A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck

Author:Richard Peck
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Kids
ISBN: 9789085241522
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 1997-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

The Phantom Brakeman

1933

Down at Grandma’s the only thing that reminded us of home and Chicago was Nehi. This was orange pop at a nickel a bottle. With the twenty-five cents apiece that Dad gave Mary Alice and me, we could each buy five Nehis during our week, if we could slip off from Grandma long enough to get our allowances spent.

The Coffee Pot Café kept the Nehis along with the Grapettes and the Dr Peppers in a sheet-metal vat of ice water with a bottle opener hanging down on a piece of twine. Grandma said she didn’t like Nehi because the bubbles in it gave her gas. Mary Alice said anything that cost money gave Grandma gas.

We made ourselves scarce that first afternoon and headed uptown before Grandma could find us some chores. I was thirteen at last, so I’d thank you to call me Joe, not Joey, and I walked a few strides ahead of Mary Alice.

For one thing, she’d been taking dancing lessons all year and never went anywhere without her tap shoes in a drawstring bag. The greatest movie star in history was sweeping the country at that time, a girl younger than Mary Alice named Shirley Temple. Shirley could sing and act, and she was a tap-dancing demon. Every girl in America was taking tap to be the next Shirley Temple.

Though Mary Alice was getting a little too leggy to be a child star, Mother said taking tap would give her poise. So Mary Alice was apt to stop cold on a sidewalk and run through a tap routine in her regular sandals. I wasn’t going to wait while she did that, so we each acted like the other one wasn’t there.

The only people in The Coffee Pot were a couple of farm women passing the time of day with Mrs. Ike Cripe. As proprietor, Mrs. Cripe wore a crocheted handkerchief pinned to her apron, and a hair net. She saw us come in. First the screen door closed behind me. Then it opened again, and Mary Alice made her entrance. You could tell that Mrs. Cripe wanted our nickels before we fished the Nehis out of the water. She was deep in conversation with the farm women, but when I started to put my nickel on the counter, her palm was outstretched to take it.

Above on the wall was a framed picture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who’d beaten out Hoover as president of the United States. He hung between two signs:

DOUBLE-YOLK BREAKFAST

SERVED ALL DAY

with sausage, bacon, or ham, your choice

20¢

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