This is Home, Part 24 - Back to Hickory, back to Darksville, the manger scene on the blackboard, Darksville community functions, cleaning the floors in school, cleaning the office, grade school graduation

This is part 24 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Back to Hickory

We went back to Hickory for my seventh grade after going to Darksville for the sixth. We got a new teacher, one that was a year or two older than Uncle Doc. Her name was Miss Gussie Eagan. I really liked her. I was the oldest student in school and the only one in my class. I don't know where Mary Hill was. Probably, she liked going to Darksville better. Her family was the next family toward the school. We must have just barely had enough children. They were all younger than I was. Jean was there, too.

During an earlier year, we went to school briefly with a girl who had TB (tuberculosis). Uncle Doc heard her cough and he talked to her parents. She had to be withdrawn from school. I don't know if they knew and sent her anyway, or if they had her checked after he talked to them. TB was called consumption then.

I got a lot of concentrated help on my math from my seventh grade teacher. And I got to do extra things like putting new numbers and letters on library books showing what type of books they were. Then I rearranged the library.

I noticed that Uncle Doc talked to Miss Eagan about the war, sometimes. I had her all picked out for an aunt, but he wouldn't listen. That was when he told me about the girl he loved who died. At the end of the year, the school closed permanently.

Back to Darksville

So, everyone went to Darksville again. Where we lived, everyone was pretty much a Baptist. This year, someone who taught a class in the Darksville Baptist Church (right next to the school) decided to teach anyone who was interested after school. So Jean and I stayed, along with some others. Mary Hill was one.

The manger scene on the blackboard

At school, the teacher had me draw the manger scene with Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus. Also, the wise men, shepherds and animals. Of course, the shining star, too. I made it with colored chalk, on the blackboard. It was up for maybe a couple of weeks before Christmas. After church, which we had started attending, everyone walked next door to see the picture that covered the blackboard. I wondered how they knew it was there.

Darksville community functions

While Jean and I were going to Darksville School for two years, we attended community functions along with our family.

I remember one time we went to a Halloween get-together. Everyone was supposed to dress up and the one who wasn't recognized or the ones who weren't recognized would get a prize or prizes.

Mom, Jean and I dressed up in costumes. This was when I was in the sixth grade. Mom said, "Let me go in first. You two girls stay here and wait for awhile before you come in. Then come in together." She couldn't convince Jean to wait and neither could I. Jean went in walking really close to Mom's side and partly behind her. Jean was very shy.

A woman -- one of the judges -- told Mom afterwards that they couldn't guess who she was until they saw Jean.

Everyone played Upset the Fruit Basket and Musical Chairs, and tried to get the bobbing apple out of the tub of water with their teeth. I hate stuff like that, so I did my usual disappearing act into the cloak room. After awhile they missed me and knew just where to look -- unfortunately.

Cleaning the floors in school

Cleaning the floors in grade school was interesting. It was swept, but every once in awhile the teachers sprinkled oily sawdust over it.

The students got to run and slide, thus cleaning the floor. The floor was made of wood.

Cleaning the office

When I was working in the real estate office, they did the same thing -- oily sawdust on the floor every so often. Joyce (W.B.'s secretary) and I either slid or rubbed it into the floor by walking; I don't remember. Mr. Stone (my boss) had three older children by a previous marriage. A couple of them may have helped. I'm pretty sure the older child, Jimmy, did help because he swept the floor every evening and emptied the trash. He was 13 years of age.

Grade school graduation

We graduated from grade school along with all the other schools around. We had to all go to the Moberly Municipal Auditorium to graduate. This was in April 1945.

This is Home, Part 23 - General Lee, the clay statue of the surrender, Spencer switches sides, Victor Rice, surprise cousin

This is part 23 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



General Lee

I was fascinated by General Lee. The famous Southern General Robert E. Lee in the Civil War. I asked Uncle Doc one time if he had been the right age to go, which side would he have fought on. He said he thought General Lee was an honorable, upstanding man and he admired him. He also said that Missouri had good people fighting on both sides. He said he would have fought on the side of the North. He said all the states were part of a union, and without the states staying together they could be defeated by a foreign power.

