There was something special about the warmth of the car seat covers in spring and summer when the higher sun angle would have the 1953 Ford’s interior pretty toasty when we left to go to town.
In preteen years, I would instinctively choose to sit in the back seat where there was a sense of independence riding along with my nose at window level, watching the wild roses in the ditches go by at about 25 mph as we worked our way along six miles of scorea road, going by the coulees and cricks where we picked Juneberries and chokecherries, curving around the section lines down through the pasture hills, eventually to the state highway three miles east of our little town.
In grasshopper-ridden summers, my least favorite thing on those drives was the possibility of a grasshopper hopping at “just the right moment” and smacking me in the face as he ingressed through the open window as we passed his roadside Montana home.  Having a grasshopper smack my face at 25 mph hurt…and if they missed my face, that was worse: then they ended up in the sloping back window area up behind the seat and I had to worry about if they were going to jump on my neck.  If my brother was along (usually he was not, because he would be working in the fields) he could do the grasshopper-capture and fling the ugly thing back out the window, but if I was in the back seat alone, there was nothing for it but to sit at the farthest point from where the grasshopper sat, taunting me from the back window saying in his grasshopperish wheeze, “Gonna jump on you.  And you can’t stop me…I’m gonna do it and you don’t know just when…..”  There was no way I was going to take hold of one of those uglies.  Still hate grasshoppers.
An occasional treat on a warm summer day was getting to rollerskate on the broad town sidewalks.  If Mom had shopping or visiting to do that was going to perhaps use an hour or so (that would mean a grocery store stop for salt and such, and perhaps coffee with a friend), I might have the liberty to skate for awhile on the long sidewalks.  Now that was good fun.  At the farm I had only the very narrow sidewalk that ran across part of the front of the house, then made a 60 degree left turn to run across the east side; then a jump down off the 8″ step to the narrow sidewalk running another 25 feet away to the short wooden sidewalk that led to the outhouse.  There was no place to get up speed or “get into stride” because most of that sidewalk was about 2 feet wide at the most.  The joys of the open road to be found in town were really, really delightful!  I could skate those great long town blocks, as long as I stayed on the east side so that I wouldn’t be going past the Stockman’s Bar.  Such a crass violation in broad daylight would have terminated all town skating privileges henceforth and forever.
There was an added fuzz hindrance in town in the summer from two sources.  When the cottonwoods were dropping the cotton in late May or early June, the sidewalks would be filled with drifting dunes of light cotton, swept up into small heaps at every corner and spot where the breeze was slightly hindered.  The other fuzzball issue would occur when the one giant St. Bernard in all of eastern Montana (as far as I know) was shedding.  Oh, my.  That dog’s annual shedding performance could do a number on main street, even if it was a half mile long.
Now I can’t imagine why my mother put a homemade frosted layer cake (no cover) on the seat of the car.  Why would anyone do that?  But if I were an artist, I could still paint the scene from the vantage point of my own line of sight.  She knew I was with her.  (Goodness me, she knew what I was like generally.)  She knew she hadn’t gone to town alone.  She knew “Sharon is here,” but somehow, in spite of all her firsthand experience with Child #7, between running into the store or down the street, upon returning to the car to get in and go with her to another point, she had placed the beautiful layer cake (destined for someone’s home) right on top of the seat, where I was going to sit.  It had not been there when I got out of the car a few minutes earlier.  Now it was.
Why?  Why?? “Why, oh, why,” I ask…to this day.  I was moving pretty much at top speed and, in one movement, had the door open and was swinging myself into the seat when, as time s-l-l-l-o-o-o-o-w-w-w-s down, I see the cake.  I know my trajectory.  I know the outcome.  I know all these things.  And there’s absolutely nothing to be done. Like a magnet.  It draws me to itself….
….the handprint that went through all the layers to the pretty plate was quite clear. Didn’t smear around much.  It was now a cake with a hand print from top to bottom.  It was a well-structured cake that didn’t fall all apart.  It just stood there.  With a hand-shaped hole from top to bottom.
She had that look on her face that was indeed familiar.    I do remember being spanked on occasion and I remember being spanked hard~~but I can count those occasions on one hand and this wasn’t one of them.   She was a woman of mercy, I tell you.
Another regular stop in town during the summer was the library: way down the south side of the Armory, there was a door propped open.  Go through that door (which is also the back entry to the Armory/High School gymnasium) and a couple of steps up to a little alcove that serves as the public library.  It was probably no larger than 15 X 25.  It had the wonderful musty, dusty smell of old books and was monitored and maintained by a singularly suitable “Marian the Librarian” professional.  She never seemed to say anything, just sat there at her desk doing things.  She wasn’t unfriendly but had apparently decided at some earlier point that “passing the time of day,” even with the parents of children who came in to get books, was not necessary.  Talking was not an option she exercised frivolously.  Now we’re happily headed home now and I have an armload of fresh books.  Life is good.
Another gratitude I have where Mom is concerned is that she took the time, exerted the effort, did the planning and “got ‘er done” in terms of getting regular piano lessons for me beginning when I was about six years old.  The piano lessons were normally a feature of the summer months into fall, with a hiatus dictated by the winter weather; then resuming and pressing on come spring.  My brother also took piano for a time, so some of the piano recitals of those early years featured duets by brother and sister.  The recitals were held in the piano teacher’s home where everyone,  including the fathers who would have left field and office early enough to be present for the 7pm opening number, would crowd in at the appointed time, filling the chairs lined up along the walls all dressed in Sunday best.  At one of the recitals where my brother and I were scheduled to play, the car door got slammed on four of my fingers on one hand as we arrived at the teacher’s house.  I made one of those “keep on keeping on” decisions, and got a moment’s sympathy and acknowledgement that the door had indeed slammed on my hand.  As is so often the case with life, there really wasn’t any more to be done.  It went ok, and we went home at the end of the evening knowing we had done our best.