A Babysitter with Benefits

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I started babysitting my sister when I was in the 6th grade. We were living in the house on the highway that everyone called the Oney house. It was the house where I received my last spanking and the house that had the yard that we had the Shetland pony in before the 4th of July celebration where he was raffled off.

My sister is 7 years younger than me but thought we were the same age. With her being so independent and thinking that she didn’t have to mind me because I was not her mama, it was not an easy task to babysit her. It was a constant battle to try and get her to do what mom said she should or shouldn’t do.

Sometimes if my folks knew they were going be gone until late in the evening and to save me from pulling out my hair…they would hire a babysitter. When they had Grandma Pitts stay with us she brought cookies or we baked cookies. She would also play games or color with us in our coloring books.

We each had our own color book and crayons; I would never have let my little sister (the brat) color in my book or use my crayons. When we had Grandma Pitts with us it was almost like having my favorite Grandmother there except I let Grandma Pitts color in my books.

Other times my folks would hire a teenage girl to come and stay with us. She was in high school and it was always exciting when she showed up at the door. My sister was better for the babysitters than she ever was for me, so that was one reason I liked having either one of them with us.

The benefit we enjoyed when the high school girl came to stay with us was getting to cruise the town. She was dating Max at the time. (About 12 years later Max became my brother in law when I married his younger brother.) Max had a 1950 light green Chevy 4 door deluxe sedan which meant it had all the bells and whistles that were offered back then. It had grey fabric (which must have been wool) interior with a lot of chrome both inside and out. It also had the sun visor over the front window.

Max and his 1950 Chevy around 1960

It might as well have been a limousine to the two girls who got to tag along with the high school kids while they drug main and every other street in town. We felt like queens when we were allowed to ride in the car with them.

Max would arrive at the house about 30 minutes after my parents left for the evening. Our babysitter, my sister and I would pile into his car for the ride around town. My sister and I would be in the back seat and the babysitter would be sitting in the middle of the front seat by Max.

The two teenagers in the front seat spent the time we were driving around town talking to each other. My sister and I, in the back seat, were just along for the ride and we enjoyed every minute of it. Even my sister was quiet during our joy rides with them.

Max always stopped at the Sinclair Station and bought us a bottle of pop from the pop machine just inside the door of the building. That would have been the only place open in the evening when we were out for our ride. We really looked forward to those bottles of pop since we never had pop at home.  He bought both of us a bottle to keep us quiet, I think. But we wouldn’t have made a sound, even without the pop, because we wanted to go for another ride when she came to stay with us again.

I don’t know if my parents knew we went out for a joy ride during the evenings while they were gone. Maybe the babysitter asked their permission the first time she sat with us, but I don’t think they would have cared if we went with them anyway. It sure was fun to have a babysitter with benefits. To contact Sandy: [email protected]

 

 

 

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