Read Online Little Altars Everywhere by Rebecca Wells - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Rebecca Wells
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town to work and only come out every couple of weeks. Which is fine with me, because Mama and the Ya-Yas are lots more fun without the men around. They don’t wear makeup when we’re at Spring Creek, just a dab of lipstick and toenail polish. And they don’t use hairspray at all. They wear men’s big shirts and short-shorts and ratty old tennis shoes, and at night they sleep in tee-shirts and panties. They only cook when they feel like it, they read tons of paperback books, and if one of them farts, they laugh their heads off and yell out: Kill it! Step on it! Don’t let it get away! When Mama is at Spring Creek, she does only what she wants to.
But when Daddy and the other men come out for a weekend, the Ya-Yas start getting ready on Friday morning. Fixing little appetizers and tweezing their eyebrows, and Mama gets all nervous. It’s the only time that Mama makes me put Vitalis on my hair, and she tells us exactly what we can and can’t tell Daddy about what we’ve been doing.
See, Mama and the Ya-Yas all came out to Spring Creek when they were little. All their families had camps and their mamas brought them out here while their daddies worked in town. When they wereteenagers, the Ya-Yas just owned Spring Creek during the summers—that’s how they put it. You should see the pictures of Mama and Necie and Caro, and sometimes Teensy, how pretty they were then with their hats and sunglasses. Mama drove a Willys jeep and Caro had a red convertible, and they did anything in the world they wanted. We egg them on to tell us stories about the trouble they used to cook up back then.
Spring Creek has always been in a dry parish, the Ya-Yas say. And it’s our job to moisten the place up!
Our camp is named Sans Souci , which means “without a care.” We have a carved wood sign hanging out in front. All you have to say is “Sans Souci” and everybody knows where it is. It’s real big and right in the middle of the piney woods, just a short hike away from three different swimming holes.
When we open up the camp at first, it smells the same as ever: all musty and old and good. It is dirty from being empty for nine months. But the Ya-Yas give us our assignments and we get right to work. Daddy-long-legs are crawling out everywhere, and there’s so much dust that Sidda has to take out her wheezer.
Mama always has us clean the kitchen up first. She says, A good camper always does her kitchen right from the get-go! She’s right, too. Because once we get the kitchen spotless, then we can go in there and wash our hands and eat Letta’s ham and cheese sandwiches and lemonade and cookies and kick our feet up while the rest of the place is still a mess.
Mama and Necie and Caro do everything themselves, with only us to help them. They hook up the well, turn on the electricity, and get rid of the dirt-dobbers that have built nests under the eaves. They just take over, and they don’t call Daddy or any servicemen to help, even though we do have a phone out there. (That phone is the oldest phone in the universe. If you got hit in the head with that big black phone, it’d knock you out cold and you’d die dead.)
Sans Souci has screen windows running all the way around it. It’s like living in a porch the whole time. There are smooth plank floors and a huge, long sleeping porch with three ceiling fans. All the beds are lined up, one after the other, plenty for everyone.
Two-dozen people can sleep at Sans Souci, if they’re not picky, Mama says.
Each bed has a little reading lamp just behind your head. And the way the fans hang from the ceiling, every one of us gets this nice little breeze. We never suffocate from the heat unless there’s a storm and the electricity goes out. We do our best sleeping at Sans Souci.
We’ve got a dressing room and a shower in the middle of the camp, but they are awful hot to spend much time in. The toilet is in a little green closet off the side of the sleeping porch, and we keep a
But when Daddy and the other men come out for a weekend, the Ya-Yas start getting ready on Friday morning. Fixing little appetizers and tweezing their eyebrows, and Mama gets all nervous. It’s the only time that Mama makes me put Vitalis on my hair, and she tells us exactly what we can and can’t tell Daddy about what we’ve been doing.
See, Mama and the Ya-Yas all came out to Spring Creek when they were little. All their families had camps and their mamas brought them out here while their daddies worked in town. When they wereteenagers, the Ya-Yas just owned Spring Creek during the summers—that’s how they put it. You should see the pictures of Mama and Necie and Caro, and sometimes Teensy, how pretty they were then with their hats and sunglasses. Mama drove a Willys jeep and Caro had a red convertible, and they did anything in the world they wanted. We egg them on to tell us stories about the trouble they used to cook up back then.
Spring Creek has always been in a dry parish, the Ya-Yas say. And it’s our job to moisten the place up!
Our camp is named Sans Souci , which means “without a care.” We have a carved wood sign hanging out in front. All you have to say is “Sans Souci” and everybody knows where it is. It’s real big and right in the middle of the piney woods, just a short hike away from three different swimming holes.
When we open up the camp at first, it smells the same as ever: all musty and old and good. It is dirty from being empty for nine months. But the Ya-Yas give us our assignments and we get right to work. Daddy-long-legs are crawling out everywhere, and there’s so much dust that Sidda has to take out her wheezer.
Mama always has us clean the kitchen up first. She says, A good camper always does her kitchen right from the get-go! She’s right, too. Because once we get the kitchen spotless, then we can go in there and wash our hands and eat Letta’s ham and cheese sandwiches and lemonade and cookies and kick our feet up while the rest of the place is still a mess.
Mama and Necie and Caro do everything themselves, with only us to help them. They hook up the well, turn on the electricity, and get rid of the dirt-dobbers that have built nests under the eaves. They just take over, and they don’t call Daddy or any servicemen to help, even though we do have a phone out there. (That phone is the oldest phone in the universe. If you got hit in the head with that big black phone, it’d knock you out cold and you’d die dead.)
Sans Souci has screen windows running all the way around it. It’s like living in a porch the whole time. There are smooth plank floors and a huge, long sleeping porch with three ceiling fans. All the beds are lined up, one after the other, plenty for everyone.
Two-dozen people can sleep at Sans Souci, if they’re not picky, Mama says.
Each bed has a little reading lamp just behind your head. And the way the fans hang from the ceiling, every one of us gets this nice little breeze. We never suffocate from the heat unless there’s a storm and the electricity goes out. We do our best sleeping at Sans Souci.
We’ve got a dressing room and a shower in the middle of the camp, but they are awful hot to spend much time in. The toilet is in a little green closet off the side of the sleeping porch, and we keep a
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