The clay statue of the surrender

I admired General Lee so much that I made the scene where General Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House in Virginia to General Grant. I drew in the background inside of a box -- the courthouse, trees, etc. Then I made General Lee riding up on Traveler, his horse, out of clay. General Lee was very detailed -- his beard, his face, his horse, his uniform, his gun, and his hand holding the reins. In those days, we didn't know about the kind of clay my children and grandchildren used. This was made of clay -- a type of soil.

I think there may have been a dog or two in the scene, also.

The art teacher thought it was really good. There was some sort of contest she wanted to enter it in. She thought it had an excellent chance of winning, she said, if she could just get it there. She said the roads were really bad and her car was sliding around a lot -- that it might break on the way. She left it up to me what to do. I decided to let her take it. I couldn't keep it forever.

Next time I saw her, she told me she was sorry, but General Lee didn't make it. The roads were too bad.

Spencer switches sides

Katie Jane (my double cousin) told me a funny -- as in odd -- thing when David and I were back there in 1997. She said our grandfather, Spencer P. Rice, was in the Southern Army, but that near the end of the war, he joined the Northern Army. He wanted to protect his family and keep his home from being destroyed. His crops and animals, also.

Victor Rice, surprise cousin

Maybe the Civil War was why Victor Rice and I didn't know each other when we both rode the bus from below Darksville to Huntsville High School. I had people asking me if he was my brother.

Finally, he came over to me and said, "Is your name Maudie Rice? I keep getting asked if you are my little sister." We decided to ask our families that night. We found out we were cousins. This is all I was told by Mom. We didn't really become friends, although we continued to ride the same bus together for two years, until he graduated. We always smiled and spoke. Martha (my friend) thought Victor was cute. He was tall with brown hair and blue eyes. Actually, all the older Rices I saw had blue eyes. Uncle Doc would correct me. He said he had green eyes. Dr. Rice may have had brown. If so, he was the only one.

This is Home, Part 22 - Darksville school, Miss Evelyn finds her calling, the new teacher, caught by Miss Evelyn, Coal and Art

This is part 22 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Darksville school

Hickory school closed after my fifth grade because there weren't enough children. We had to attend Darksville school.

Miss Evelyn finds her calling

Miss Evelyn joined the service. Can you believe she actually tried to write to Jean and me? She probably became a sergeant and yelled at the soldiers. The idea of a gun in her hands is really frightening.

Darksville school was actually quite nice -- except for the time two of the boys chased me with a dead snake during the lunch hour.

The new teacher

The teacher was Miss Doris. She was young and pretty with dark hair. Best of all, she was nice.

She left me in charge when she went to make a phone call sometimes. She told me to write down names of students who got out of their seats or talked. I wrote down their names, but I never turned them in. The idea that I might probably subdued them some.

Schools were pretty strict in those days. No talking, no moving around, no anything without permission.

Caught by Miss Evelyn

When we were in grade school at Hickory (Miss Evelyn), the boy across the aisle asked me if he could borrow a pencil. I was reading, so I just picked up one from my pencil box and held it out to him. I finally realized that he wasn't taking it.

I looked at him and he was staring at Miss Evelyn. I looked at her and put the pencil back. She made both of us come up in front of the school, and stand with the toes of our shoes touching chalk lines facing the room. We had to stand there until noon, which was over half an hour away. It seemed longer.

I hadn't said one word. I hated standing still worse than anything, except maybe being interrogated in the cloak room.

Coal and Art

There was a coal furnace in the classroom. Miss Evelyn was trying to get it to burn one day while everyone was standing around shivering. I used to get really cold back there unless I was close to heat.

I was shivering and my teeth were practically chattering I was so cold. I said I was so cold several times before Miss Evelyn said that she had better not hear that again. I don't know why she waited until we were all there before trying to start it.

We had an Art teacher who visited all the schools. She only came once or twice a month. It was her time to come that day. She walked in and said, "It's freezing in here. I'm so cold." I really liked her anyway -- after that, I loved her.

Dream - The little town that was made for me, house painting, and the dinosaur figure in the back yard

On Wednesday, June 2, 2010, around 2:15-3:45 AM, I dreamed I had been driving back and forth in a small white car out in the country. Some other people had been doing it too, in another car, maybe two. Earlier it seems there had been something about a large circular swimming pool that I visited and walked around a bit, that was full of people. It was something that had appeared in some dreams years ago. Now I had been driving, and heading for the portion where the road went gradually uphill. The area was a crisscross of small roads, a lot of them dirt. The ground was pale and a little sandy. I got to a crossroads and stopped. The other car had come, from the right I think. It was late and I was tired. I think my mother was in the other car, along with someone else, maybe my brother. They, along with another couple of people I think, had been making a surprise for me. They had constructed a toy housing development with roads and even railways. The houses were made in great detail out of wood and painted. The roads and railways ran for miles, going up the slope, and also to the right. The houses were probably two or three feet across. I thanked them for it and they took me on a tour. They had a lot more to do with it, to finish it, but had worked fast.

