The Rose Sisters' Island Adventure by Linda R. Mills

Author:Linda R. Mills [Mills, Linda R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Children's Fiction
Publisher: Ambassador International
Published: 2018-01-16T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

Life in Paradise

September 1958

IT TOOK US ONLY A couple of weeks to get used to life on Kwaj. By the time school started, we knew our way around the island. And the heat didn’t seem so bad either. We discovered that there was a seawater swimming pool on the windward side of the base, just a couple of blocks from our house. It was free, and we could go anytime. There were lifeguards on duty, which was a good thing because Mom did not know how to swim.

The monthly refrigerator ship had come in recently, so there were fresh eggs and vegetables in the commissary. There was only one kind of ice cream that they brought to the island. It was in five gallon containers, and Daddy usually bought a container of chocolate for our freezer. We never had fresh milk though. It was always the icky canned milk. Susie plugged her nose every time she had to drink a glass of it.

“When we get back to the States, I am never ever going to drink anything but fresh whole milk again,” Sue declared. “This stuff is terrible with a capital T.”

Canned milk wasn’t the only thing different from what we had been used to. We had discovered a lot of differences between Kwaj and the States.

It didn’t rain much, so there were ditches along the sides of the airfield to help catch rainwater, and we had a rain barrel next to our house. We used that water to wash our hair or put in the water tank of the toilet. There was a brick in that tank too so that it took up some of the space and didn’t use as much water when it refilled. I learned to take Jackson showers because we had to conserve water.

Daddy explained it to us the first time. “When you get in the shower, turn on the water and get wet all over. Then turn off the water, soap up, and scrub all over your body. When you have finished all your scrubbing, turn the water back on only long enough to get rinsed off. We can’t let the water just run the whole time. Every one of us has to do our part to conserve the water on the island so we don’t run out.”

We didn’t have a TV. Nobody did because there was no television station here on the island. We were out in the middle of the Pacific. There were no nearby stations either. There was one radio station that broadcasted just on the base, but somehow they had all the latest records to play like “Charlie Brown, he’s a clown, that Charlie Brown.”

Because it was so hot, everyone wore shorts. Even the Navy dress uniforms for the men had shorts, not long pants. In school, we were allowed to wear shorts. That never would have happened back at my old school. There we had to wear dresses or skirts and blouses and saddle shoes. Our shoes on Kwaj were called go-aheads because you couldn’t walk backwards in them.

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