No Handsome Cowboys Yet (Part 1)

Alice was already fifteen years old when I was born in 1944. A baby sister was not on her teenage agenda. She was busy dreaming of horses and cowboys and the Wild West, of living her life somewhere other than in the comfortable northern suburbs of Chicago. She couldn’t wait to get out of the house. I’d like to think of my presence in said house as not so much of an annoyance as a dream catalyst.

Not long after my arrival, Alice talked Dad into buying her a horse that she kept at a stable nearby in Harms Woods. Family lore has it that when she was sixteen, she announced she was going to marry Harry, the stable boy. This news apparently didn’t sit well with Mother and Dad, so they whisked her off with them to a film convention in Hollywood and on down to Mexico City to broaden her horizons. She spent all her time in hotel rooms writing lovesick letters to Harry who reciprocated by having a new girl friend when she arrived home. That’s probably why she was so mad when I hid her lipstick in the clothes hamper. How was I to know?