To Table of Contents knew to get out of the house the minute they heard his car pull up outside. Mom would allow the dogs inside to please us even though there was a strict no dogs in the house rule enforced by dad. He was strict but fair. I did not dare talk back to my dad until I was well in my forties and that happened just once.
Mornings were for mom to feed us, dress us and make sure we were ready in time so my dad could take us to school on his way to work. She and Pluma took care of the house while we were at school and they would prepare lunch, which Pluma would finish, while she picked us up from school in whatever beat up old car she was driving at the time.
Afternoons after homework was playtime and playtime was done outside with the neighborhood kids. Our house was always the gathering spot. It was also the loudest, with sometimes up to 10 kids running around in the yard. Between us 4, the neighborhood kids and friends coming over for playdates, there was never a shortage of kids to play with.
Our house was on a main road with a dirt road on the side, perfect for speeding up and down with our BMX bikes, until I fell and slid on gravel. I got scraped up quite badly, so I gave up biking for“ teaching”. My dad bought a few school benches from a school that was remodeling and we set up the garage as my new pretend school. I was of course the teacher, always ruler in hand. Our pretend school did not last long though. My brother and sisters together with the neighborhood kids shortened my tyranny with an unexpected coup and my Head Mistress days at our pretend school were short lived.
TV was a no-no in the afternoon. We had to play outside and use our imagination and boy, did we do that. There was the haunted house we“ built” out of bush and sticks that grew over the fence, the swimming pool we dug up ourselves and the dress up parties in our parents clothes and shoes, the dogs and cats took the roles of our kids. They would get dressed up and carried around like babies. My brother with his friends even pretended to be funeral home directors once and buried my Barbie dolls. To this day he cannot remember the exact location of the burial site and I never saw my dolls again.
Evenings were for dinner, homework was checked by dad, we were allowed TV for a few hours of which one was dedicated to the evening news, which my dad insisted we watched to keep us up to date with what was going on in the world.
As for weekends, those were spent mostly as a family before we all entered puberty. But when we were little my dad would take us to the nearest VHS store on Fridays after work and each week one of the 4 of us would get to choose two movies and our dad got to choose one, which was most of the time either a Clint Eastwood or a Charles Bronson movie. Saturday morning, dad would take us biking in the neighborhood, sometimes all the way to the beach or he would take us for long drives in what he called his weekend car. It was a Toronado that he every free minute working on. Sundays was of course for the Church but after the mandatory and boring hour-long sermon by a Ctaholic priest we were usually rewarded with one scoop each at Baskin Robbins.
Vacations were to neighboring islands of Bonaire and Aruba or mainland cities like Caracas, Amsterdam or Orlando. Like I mentioned before, we were definitely not rich, far from it actually, but dad worked really hard and my mom was super savvy when it came to running the house. One regular pack of