Walking up the slope in the broad cleared area beside it, we went all the way to the top of the slope, miles, to where the little roads and rails met with another coming in from the right and at steep angle, and then continued in their respective directions for a few inches and stopped. They were going to extend them as they worked in the next few days, going over the hill and down the other side, maybe continuing until close to the next town, and put more of them in also. I worried some about cars coming by before it was finished and not understanding it, and maybe about police or town officials seeing it and interfering, but I don't think I said anything about it.

We went back down the slope to near where we started, then were going back up looking at things in more detail. I saw in the darkness in the dark dry trees and dark dense brush to the left of us, that we were walking nearby, huge spiders with thin curved legs, the legs maybe as big as an inch and a half long in some cases. I kept telling them about it. My brother didn't pay any attention and kept talking, but my mother sometimes turned and pooh-poohed it to me.

We continued up the slope and after a while we turned right and walked along another cleared area, with the houses laid out to the right on the higher ground here, overlooking a sharper section of slope that gradually leveled out as it approached the area where we had parked. The dense trees and brush were to the left of us, and ahead of us too as we reached the limits of the cleared area again. I saw the spiders again, in the darkness, in the brush and trees, slightly different looking here but even slightly larger. I nervously said something about them again, but again the others didn't care, though they may have turned toward me briefly as I talked about it. They mostly talked about the project, telling me about it, and discussing it with each other. It seems then that we went back down at least partly, and spent the night somehow, sleeping outside or in our cars maybe.

Then it was later, maybe the next day or maybe a few days later. A lot more of the complicated little wooden houses had been built and painted, not always in the same colors. I walked along on the lower ground looking at them up on the higher ground, my brother and mother I think pointing them out to me. It was impressive, but the occasional ones in different colors stood out and clashed, and I thought that a uniform color scheme would probably have been best, though I didn't say so. The houses themselves had two or more colors painted on them. That was alright, it was just where the houses didn't match other houses that it looked wrong, but mostly in where the long projections of the roofs stuck out.

Down below, in the gentle slope bordering the road that went uphill, leading to the road that crossed it where we had earlier parked, where a row of real houses were, mixed in with the little ones, we went to a house two or three houses along, which was somehow my grandmother's house in Arizona, though somewhat different looking here. A lot of people were working there, painting both the house and the little houses, which they were making in the yard and basically all over the place. Some of the people seemed to be from the radiator shop, and my sisters seemed to be there, looking much younger, maybe even in their teens, plus friends of theirs and maybe some other people. I think my grandmother was also there. They were getting paint all over everything, including the yard, which I think had cars parked in it, and very tall dry grass, looking almost like wheat in some areas. A low inexpensive picket fence, the posts joined by woven wires, separated the front yard from the one to the right. It was late afternoon now. People sometimes went in and out of the house, and some were painting it and even up on ladders and things up by or on the roof. All were working swiftly and industriously. They didn't seem to care how much paint they got on the grass or fence or whatever was in the way, and sometimes seemed to revel in it. A lot of paint was being wasted that way. My youngest sister was laughing and taking joy in it, and the painting itself. She was working with someone else, a man, one of her friends maybe. She went along from the front of the house and out into the yard. I followed at a distance, frowning some, floating low over the tall grass, which was mostly covered now in splatters and strings of paint, with some areas having a heavy, goopy deposit covering a foot and a half or more. Some was on the grass of the next yard, too.

I went along near the fence toward the pale dirt road that ran in front, then I went back toward the house. It was getting darker now. Going down the short section of the side yard, still floating, I managed, with some effort, to get high enough that I could go over the taller fence there, maybe six feet, that separated the back yard from the front. I think it was chain link with metal slats through it. I went along the edge of the roof and then higher, up into the air. It was almost dark now.

