Part 1 Summary

Sissie, a young child and the narrator of the story, is playing a game with her mother. She describes her mother as pretty with long hair. Sissie and her family are seated at a table by the water when her father returns with glasses of beer. Friends of her parents' have joined them and are chatting away. They have all just come from a parade in which one friend, a volunteer firefighter, marched.

Sissie's brothers, Jerry and Frank, have been playing near by. They approach their father and beg to be taken out on the lake in a boat. He brushes them off and returns to his conversation. The boys run out to the boats and Sissie follows. The children wait impatiently for their father, before giving up and heading back to the table.

Again, their father brushes the children off and one...