I don't think I liked school very well. I can't remember that I even had any special friends there at that time except Ethel and as she was a grade behind me at school we didn't see much of each other there. I do remember how I hated to go to school mornings and sometimes I cried so hard that mother would give in and let me stay at home but she finally had to make me go anyway and I would bawl and sob half way to school which must have been trying to everyone concerned. How sweet it would be to me tho when I came home after school and Mother would be sitting in the living room sewing and Bob playing with his blocks on the floor. I used to hug him and be so happy. I was so content until the next morning when I have to leave them again.
There was a small lake a short ways from our place and sometimes we would walk down there and there was a boat some one kept tied to the shore, Hazel and I took it sometimes and went rowing, we couldn't either of us swim and it is a wonder we didn't drown tho the water wasn't very deep.
The Presbyterian minister and his family lived over on 25 Mile Ave. not far from us and Hazel had struck up a friendship with his daughter Frankie May so brother Baker began coming to see us and trying to get us to attend his church and eventually we did go and all joined. There of course we met people who became our friends. Mrs. Fox was my teacher in Sunday school, her husband ran a store the "Fox Merchantile" and they were quite well-to-do. They had a large three storied house - everything was so lovely and grand - the entire third floor was fixed up for the two girls to play in. There was one older boy named Gilbert but the girls Ruth and Esther were in our Sunday School class [Hazels and mine] and Mrs. Fox often had the class come to her home for parties or to work on some project, to me she has always been remembered as an ideal S.S. teacher. I don't believe she was too happy in her marriage - later in life she became blind.
Harley must have grown into quite a lad by this time and Dad took him with him to work on a bridge construction job one summer, they only came home on weekends so Mother, we girls and Bob were alone most of the time. There were lots of windmills in Texas and most of them had large wooden wheels and as they lazily turned in the wind they made a sort of drowsy comfortable noise but if they were in need of an oiling they could make a screechy, weird noise as they turned, and in the middle of the night mother heard this noise and was frightened and when Dad came home that weekend he traced it to a windmill which needed oil. The noise never happened in the daytime probably because the wind was so still, so Mother was really frightened when it made the noise in the night.
Here I had my first and only birthday party, it was a surprise party. Mother made jello and cake and Hazel had invited my friends from school, it was nice. My best friend at this time was a girl called Emma Belle Elliot. I used to walk out of my way evenings after school to go by her home with her and sometimes would stop in for a while and we would sit outside on the grass and talk and she would get a watermelon from the garden and we would eat that. She lived with her mother and an older sister - her father was a traveling salesman and away from home, and her mother was never very happy to Emma Belle home and we had to be quiet and stay outside most of the time when I was there. Then Emma Belle's father killed himself in a hotel room in another town and there was a scandal about it and Emma Belle was very sad, she was so dramatic that I felt she was putting on a little - I rather shunned away from her in her sorrow which is no credit to me, we were never very good friends after that.
We had lived in this town several years now - and we moved into another house right down town - just across the street from the school house - this to me was really something - I thoroughly enjoyed living there - we could dash home at noon for a hot dinner, something I had envied in the other kids for a long time. Seemed like I was really one of them now when I jauntily walked home at lunch time and after dinner ran out of the house with an apple or a peach in my hand to join a friend and saunter back to school. Mary Hicks, a girl in my grade at school lived across the street and we were together lots. Harley was working summers now and he started taking Bob and I to picture shows every Saturday night, the first time we had ever been to them. That was a sweet thing to do, and he will never know how much we enjoyed them and having our big brother give that much attention to us. I never speak of Velma too much as I write and really she was more a pal to me to me because it was generally Harley and Hazel who did things together, leaving Velma and me to do things together until she grew older and then it was Bob and me who were inseparable. We didn't stay at this place very long as Father decided to move to the farm, it wasn't paying off very well and Dad was a real farmer and knew how a farm should be run.
Harley quit school then, Velma had one more year and in the fall Father and Mother rented us some light house-keeping or an apartment as it would be called now, and we went to school in town and home on week ends. The family we lived with were named Razor and it was a widow with a large family, mostly boys. There was an older girl named Edith who was through school but still living at home and once I found her very sick and retching - she said she always got sick when she ate her breakfast and I felt sorry for her, later I found out about such things as morning sickness. Velma had headaches bad and the Dr. told her to go for a walk every day and get fresh air and exercise and I would go with her, so mornings we would get out of bed early and walk in the fresh morning air. This year in school my teachers name was Miss Meda Woodburn and for the first time in my life I was the teachers pet. It was the year I graduated from grade school and we had an operetta at the close of school called "A Day in Flowerdom". Emma Bellee was the Fairy Queen, my part was a singing part - many of the children were made up to represent flowers. I was dressed in black to represent a cricket and came to the queen's crowning ceremony to entertain with songs. Our Costumes were made of tarlatan and Mother made mine which as I said was black with a very full skirt no sleeves and a low neckline. I didn't have any black shoes so I borrowed a pair from Ethel Rice and they were too large so we put cotton in the toes to fill in.
There was a boy who wanted to be my boy-friend named Albert Berry but I didn't like him but he would leave candy in my desk and notes. Lester Boardman who was in my grade at school and also in my class at Sunday School had been my boy friend since we were real young and he had given me a ring once [a very insignificant ring] and said when we got old enough we were going to be married. He and William Baker, the ministers boy were very good friends.
The summers on the farm were very enjoyable. I ran wild barefoot and dirty with Bob all day long. Mother was hurt and angry at me because I was so negligent of myself - couldn't I wear shoes and not get my dresses so dirty and comb my hair and stay in the house and act like a girl should. But they had a hard time to capture me after the meals were over to even dry the dishes. Hazel and I always had the dishes to do sometimes we quarreled all the time we were doing them, other times we would see how fast we could get them done, timing ourselves by the clock and sometimes we would work at a snails pace singing songs as we washed and dried. Hazel had grown up more now and I could never get her to play dolls with me unless Bob and I were playing house and made a play dinner, then she would be a guest if we wanted her to be.
So Bob and I played from daylight till dark, stick horse, playhouse or out hunting birds. The barb wire fences ran for miles here on the plains of Texas because cattle-raising was the important industry and farming only a side line and on those barb wires would sit the little wheat birds in the middle of the day when the sun shone so hot and they would hold their wings away from their bodies with their mouths open for air - it being so hot that they didn't want to move we found we could sneak up close enough to them and pull down the wire they were sitting on then let it flip up fast, the birds would be stunned and fall to the ground and we would run up and pick them up and pull off their heads. We had to go out to do this during the early part of the afternoon while it was the hottest part of the day, then we would come in with our kill and if we had enough we might clean, fry and eat them. We would have the kitchen to ourselves at this time of day as Mother and the girls would be in the cooler part of the house reading, sewing or resting. If our catch was small as it generally was we would put them in a dish of salty water to save until we had more to go with them and later Mother would smell an odd smell and trace it to our birds that had been kept too long and we were told not to do that again but we often forgot and did it with birds and frog legs again and again - no refrigerators in those days.
Bob had a dog and we had Maizie the beautiful mare to ride - we used to put the saddle on her or rather she was generally saddled in the morning and left that way all day and we would put the dog in the saddle and we would ride behind the saddle as that was the only way Maizie would allow the dog to be on her back. Once Maizie lost her colt she was carrying and Father said it was because we rode her all the time and up over straw stacks or where ever we could get her to go, so that fun was sort of squelched.
Get your own Free Home Page