Chapter Four:

The Wide Open Spaces

A "SEA CHANGE" now ensued in my Dad's affairs: as a troubleshooter for the old GMAC arm of General Motors, he was transferred to...Dallas, TX. The family's arrival there largely marked our peripatetic home ("Border to Border in Texas," as my Dad was later often to refer to it) for the next 12 years - and the only real place I was ever "from" - or where (better!) I grew up.

Van Dalia Place. Something like that. That's where we moved to. I remember the big van in the driveway (a scene to be repeated so many times in my youth...) and the loading crew had just set up a ramp down to the ground - when ZOOM! - out of the back of the van shot my sister, Ceily, on her tricycle - lickety-split down the ramp and up the driveway - narrowly missing a couple of the loaders! They laughed all afternoon over this - it entered family lore. (Actually, my sister, who wore bangs, and looked like Moe in the old "Three Stooges" comedies, was hell-on-wheels in her formative years... More anon).

Van Dalia didn't know us long: soon came a transfer to ...Chicago! (a six-month interlude out of my Texas upbringing). As pop would describe it in later years, a pattern was being cut in - he would come home, announce we were moving (again!) - and Mom would "...wave a wand and the dishes would automatically jump into boxes and barrels...".

Sigh.