The island was drenched in a dark and irresistible glamour so potent that the biggest-name entertainers in the country performed in the nightclubs, casinos, and supper clubs there. And the prostitutes who worked openly along Galveston’s infamous Line outnumbered spotted dogs. Where gambling wasn’t considered any worse than chewing tobacco. And why not? Back on Vinegar Hill, we all knew that Galveston was a wide-open town where Prohibition was a suggestion instead of the law of the land. A couple of the women, giggling behind their hands at their daring, lit up cigarettes and carefully blew the smoke out the window.Įveryone acted like naughty children playing hooky. Mothers let their children stand on the seats. Or the little girls with long curls and short dresses with bloomers.Ī party atmosphere pervaded the car. Not the women in crisp white linen dresses and open-toed sandals. No one else onboard appeared to have a care in the world.

School had just let out and jolly vacationers packed the car. This was worse than any case of stage fright I’d ever endured back on the vaudeville circuit. My palms were sodden with sweat and butterflies churned through my gut. I was so terrified of what lay ahead and so thrilled about what lay ahead that, had I been a dog, I would have stuck my head out the window and panted and drooled from sheer excitement.īut, being a seventeen-year-old girl from Houston’s notorious Vinegar Hill neighborhood determined to hide who she really was, I sat up primly and folded my hands in my lap instead.

The cabin-sleek and modern as a rocket ship out of a Buck Rogers in the 25th Century comic strip-was the perfect vehicle to launch me into my future. Even though the island was barely more than an hour away, this was my first visit. I sat up even straighter on my dusty maroon velvet seat aboard the Houston-Galveston Interurban Railway. Mary’s Hospital School of Nursing located on Galveston. Today, though, today was the first day of the life that I chose.īy some miracle, I had won a scholarship to study at St. Mostly, I was always what Mamie, my mother, needed me to be to earn money. I had already been a lot of things in my young life-vaudeville performer, dance instructor, waitress, dishwasher, pants presser, babysitter. Saltines drooped limp as slices of bologna.īut nothing and no one was going to wilt me. Towels hung out to dry came in so damp they had to be cranked through the clothes wringer again.

Last dance vs last hope