Read Online Rohn Federbush - Sally Bianco 02 - The Appropriate Way by Rohn Federbush - Free Book Online

in Huntley, second grade in Algonquin, third grade in Crystal Lake, fourth grade in Wayne, fifth, sixth and seventh in Plato Center on the Rossmoor farm, and eighth grade was spent at St. Patrick’s. The family moved nearly every year until Daddy stopped managing farms for other people to start house painting. His hot temper wasn’t fit for steady employment. If he left a customer as a house painter, the family could at least stay put in the same community. As a consequence, Sally endured a friendless existence. She was most comfortable talking to strangers. The entire world was filled with interesting people.
    Her middle name was Alice, and as Lewis Carroll said of his brave Alice in the journey through the Looking Glass, she found in her world, “Everything happened so oddly she didn’t feel a bit surprised.” She certainly couldn’t control much. The family’s extras went to support her brother in the seminary. No one encouraged her to apply to college.
    As she was growing up, her older sisters and Dick, four years younger than Sally, were spirited away to school or worse. In Algonquin when her mother fell down a haymow in a suspicious accident, they were at school, her father in town. The farm’s crop failed to turn a profit. Their unpaid wages were deemed a further investment in their share of the land. Her father contacted a lawyer, which only added fuel to the dispute. The family was asked to vacate the premise in the middle of the school year, so her mother’s convenient accident solved their lodging problem. An aunt opened her home for Mother while her broken pelvis healed. Madelyn and Dick accompanied her. Loretta and Sally were shipped off to grandmothers; first Daddy’s and then Grandma Kerner gave them a home.
    Nearing the end of Dean Street, Sally thought she could taste an apple pie. The factories behind the house smelled of rust and oil. Maybe there would be no pie tonight. No siblings either. One sister lived five blocks east; the eldest across Main Street, six blocks away. Dick was still tucked away in the Seminary.
    Art Woods was playing games with her to entertain his buddy. What was it with guys? Jill probably presented her fantastic stories for the same reason. Sally stopped before opening the front door. They were more immature than she was.
    Sure she dived into books at the first hint of trouble, but at least she knew who she was. They were all pretending, while she was content to what, read scripts? Almost the same thing! Understanding their need for escape helped Sally draw her next, more mature, breath as she called hello to Mother.
    Nevertheless, Sally longed to return to a simpler time on the farm when copulation was only fit for farm animals.
    ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
    September 1958
    On the first Monday in September after Art and Tony returned to college for their second year, Jill called asking Sally to spend the weekend with her down in Lincoln, Illinois, where the boys attended Lincoln College. “Art Woods asked Tony if you could come down with me. Are you dating Art?”
    “I know him from school.” Sally couldn’t understand why she was defending herself.
    “So you have been dating.”
    “No. We just ran into each other.” Sally didn’t want to share the details of the last time she’d seen Art Woods in June.
    Sixty miles west of Chicago the mighty Fox River cuts a north-south meandering path through the farming plains of Illinois. In St. Charles, ‘streets’ were laid out parallel to the river on the west side balancing the ‘avenues’ which terrace the riverbed’s rising slope to the east. As a teenager, she hoped to escape the valley.
    The first week out of school, she accepted a job at DuKane, a privately owned electronics firm. Each day she drove her father’s Buick east to her secretarial job. Each night she returned west. She often thought if the sun would stop blinding her, she might find a way out of the river valley. Typing dull business letters left her hungry