Mama’s Purse took Flight…

A fit of temper made for a mysterious family story.

Holy Cow!

👿Mama was fuming at my sister & I at it (again)🙄… fighting.

Mama was high-strung and easily frazzled by nature. 😓

Another overworked housewife/ mother with bratty, acting-up kids.

Mama had no help cleaning, cooking, shopping and working in Papa’s Butcher shop with him.

Well, my older sister, Sondra, 10 & I, 8, were teasing, bickering and pulling one another’s hair, while rolling across the waxed linoleum kitchen floor…underfoot.

Of course, we chose to carry on when Mama was rushing to pack the hot lunch to carry to Papa’s shop for him.

His business was about a dozen Brooklyn blocks away in those days. Then as usual, on the way she would stop at a bakery, to pick up fresh bread to accompany her homemade hot meal. Papa did like a warming meal and Mama aimed to please.

Imagine her huffing & puffing and us in battle over nothing’, in her path in the “compact" cooking space.

Scolding, & warning after a few times, she threw her small change purse back at us, in temper, and frustration.

(Can you blame her)?

It flew from her hand, thrown up into the air, in our 1940’s kitchen.

…BUUUTTT where it landed, nobody knew…😮

We looked “high & low” but to no avail.

Mama was livid… so Sondra & I ran for our lives, out of our tenement apartment, down the 2 flights of creaky wooden stairwell, to the street below. We got outa her way…but fast. 😝😝

We were brats, no doubt but not stupid ones.

Papa would deal with us later when he’d come home for supper.

Woe would be us for aggravating Mama…a spanking was due us tonight, for sure.

Mama became more upset when she couldn’t find what out what happened to the flying money holder. 🤬

I must add every cent was precious and needed in those days. 💲💲💲

For years we could find that darn coin purse. From time to time, we talk about Mama’s purse that vanished into the thin air…not that we didn’t turn the place over again…but to no avail!

Time passes…

Half a decade later, Papa got “rich” enough to buy a house…so our family was to move to the six-room apartment, above a store, that would become Papa’s Butcher 🥩🍖🍗shop. Mama could help in the shop, as needed, then go upstairs to care for our home.

Are you sitting down?

Moving Day Arrives…

As the moving men took out the well- worn furniture, the last piece being the huge dark wood framed hung mirror huge horizontality on the wall, opposite our table & chairs.

When the mirror was carefully removed from the dinette yellow wall…a muffed clang hit the floor.💥

Surprise the little old leather change purse was spit out like a dried prune pit. 💨

Holy Brooklyn! Mama’s purse with its meager contents of $ 9.53 scattered across the linoleum floor. 💥

Well Mama was a happy person…she found her $9.53 but also the mystery of the flying, lost purse was solved. It had wedged between the mirror & the wall from her wild toss in the air.

To quote Mama, “When is a poor person happy…when he finds what he thought he lost”. 🧡💚💙