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Our Forefathers and Foremothers 39
My dad’s worst fear was that I’d get “knocked-up,” pregnant, while he had custody of me. He wasn’t nice to the young men I dated, always offering them “homemade” delicious peppers before they took me out. I would beg him not to do it because they were actually store-bought hot chili peppers, and he would laugh as my poor dates ate a pepper to be polite! They would usually start coughing, beg for water, and mumble something like, “Your dad sure has a strange sense of humor.” It was his way of saying, “This is nothing compared to what you’ll get if you put my daughter in a family way.”
One of my many high-style fashion sketches dating from the 1940s and 1950s. I often signed them “Vicki Verelle.”