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| Tonight I received an email from someone
that I used to spend more time with then my own family. She was my best
friend. Her name was Linda Catherine Rose and she was 1/2 American Indian.
She was beautiful. Her hair was black as coal and her cheek bones were
to die for. I think we first met in church when her mom started coming
to the church I had attended all my life. We were about in the 5th or 6th
grade.
Although we attended the same school we really didn't get too buddy buddy until she started coming to our church. After that a stick of dynamite couldn't keep us apart. We were together constantly. We were together all day at school and on Wednesday nights after church we immediately stated begging to spend the night at one or the other's house. Linda was so smart and talented, she could make a designer gown out of a feed sack. Needless to say she made a lot of our clothes, while I lay on the bed and talked her ear off. I think we must have stayed up till all hours of the night and then got up and went to school. She of course had no problems for as I stated before, she was smart. I hated math or anything to do with it, still do. She could zip through those problems like they were song lyrics. Linda and I were not above lying to our parents to go somewhere either. It was the old "you lie and I'll swear to it." We used to smoke and throw the butts out her bedroom window which unfortunately faced the front of the house. So we would have to beg and plead with her older brother Howard to clean them up for us before her mother Irene found them. I don't really remember where we got the cigarettes, perhaps her mom or my mom as they both smoked. We could have stole them from other family members and we might have got someone to buy them for us. But, nevertheless we had smokes and we was cool!!!!!!!! God help us if we got the giggles and it seems we would be at my house when they hit hard. I can just hear my daddy yelling from his bedroom, "Linda Catherine, you and Kathalise have about two seconds to shut up and go to sleep!" and that of course through us into fits of laughter. Muffled by the blankets and each other's backs we would laugh till we almost peed our pants. I can hear him five minutes later, "Don't make me get up and come in there!" Like he would, my dad was so afraid someone would see him in his undershirt there was no way he was going to get up and come in there. Of course we got the same thing at her house. Her dad Mr. Harvey yelling from the back of the house for us to hush and go to sleep. Again an attack of the "I can not stop laughing" would hit and we would have our heads under the covers trying so hard to be quite. One Sunday after church her mom sent us up to her grandmother's house up the road to get some potato salad for lunch. Well, coming down that dirt road we decided to pull back the foil and have a taste. Well in our hurry to be first, I don't to this day remember who or what happened, just that one minute we were giggling and the next the whole bowl of potato salad was in the dirt. Oh we were in for it now! But, all was not lost as we got the brilliant idea to scrape off the dirty part and kind of mix it around so no one could tell. Of course at dinner no one could understand why Linda and I refused her grandmother's famous potato salad. It was forever known after that as "Potato Salad" road. Linda was my hero, I wanted so much to be like her, look like her, act like her, be smart like her. I was redheaded and freckle faced and she was this dark exotic creature with a great figure, while I tended to be a little on the chubby side. I played basketball, and Linda did for awhile, until she realized she actually had to move and there was a great chance one of beautiful nails might break. So she quit and joined the "Flag Corps" We knew things about each other that no one else knew, and were sworn to silence. We went from day to day knowing it would last forever. We double dated and even had two poor fellows get baptized in our church so our mom's would let them date us...HOW FUNNY. Linda married her high school love and had a daughter in June of 1970, I had my son in July of 1970. WE did everything together. So, I moved to Indiana and she to Texas. Years later she divorced and remarried and has a husband of 20 years today and two teenagers. God I hope they don't do her the way we did our poor parents. Her mother and father are both gone as is mine, and I know that they are glad for the rest. We put them through it... Linda's birthday is this Saturday and this is sort of my present to her. October 20th, will be our 30th high school reunion, we have promised each other that we will go and neither chicken out. Linda if I never told you, you were such a big part of my teenage years and I loved you like a sister. I remember so many times together, sitting on the lake till we were lobsters knowing we had to be in a wedding that night as candle lighters. The bride was not happy with us...Remember. You took boyfriends away from me with out even knowing it, but I always loved you anyway. We both have very busy lives now, me with grandchildren and you with teenagers and grandchild. We both ended up with really good husbands (how I don't know) who seem to love us and take care of us. It's been a long time Sis since your mom rode that little car down the hall beeping the horn...( you had to be there) And I am looking forward to us waltzing into that old school in Oct. and saying, "HERE WE ARE!" Still the cream of the crop just a different field... I love you girl, Happy Birthday and if I could I would gather the old gang and we would go to Lake Vernon and have another "night swim" for your birthday. But I guess this will have too do.
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