The punishment for continuing to talk at nap time after Miss Arnold had reminded you to be quiet was to sit on the floor in the chair-opening beneath her large wooden desk. That’s where I was on June 6, 1955, when my older sisters Jean and Tootie came to my first-grade classroom at Lincoln Elementary School and whispered something to our teacher. They removed the chair that blocked the opening, leaned down, and reached in unison to pull me out and up. Before I could ask how they knew I needed rescuing from my wooden cell, they said in unison, “Daddy’s in the hospital.” 

A standing rule in our house was that if Mama was not home when we got in from school, somebody had better start cooking. So Vern went to the kitchen.