I saw in the back yard the old dinosaur figure I had made long ago. It a was fairly simple version of T.rex, standing and facing toward the house, maybe six feet high or taller, looking ferocious. I had later made a more natural looking version, about the same size, and devoted almost all my attention to it, instead of working more on this one. This was all in the dream, though in real life I did make one T.rex around four feet high.

A huge, very thin wall ran by the dinosaur, to the left, touching it, sometimes leaning against it. The wall was probably around the thickness of cardboard, and was black. It was very tall, maybe fifteen or more feet, and went across the yard at a slight angle, supported by wires or ropes that ran to something in the alley, perhaps a telephone pole, and to the house. The thin wall reached the house at about where the corner of the utility room stuck out from it. The wall moved a little in the slight breeze. I looked down at it from where I was in the air.

Near the house a large dog was chained, looking out at the dinosaur and the wall, sometimes angrily barking and growling at them, evidently when the wind caused the wall to shift some and when it sometimes made a slight noise when doing so. It may have also sometimes barked or growled at me, but though it sometimes looked up at me a little, it didn't seem to mind me much, and knew who I was. In real life I was probably hearing the two small dogs fighting with each other in the kitchen.


The dream seems to have had a lot happen earlier that I don't remember.

Dream - The tornadoes and the dinosaur tree branch

On Sunday, November 2, 2008, I had a dream about being in Nevada and then in Arizona, driving home, coming to a white building where several tornadoes came. Then I was home and saw the tornadoes had blown down a tree that had a T. rex dinosaur, that I had never finished making, carved in a branch.

In the dream, I was working in Nevada and also somehow going to school as part of work. The school was something that occurred during work. At work, my boss had said, to the Engineering group in general, that later on, a few years in the future, in a later part of the class, we would have to travel some and spend some time in Portland [Oregon]. I had protested, saying I didn't want to travel, that I wouldn't do it. He said I would have to, if I wanted to complete the class. Now the years had passed and it was time to do it, there was going to be some travel back and forth by plane to Portland with possibly weeks at a time being spent there. I didn't want to do it and I didn't want to travel by plane, wanting to drive if I was going to do it, but it was so far, so much distance added to my trip to and from Arizona, that I wasn't sure how I was going to do it.

Then, later, I was back in Arizona and driving home. I went to a low white block building, not very large, completely out in the open with nothing nearby, like it was in the middle of a field. A few other people were with me. The building had large windows and carpet on the floor. We were talking to some people there, something about an auto part I think, about trying to get one or a supply of one. One of the people started talking about the economy. It had nothing to do with what we were there for, he just started talking about it in a kind of conversational oh-by-the-way kind of tone. I was probably actually picking up something from the radio and incorporating it in my dream.

He kept talking and I wandered off a bit and looked to the side out the window to the front. I saw several, maybe five, tornadoes going this way. They were tall and narrow and a very dark bluish color, moving rapidly this way. I called out a warning to the others, repeatedly since some of them seemed to be slow to respond, then dived down near one of the walls, which was also white, almost everything inside was white or pale colored. I think I might have been beside a short section of wall, maybe between it and the main wall. I think someone dived down with me, too. The tornadoes passed over, the sky and room darkened and the building shook, but though things were falling around the building and hitting the building, and some things seemed to be falling inside, the building seemed to have survived without much damage. I had to go home then.

At home, my brother and his (former) wife were over and some other people, including a bunch of kids. His wife looked different, not like she really is. It seemed to be an earlier time, and it seemed to be some kind of special occasion, though I'm not sure what. There was a couch in front of the cabinets in the family room, near the corner by the wall with the sliding glass door. Some of the adults, particularly my brother's wife, walked around in the family room talking. Sometimes some of them sat on the couch. We, mostly not me and mostly his wife, kept talking. The subjects were odd things, not always related. I was probably still picking up something from the real-life radio. At some point most of the kids, there were quite a few of them, went out to a big wading pool, about two and a half or three feet high, that was on the carport. I occasionally looked out at them from the family room, just glancing out the window from where I happened to be. I considered whether I wanted to join them and decided not to. The talking went on...

