Father wasn’t around much after I turned 6 years old. For several months we thought he had run off, but then we realized he had taken on two new shifts at the button factory. He worked 8am to 8am every day of the week, but he got a half day off on Christmas. He said during his breaks he would take naps under the conveyor belt, where it was warm and dark. Since Father was away and Mum was busy drinking tea and changing diapers, the rest of us had to make our own fun when we wasn’t in school. One summer – I was seven years old – my older brother Pappy invented a game we used to call “throw up”. Each of us found a rock, or stick, or brick or something and tried to throw it up on the roof of the tool shed. If none of us got it on the roof, we kept throwing until someone did. When somebody did reach the roof, I think we just kept on throwin stuff. That was a great summer!
