Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

businessman.
    Daddy and I had fun his last night as a motion picture operator. I stayed in the booth with him and we broke eighty-three intermission records over our heads. I ate five Mr. Goodbars and a Baby Ruth.
    Momma, who was in the audience, was embarrassed. Nobody enjoyed the movie,
Johnny Belinda
, which had a lot of silent parts in it, because of the noise we made. When Daddy missed his changeover and the audience started clapping, she clapped right along with them. She didn’t want anyone to know she was related to the operator. I myself remained loyal and leaned over the balcony and screamed, “Shut up.” After all, it was only a four-minute wait. Some people have disgusting habits.
    Felix, plus two of her kittens, and Lassie are going to Shell Beach with us.
    We are driving down in our Crosley car. It is real little andMomma hates it. She says she feels like she is riding in a washing machine.
    I’m going to name my pony Trigger, or Helen if it is a girl.
May 29, 1952
    I am in Shell Beach, Mississippi, almost 300 miles from Jackson. Wow! We have been here a week and a lot has happened. The trip down was great. I saw real cotton growing and cows and read Burma Shave signs and there were rednecks all along the side of the road. Momma says I have white trash blood on my father’s side, but I don’t believe it.
    The trip took about nine hours. We had to keep stopping for Lassie and Felix and her kittens to go to the bathroom and Felix ran away in a field once. Momma cried all the way and wouldn’t even eat her bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.
    We met Jimmy Snow at a filling station ten miles from the beach and he gave Daddy the key to the malt shop and wished him good luck. He sure is funny-looking. He has snow white hair and snow white eyebrows and he isn’t even old. He said he would be down and see us later.
    At about four-thirty in the afternoon we reached Shell Beach and it is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. The beach has sand white as flour and the water is green and clear, not like the Pearl River at all. There is not a tree anywhere.
    Daddy’s place is located at the end of the road that goes straight to the beach. Even I can tell it is a prime location. It is across the street from a dance hall called the Little Casino. Daddy got the key out and opened the door.
    The malt shop is terrific. It has six booths, made out of limegreen plastic, and six tables and chairs to match, and you can see the Gulf of Mexico right out the window. It has a kitchen and a jukebox with pink and green lights and red buttons that I get to play free.
    We couldn’t tell much about the floor because the place was closed all winter and it had about two feet of sand in it. Daddy said we could clean that up in jig time. However, it took us four days. Sand can fool you. We are living in the back of the malt shop, which is one large room with a sun porch. Daddy is turning the sun porch into a bedroom for me. The malt shop is made of green asbestos and has a big picture window in the front.
    Our very first visitors were the Romeos, who live up the road and have an Italian restaurant and about eight summer cottages. They have a son named Michael, who is visiting his cousins in Jackson and will be back home in about two weeks. Mrs. Romeo said the only other person down here my age is a girl named Kay Bob Benson.
    The Romeos were very nice and helpful. They told us about the money prospects of Shell Beach. Mr. Romeo said there were only three months a year that you could make money: June, July and August. The rest of the year nobody ever comes down here. There are only about fifteen people who live in Shell Beach year round. Even in the summer there aren’t that many people because everybody wants to go to Florida. The main highway to Florida bypasses Shell Beach by thirty miles.
    Momma looked at Daddy like she could kill him when she heard that one.
    Most of the people who come to Shell Beach are from Hattiesburg. Mr.