I happened to look out at the back yard then (I think I may have even been walking around in the yard earlier, though I don't think I noticed anything at the time), and saw a very long bare branch a few inches thick that had fallen off one of the trees and was laying across the top of the swing set and extending off over the top of the fence to somewhere in the alley. I said something about a branch having fallen off one of the trees, saying it a few times. I went out with some of the others, then. I think some kids were already out there. A couple of big sections of the wooden fence were leaning out toward the alley, and most of the lattice work along the top was missing. My mouth was hanging open in surprise and wonder. I said that the tornadoes (I may have said hurricanes instead) must have passed over here, too. I looked at where the tree to the side was and it was entirely gone, there wasn't even a hole or stump left, the ground was just smooth, like a tree was never there. I guessed it must have somehow been rotten and broken off at the base and fallen over entirely into the alley.

I heard sirens, I think, and a bunch of emergency cleanup people came, wearing yellow raincoats I think, in a big truck or two and started working in the alley. They started quickly taking down big sections of the fence. I saw one of them hitting the end of the top board in the corner with his hand or a hammer, popping it up from where it was nailed down to the post. The fence seemed to be in the way. I hoped they would put it back up when they were done. I started trying to move the long branch that had fallen, or maybe I had tried that earlier. I didn't do much with it in any case. I couldn't see what they were doing in the alley or what things looked like out there, the fence blocked the view.

I walked around looking up at the branches overhead. There were still quite a few, either from the fallen tree or the one in the middle of the yard that was presumably still standing. I was talking sometimes with the kids or other people in the yard. Still looking up, I saw a dinosaur that I had made long ago, that I had started but never finished, a huge Tyrannosaurus rex. It was made out of wood, out of part of the tree, and had fallen down some, sticking out past the swing set over the yard, several feet overhead, on its side with the branch it was part of extending behind it. It looked old now and damp, its contours softened and rounded a little. Blackened with mold and age, it almost looked burned. The head seemed to have a sinister grin, made more so by its open eye socket. I looked at it perhaps for the last time. They would take it away with the rest of the tree. I thought somewhat sadly that in this way it would finally be finished, finally be done with.

Comics art imitating life

Several times over the years I've had some cases of deja vu while seeing images on television. I was able to place them fairly quickly, though, in some cases instantly, as things I had seen in comic books long ago.

One time, several years ago, I saw an old clip of some disaster in some other country, with the announcer in the foreground talking into a microphone and dirt and debris behind him, and an old man kept coming into view a few feet back. The old man had his mouth open wide in an expression of despair, the mouth a tall rectangle with a few ragged teeth showing and a lot of them gone. He kept coming back on camera, evidently wanting to be part of the broadcast, always with the same expression, always looking the same. I was astonished. It was the same figure I had seen in the comics, drawn by Jack Kirby probably, probably in the 1960s or early '70s. I had thought it was terribly exaggerated when I saw it in the comic book, the mouth open far beyond anything in real life, with lots of artistic license, but here was the original for it, what must have been the original, and it looked just like it.

There was also a case where I saw, again several years ago, a scene in a movie in which some people were sitting down with their backs to each other, maybe tied up but I'm not sure now, with the tops of their legs seeming unusually long and sticking out too far. I had seen the same image, with Sgt. Fury and some of his commandos I think, tied up in a circle with their backs to something, back in the mid 1960s. I had thought at the time that the legs were much too long, that their length was terribly exaggerated, but they looked the same in real life.

Another time, several years ago but perhaps a little more recent than the others, I saw a replay of an Elvis Presley concert, from the late '60s probably, or maybe a little earlier. In one scene, his arms were stretching out in opposite directions, and his hand was reaching out toward the camera, fingers spread, his face turned and looking up toward the camera imploringly as he sang. The cloth of his sleeve was covered in wrinkles because of the arm stretching out and upward like that, and the fingers large and foreshortened, the fingertips looking square and seeming to form an arc with the thumb. I realized with wonder that I had seen the same thing years ago, in a comic where the Human Torch was having trouble with his powers and trying to light up without much success. It had seemed exaggerated again, the extreme foreshortening and the large hand with the squarish fingers in an arc, and the extreme wrinkling of the sleeve, an unusual thing for a superhero costume and it seemed a vastly overdone effect. Even the anguished face was there.

Then, a few years ago, I saw part of an outdoor concert from the mid '60s, with Peter, Paul and Mary among the performers there. The camera tended to stay on Mary as she sang, looking up at her face, which was in the sunlight. Her face had dark shadows in places, and because of the angle of viewing looked more squarish. The wind was blowing, blowing strands of blond hair across her face as she sang, the hair making more shadows, strands of shadows on her face. I realized, again with astonishment, that I had seen the same image in the comics, probably for Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman, another member of the Fantastic Four.

