By the time we reached the park we had sold twenty names. We stopped at every house on that side of Upson. She wrote her name and address next to it, gave us five pennies and her pencil. We knocked on our first door … a lady came and put on her glasses. “They’re laughing at us … they think we can’t do it!” They were shoving each other over in the grass, laughing. It’s eleven thirty … get going … we’ll time you.”
“They can’t sell all those cards,” Jake said. “So you two get a quarter for every card you sell, and we get a quarter. I send them a dollar for each and they send me the boxes. “Hell of a lot of Vanity Boxes!” Jake giggled. The person who chose that name wins the Vanity Box.” When all the names are sold we open the red seal. “It costs a nickel to buy a chance on a name. Thirty three-letter names with a line beside them. Under the seal was one of the names on the card. Next to it was a red seal that said DON’T OPEN. On the top of each card was a tinted picture of a Musical Vanity Box. “Sit down, we’re going to cut you in on something.” When Ben left, Sammy called us out from under the porch. They were talking with Ben Padilla and at first made us go away. It was late in June 1943, when Sammy and Jake cut Hope and me in. I wrote LUCHA and hung it around my neck. I bought a chain and went to the Greyhound bus depot where a machine printed things on metal discs … a star in the center. But I did want a chain, one that rang when I laughed, like Sammy’s. I tried to remember what instruction I had had. Mamie, my grandmother, read that over twice. “Hear the instruction of thy father and mother, for they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head and chains about thy neck.
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