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GUS: Something Different...Open Thread)
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I have told this story before on other boards...but...here goes
When I was growing up, every summer my family would travel from Texas to Nebraska to visit my grandparents and this story happened in 1965 when I was 8.
As a boy, I wasn't allowed to have dolls. I wanted them, but my parents refused. Boys don't play with dolls.
Anyway...this summer my brother and I were spending the day with my Mom's mom - my Grandma Barajas. She lived in a tiny town called Minitare, Nebraska which had one main street with a general store, a bank, a post office and a few other buildings with about 20 or so houses scattered around.
This day, my younger brother and I went with my grandmother to the general store to buy groceries and while there, she told us we could buy whatever we wanted with $2. My brother bought penny candy, but I saw a display behind the counter with many little plastic boxes containing dolls of the world. They were little celluloid dolls - a man and a woman - for $1 each couple and oh how I wanted them. I knew my parents wouldn't approve, but my grandmother saw me staring and told me to go ahead and get them. She loved me no matter what.
I looked and looked and finally decided on a Chinese couple and a Japanese couple. I was estatic walking home with them and when we got there, I just held the boxes and stared at them with happiness. However, when my parents came to pick us up, they were not happy. They told me I couldn't keep them. I had to give them away. Boys don't have dolls.
I gave the Chinese couple to Grandma Barajas and later, the Japanese couple went to my Father's mom who lived 12 miles away in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. Every summer after that I would see the dolls in my grandmothers' houses, but I never touched them. First Grandma Barajas and then Grandma Perez passed and they were lost forever.
22 years later it is 1987 and my Father's sister is visiting Texas and going through barrels containing my Grandma Perez' things. I am helping her and as we lift sheets and blankets out of a barrel, I see a little plastic box, yellow with age and backed by cardboard cut out of an old cereal box. I lift it from the barrel, turn it around, and look again into the faces of the tiny Japanese couple.
His head is lopsided - heat damage. She is missing an arm. Their clothes are faded by the sun, but there they were. And now, they are here.
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