MY MEMORIES

Chapter 1

My Early Days

Most of the chickens died and the hog they had planned to butcher for meat and lard had to be sold. Daddy hunted a lot so they could have meat. Mama said they ate a lot of bread and milk and unsalted butter for they didn't even have salt and sugar. Mama canned peaches from their trees but couldn't sweeten them. Their parents, especially Daddy's mother, hadn't wanted them to get married so they never let anyone know what a hard time they were having and, somehow, they made it through that first lean year.

Mama was only seventeen years old when they married and Daddy was twenty-three. In spite of their problems they spent sixty-six happy years together.

Before I was born in the fall of 1921 Daddy cut firewood and hauled it to El Dorado Springs with a team and wagon for a dollar a load.

Mama did not have an easy time with my birth. The doctor stayed at our house two days before I was born. He charged my father thirteen dollars, exactly what Daddy had received from his wood hauling. Quite appropriately I was born just after midnight on the 13th but it had to be the 12th month.

Just past my second birthday I got a pair of one-buckle rubberized-cloth overshoes for Christmas. They were like Dad's high-top five buckles. The soles looked like tire tread. I didn't know then what tire tread looked like but I knew my overshoes looked like Dad's and made a pretty print in the snow.

We lived on the main road north of Alder Creek and could walk east, across country, to visit my Grandpa and Grandma Jones. I thought it was a long way, maybe a mile or more, but I doubt that it was that far for I walked all the way on the snow. When we got there on one such trip my folks hid at the side of a small building and let me walk to the door alone. I knocked, and when Grandma came to the door and saw me she really had a fit. She thought I had run off and come by myself. That was an exciting day that I never forgot.

One day I did run off to the neighbors to see Grace and Olive Bell Smith. Olive Bell was a little younger than I was and I liked her a lot. We lived on the highway and my folks were frightened when they found that I was missing. When they saw that the highway was clear they searched the lane behind the house. Mother became hysterical when they found my dog, Ginger, looking into a dug well near the lane. Fortunately, Daddy saw me going into Smith's yard. He rushed over and we had a grand reunion. It was so much fun I did it again that same week. It wasn't so much fun the second time. The lane was muddy and Daddy made me walk all the way home. I begged him to carry me but he told me that if I could walk over I could walk back. We saw a wolf on the way home and that was the last time I ran away.

In the fall before my third birthday we went to a pie supper at the rural school. The teacher, a local girl and a neighbor, persuaded me to sing during the program. During that year people made a big deal of my singing and being able to whistle. Ham that I was it was easy to get me on the stage. I sang, PEANUT SITTING ON A RAILROAD TRACK. HIS HEART WAS IN A FLUTTER. TRAIN CAME RUSHING ROUND THE BEND - - my whistle - - PEANUT BUTTER.

I didn't think whistling was such a big deal, I cannot remember a time when I could not whistle a tune. My whistling made my grandmothers uneasy. They said, a whistling girl and a crowing hen always come to some bad end. Those old ladies would kill the occasional hen that crowed and have chicken and dumplings!