On Sundays the door to the grocery store was locked and Dad took a day off. It always surprised me that he allowed it, but if we asked, sometimes he would give us the key to the store and let us girls go down there to play. If we kept the door locked and the lights off. Most often we played red light green light, but eventually we tired of that game and assessed our surroundings for another amusement.
Wooden vegetable bins flanked the west wall. They had slanted tops for displaying produce, and enclosed storage spaces beneath. I had tested their doors once before, yanking on the handles until they flew open with a splintery squeak. Inside were formless gunnysacks filled with extra potatoes, dusty and slumping against one another like bodies. A musty, moldy smell emanated from the dim cavity, and I imagined all those potato eyes creeping through the burlap mesh. I had not wanted to investigate further.
One Sunday my sisters sized up this underworld and decided we would all fit in if we crouched low. I wasn't keen to sit in the dark with unseen crawly things, but I followed the others, giggling and fitting our bodies into gunnysack nooks and crannies.
There we were, hidden inside the vegetable bins, but severely limited for anything else to do. "Let's have a club," one of us said, and we all piped up, "Yeah!" Considering the nature of our clubhouse, we proclaimed ourselves The Underground Vegetable Club. We established rules and decided we needed a club song. We borrowed from a popular tune and made modifications, coming up with this clever composition: (to the tune of Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here)

Hail, hail, the gang's all here,
Judy, Susie, Kathy, Lynn
Judy, Susie, Kathy, Lynn
Hail, hail, the gang's all here,
The Underground Vegetable Club!

The club didn't last long, but the song did, and to this day we can all sing the song from sheer memory.
Remarkable.
Sometimes on a Sunday I visit Sweet Life Bakery in the building just to the north of my first family home, and buy a latte to go. I walk to the corner of 8th and Monroe and sit looking out over the parking lot. In my mind's eye I see little girls romping and shrieking. I lean forward and gaze through the window of Pacific winds Music, and, indeed, I do hear music, but faint—Hail, hail, the gang's all here . . .