Doreen Ketchins
speaker
125 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Doreen Ketchins’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
You know, I mean, you could sell things like world's finest chocolate, which everybody has at least tried once. And, you know, oranges, jams and other candies. But I wanted to be queen of my nursery school. And every year they would have a fundraiser, which would be a Mardi Gras ball. And that Mardi Gras ball, you get to dress up and walk down the aisle.
And there's a king and there's a queen in their court. And I just thought it was the coolest little thing. I went there two years in a row. But so it came time to raise the money. And what you do is you do things. So my mom, she decided to sell candy from the front room. So she'd go and buy some wholesale candy. And we were right down the street from the school.
So naturally, kids would come and get on the doorstep and buy candy. You had to be pretty popular. Yeah, yeah, learn how to fight, too. But so, you know, she was pretty good, you know, sell candy and cookies and stuff like that and raised some pretty good money and turned it in. But when we turned it in, I wasn't queen. I didn't have enough money to be queen. I was...
And it was cool, you know, I got to wear this big, beautiful yellow dress, but I wasn't queen. When the queen walked up, you know, the aisle, I was like, man, look at her, man, I could be queen. So we started early that next year, you know. Of course, they never stopped coming to the door anyway.
And by the time it was time to turn in the money, we had a whole lot more money than we had the year before. But it was my last year there. I had basically aged out. So my mom, she explained that to me. I was four. And she said, now, I know you want to be queen, but we could do one of two things. We could take all of this money and turn it in and you can be queen.
You walk down that aisle as queen. I'm like, yeah. She said, or we could take half the money and you probably won't be queen, but you could still walk down the aisle and you'll have some money saved. You know, you start saving money and, you know, you grew up, you have more. I was four. So what I wanted to do was take all the money and even add some more and be queen. I mean, I just did, you know.
But I looked at my mom and I know what I was supposed to say. Even though I was four, I knew what I was supposed to say. So I said, okay, we'll do that. And that's what we did. And I still wound up being first maid. But I was okay with it because when the queen walked down the aisle this time, I'm like, yeah, I gave you that.
But the kids kept coming to the door, you know, and there was a barbershop next door run by two twins. And they closed up. And, you know, my dad got the bright idea of, hey, people come to the door anyway, come to the shop, you know. So he inquired about, you know, renting a shop and got it. And we lived next door and we had a sweet shop. Right there. And my mom started.
And that's why they named it Doreen's Sweet Shop, because it all was brought upon by me wanting to be a queen.
Oh, I mean, sugar. Sugar. Sugar. That's what they came there for. Cookies with sugar, candies with sugar, drinks with sugar. You know, on the way to school, my mom would get up early anyway and she'd be open and she'd open all day long and close at about 9 o'clock at night. And she would be in there because my dad, you know, he worked for the park service. So, you know, he had a 9 to 5.
But she was okay with it because it was hers, you know, and she was home. And my mom would cook three meals a day, every single day, and run the shop. I don't do that now. I mean, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I was really popular, you know, because, you know, my parents had a sweet job. Of course, you know, you get the negative influences, too.
And, you know, people tell you, you better bring me some candy or I'm going to beat you up. Yeah. I mean, were you helping your mom make the candy, too? No, no, no. It was—we didn't start making stuff until I got to, like, college. But before then, it was just, you know, just buying things wholesale, like chips and, you know, candies and cookies and stuff like that.
And they'd come—you know, I was made to work in the store and didn't really like it that much, you know. So a typical kid, you know.
Yeah, it was amazing. We were at my favorite subject, which was music. And there was a talk of a pop quiz. And it's like, they said we're going to have a pop quiz when we go back. And I'm like, we ain't never had no pop quiz, you know. Well, of course, we got back up and there was a pop quiz. And I got the stink eye from so many people, you know.
But the quiz was as such because there was like 30 kids in the classroom. And he'd go down the line. He'd ask one question. And if you got it right, you passed. If you got it wrong, you failed. And I looked out the window and I said, oh, God, he'd get me out of this. I'll do anything. And about two minutes later, the principal came on the loudspeaker.
And she said, anybody interested in joining the band, report to the band room immediately. And I'm like, oh, my goodness gracious. I raised my hand. Of course, everybody else raised their hand, too. But by God's grace, he picked me. And we were running down the hall, and I was so happy. And we went to the band room, and we spent all our time in that classroom.
But when I got to the band room, it was a huge room, and it was beautiful. They had music notes and pictures of instruments all over the walls and stuff like that. And I saw the flute, and I was like, oh, wow, look at that. I said, I'm going to play the flute.
You know, the band director, Mr. Birkeland, you know, he started out, you know, introducing different instruments and saying different things. And then he asked, you know, you know, he went row by row asking, what do you want to play? Well, I already knew what I wanted to play because the flute was so sleek and so silver and so beautiful. But the girl in front of me, she said the flute.
The girl next to her, she said the flute. And it went on and on about seven to nine times. And by the time he was getting close to me, I was like, well, I don't want to play that now. It's a pretty common instrument, you know. And the clarinet was right next to it. So I said, I'll play that. And that's what I was playing with clarinet.
Of course, they had about five or six other girls that said clarinet because they were boy-girl instruments and girl instruments, you know.
Showing 81–100 of 125 · page 5 of 7
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