I'm not suggesting that there's anything wrong with doing this. It's common for artists to use models, and common for artists to take inspiration from real life and from what they see around them. It's just interesting to know what the artist(s) in these cases used, and that the extra effort was put forth, even when a comic was involved. And also that, though some of the drawings seemed exaggerated, they were in fact drawn from life.

The papier-mache dragon

A long time ago, probably in high school though it could have been late in grade school, I made a dragon out of papier-mache, probably as something for art class.

The dragon was probably around a foot and a half or so in length, but was fairly skinny. I think I made it out of newspaper and masking tape, maybe with cardboard in places, too, and then covered it in plaster cloth. I painted it in poster paints, kind of a slightly creamy pastel green. It had an open mouth with white teeth and a red interior. The teeth were just folded over strips of plaster cloth on the top and bottom jaws, so it didn't show individual teeth, just a continuous white strip representing them. It stood on its hind legs and had two arms bent in different positions, with hands with stiff skinny fingers and thumbs. The wings were a bit of a problem, as they tended to sag some because of their weight and the narrow attachment area. The plaster cloth crumpled there and broke the plaster at the attachment joint, though the cloth remained intact and the wings were in any case in no danger of coming off.

It's possible I still have it somewhere, but I'm not sure.

Forgotten dragons

It was 1961, and I was in the second semester of the second grade, with three months, maybe a little more, left of the school year. We were going to move again, going from the second house in Las Cruces, New Mexico to Phoenix, Arizona.

Before we moved, I had been playing in my mind with dragons, with a whole complicated storyline involving even generations of them. It had been going on for weeks or months, but was particularly intense the last week or so we were there.

Then, just before we moved, when the rooms were mostly bare, I suddenly forgot almost all of it. I still had a lot of pictures of dragons I had made, but almost everything about them was a blank. I was very saddened and disappointed by the forgetting, feeling somehow betrayed by it.

The bark dinosaur

Back in grade school, a long time ago, I made a small dinosaur out of bark. I was in Scottsdale, Arizona and probably in either the fourth or sixth grade. I know it was not the fifth, because my fifth-grade class was bused, because of overcrowding, to a school in Tempe. In my class, at this particular time, whichever time it was, students had been divided into small groups for the purpose of doing a group project. The groups were to decide on their own what projects they were going to do. The teacher may have had to approve them, but I don't remember now whether this was needed.

There were probably four people in my group, including myself. I had a possible idea for what to do, but wanted to see if anyone had any other ideas first. No one did, and they all seemed to be hoping that someone else would come up with something. Seeing what the situation was, and somewhat surprised by its severity, I stepped into the vacuum and took control.

I told them I had an idea on what to do. They perked up, looking interested and hopeful. I told them that we could make a dinosaur out of bark, a Tyrannosaurus rex. They agreed with this, and we set about gathering small pieces of bark. The bark was mostly of the thick brown variety, with a soft, uneven surface.

The dinosaur was a small model, around seven to eight inches high, longer if measured diagonally. I did most of the work putting it together, though the others helped in a small way. I don't think it had any internal framework, just the pieces of bark glued to each other. When we turned it in, it was thought to be so impressive that it was put in the front offices of the school for a while, so people could see it.

After we finally got it back, we had to decide who got to take it home. I wanted to take it, of course. One of the other kids begged we, over and over, to let him take it, but I refused. I think he said something about wanting to show it to his mother, that he didn't really have anything else that he did that was important. Part of me felt bad for him, but there was no way I was going to let him take it.

I still have it, on a shelf, wrapped in plastic.

The Idea of a Circle

Long, long ago, back in grade school, the teacher wanted each of us to come up with an idea and to make something, in a box, that represented that idea.

I thought for a long time about what idea I should use, and finally decided on the idea of a circle. I used an old cigar box for the box, and put lots of circles in it, with some of them being partial circles coming from the inner sides of the box. Some of the circles or partial circles were painted and some were cut out of colored paper. At least once I made a circle out of white glue and then sprinkled sand on it, and then painted it after it dried. I also made a big arc of colored paper coming out of one of the inner sides, a little distance from the bottom, supported on tiny pillars of rolled paper. It was on this arc of colored paper that I wrote, "THE IDEA OF A CIRCLE".