Bernice (More War, More Love)

So as usual, Bernice the serious writer and Bernice the comedic talker were two different people. I don't know how she got started, but before class she was telling so many stories about her in high school, big earrings, short skirts, crazy about boys. She told us about her eleven o'clock curfew that her dad strictly enforced. About the coolest girl in school who thought she could get any guy she wanted (with a skirt whose bottom seam kept riding up to her navel) - until a new girl started school who turned out to be much cooler, and the real "hot dog". Bernice told us about how boys used to carry girls' books and lunches for them in the halls, and she had this one boy carry her lunches for her, which led her to assume he liked her, but it turned out he only liked her lunches - because he ate them all. Ok, so when the seniors sat down to write, I had every reason to think she was going to write about silly high school episodes but no, she went right back to war:

10/22/09

Bernice Moore

My story of yesterday

In the 1930s we lived in Jersey. My father had a farm of horses and pigs and chickens and they had laid eggs. My father had people helped with the farm. One day the farm was on fire. It was  very bad a lot of the animals got killed. In those days other people was like your own family. Everyone look after one nother. Then my father came here to Phila. In North Phila. the people was different in color. We made many friends during the war year. We kids called collected Cherry Plum Paper cigarette paper and can left overs which was soda cans at this time the war was going strong. We was at two wars Japan and Germany. Many men and women was killed. My brother was in the army. He ran away from home and join the army. He did come back home later safe. He told us of friends who got killed. It was very sad to hear about it. In all war these things happen.  Today we have a war that is not ending yet.

When she was done, I told her I love hearing more about the war from her but was kind of hoping to read about her dating stories too. She looked at me with a look like glad-you-asked-you-want-it-you-got-it and got right to work on her second piece of the day:

10/22/09

Bernice Moore

Dating story

Goes back to when I was 17teen. My husband was my first date. On weekend we went to the movie and took lunch to the park, we met other group who was there. We had a lot of fun. The  boys acted very nice. They make sure we got home on time which was 11oclock. We could go any place and was safe. Sometimes we would run into our teacher there. Woodside Park was a park where they had games and rides on different things. Hot dog was 10¢
then and sodas was 5¢ the bus fare was 15 and 25¢ fare. Rent was 50 dollar a month. Hamburger was 15¢. Hot dog 10¢ movie 25¢.