Dear Folks, Even as a little kid, I was always fashion conscious. I remember when I was either 5 or 6 years old Mother bought me a gen-u-wine Shirley Temple dress for my Easter outfit! I can still see it. It was a pretty peachy-orange with lots of white piping on it. To complete my Easter ensemble, Mother bought me high-topped white shoes. No doubt but what she also bought me an Easter hat but with that dress and those shoes, I was in fashion heaven! And to think that I went to Lutheran Sunday School that Easter morning being so prideful! Well, for the next few years, I certainly wasn't in any kind of my blue fashion heaven. First off was my dream for Daddy to bring me back a Shirley Temple Heidi dress from Switzerland. It took me many years later to figure out why he couldn't grant me my dream. No doubt that nowhere in Switzerland at that time did they have a Shirley Temple Heidi dress shop; therefore, it was just a dream of mine that didn't come true. (sigh!) But it goes downhill from there. By now we're into the winter of 1939 and I was in the third grade at Pacific Avenue School. Mother always made certain that I was dressed warm enough for the ten block walk to school and therefore I had to wear winter underwear under my dress in addition to my woolen snow suit complete with leggings. There's one particular time that I still recall with utmost embarrassment. I have the feeling that our school was practicing our first air raid drill. WWII had actually started even though our country hadn't gotten involved in it yet but what I remember is that upon our teacher's instructions, our class was taken down into the school basement and I believe we were given some sort of an introductory course as to why we there. Frankly, I don't believe any of us kids really had a clue. But that's not the fashion point I want to make. All of us third graders stood patiently in line for an interminable length of time (at least to me) and when I hqppened to glance down at the rather short sleeves of my dress, I realized that the longer sleeves of my winter underwear were peaking out below them! I was mortified!!! Oh how gauche!!!! Well I won't beleaguer you with more sad tales of my failure to be voted the best dressed third-grader but I'll leave you with this. Mother had bought me new shoes for me to wear ONLY to Sunday School. They were drop-dead gorgeous and I wanted to show them off at school. Of course that was out of the question, so one morning shortly after receiving my fashionable shoes I figured out a way to out-fox Mother. While I was getting ready for school that morning I swore to my mother that I could find only one of my everyday school shoes and therefore I'd have to wear my new shoes to school. She bought it (Yeh, like right!! :-) and I marched off proudly in my newest fashion statement! I just KNEW that I would be the envy of the other third-grade girls that day!! Such simple things are what memories are made of. vee