This is Home, Part 43 - Psychic ability

This is part 43 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Psychic ability

Some members of Mom's family have had psychic ability to one extent or another. It doesn't work on everything.

Mom, herself, was psychic. She and Aunt Gertrude had made a pact when younger and unmarried that whichever one died first would try to come back to tell the other if there was a Heaven and the things they believed were true. A few months after Aunt Gertie died, this happened.

One morning, Mom was standing in front of the dresser with the partly marble top that belongs to Stephen now. She said she was combing her hair and thinking about what she was going to fix for breakfast when Aunt Gertie appeared, behind her in the mirror. Aunt Gertie was smiling.

Mom said she was so shocked, she just stood there and stared at her. When she finally turned around, Aunt Gertie was gone.

Aunt Gertie died in Colorado from pneumonia, when I was a new baby.

Mom's sister Edith also had psychic ability. She could make a table move. Daddy and Uncle Doc asked her to come one time when a horse had got wrapped in a barbed wire fence. He was cut and bleeding a lot while still fighting to get away. Aunt Edith placed her hands on the horse and the bleeding stopped. He let himself be cut out of the fence.

Other members of the family with psychic ability that I know of so far are Jean, Stephen, David and me. But that came much later than the sale of the farm.

These psychic incidents are only for family. Mom used to say, "Don't tell anyone that." So, I'm trusting you not to tell.

There is another incident. When Uncle Elliott died on the way home, no one could find him. It sounded to me as though he had been missing for days, maybe a week. Finally, in desperation, a psychic in Macon was consulted. She described where he had fallen. Thanks to her, they found him. Mom didn't want this repeated, either.

This is Home, Part 38 - Hickory school and Uncle Doc's hand, Uncle Doc, Assessor

This is part 38 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Hickory school and Uncle Doc's hand

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but Uncle Doc drove us to Hickory School each day. He picked up any children that were walking and also gave them a ride back.

He came and played with the students for a short time after school sometimes. I don't remember what we were playing, but we had to choose people for each side. Everyone called him Uncle Doc and wanted him on their side.

One time when he was getting ready to go home, he was taking the Hill children in the car with us and he said, "Now, be careful, I'm going to close the door. Keep your hands out of the way." He was leaning over and looking in with his hand on the door opening. Then he closed the door on his thumb.

His thumb was cut along the middle lengthwise. It was broken and bleeding a lot,

The teacher -- I think it was Miss Hazel -- wrapped his thumb in his red or blue handkerchief that he wore around his neck when he worked in the field, and drove really fast to Jacksonville to a doctor.

He always had a deep line where it was cut and the nail had a caved-in line after that. His thumb was thinner, also.

When the weather was bad, Charley took us to school and picked us up in the buggy. Mom used to come running out with hot wrapped bricks that she put under our feet.

When it had snowed and we went to school, I always admired the outside of the turn to go down the hill below the barn. Snow always drifted there and it looked like layers of whipped cream.

Mom used to make extremely good chocolate pudding with real whipped cream and send it in our lunch. The whipped cream had layers and tasted cool and faintly sweet. Her chocolate pudding was really good. So is Sharon's chocolate pie.

I remember a spring day when it was too muddy to drive and Uncle Doc came walking after me. He couldn't take the jolting from riding a horse.

Anyway, this particular day was nice except for the mud. Walking was fun and different. When we almost reached the road going to the house, we went through the large gate into the pasture and walked through there. Just about where the large gate was when we were there, David. However, the fence used to run along the side of the road. It was straight.

When we got home, Mom, Daddy and Charley were working in the garden behind the barn. Uncle Doc went back to helping. Someone had made a raised bed for onions to be set out. They had rows dug in the garden and they were dropping seed in them and covering it. It was interesting and fun. This was the garden where sage grew along the fence every year.

Uncle Doc nagged the county until they finally put gravel on the road to our mailbox. From the mailbox on through the neighborhood we had dirt roads.

In the spring, cars made deep ruts in the road due to trying to drive in mud. At other times of the year, also. When it dried out, if something wasn't done, cars would follow the deep ruts and scrape on the underneath side of the car.

Daddy, Uncle Doc and Charley made a drag with very thick, heavy, rough boards. They bolted them together in a rectangular shape with the same type of boards on the top. Then they put a huge rock or two on it and Daddy or Charley dragged the roads themselves with the horses. The graveled roads and up past our house.

Uncle Doc, Assessor

When Uncle Doc taught school, he had a pupil who later became the Randolph County Assessor for years. His name was Walter Wright. His secretary was Frances, who became my boss' wife. They had three children when I worked for James Stone -- real estate office. A couple of the children were twins and really fast at snatching things off the desks when Frances brought them to the office.

Anyway, Walter Wright contacted Uncle Doc and asked him if he would assess some farm property for him. Uncle Doc did this every year for maybe four or five years, maybe longer.

Farm families are different. If you are there at mealtime, they expect you to eat. Uncle Doc wound up eating with a lot of different people. Sometimes, he took lunch with him if he didn't know the people.

I think he enjoyed the work, although sometimes he looked pretty tired when he got home. He worked at this job for maybe a couple of months each year. Maybe three. I'm guessing. I remember him being gone in the summer and early fall.

This is Home, Part 25 - President Roosevelt, the war ends, the men come home

This is part 25 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



President Roosevelt

President Roosevelt had led the country almost through World War II. He is the only president in history who was elected for four terms. I read that in each of those elections, he carried 31 states out of 48. He was loved in the United States and the world.

Just a few days before graduation, we were listening to the radio and heard that President Roosevelt had died. This was on April 12th. I remember telling Daddy, Uncle Doc and Charley that he had died. They were bringing the horses and wagon back from working. For the first time, I saw tears in Uncle Doc's eyes.

President Roosevelt's friends and neighbors plus thousands of others stood weeping at Warm Springs as the funeral train left for Washington, D.C. It took around twenty three hours to get there. (I hope I remembered this correctly.) His casket had been placed on something that raised it so it could be seen out of the windows. At night, the lights in the train were dimmed and the car with his casket was brightly lit. It was also brightly lit during the day. His casket could be seen for miles. The tracks were lined on both sides all the way through the countryside with thousands of people weeping. No matter what the hour there were grandparents, mothers and fathers, often holding children. Mrs. Roosevelt sat watching the continuing tribute to her husband.

On the trip from Washington to Hyde Park, N.Y., the situation was the same.

His daughter, Anna, remembers sitting on the floor and watching from her window all the people who loved him. He was buried in his rose garden at his home in Hyde Park.

There is a famous picture of a black man in a uniform crying and playing "Going Home" on his accordion. I don't know where it was taken.

When President Roosevelt died, it was similar to when President Kennedy died. The whole world mourned and everyone remembers where they were when they heard.

Newspapers published a daily list of servicemen who had died for their country. The day after Roosevelt's death, some newspapers put at the head of their casualty list Roosevelt, Franklin D., Commander-in-Chief.

The war ends

The atomic bomb had been a closely guarded secret. President Truman got the shock of his life when he was told.

First, we had the formal surrender of Germany. V-E day -- Victory in Europe -- was May 8, 1945, but I think the formal surrender was somewhat later. President Roosevelt had told someone that the war in Europe would be over by the end of May.

After calling for the Japanese surrender and receiving their refusal, Truman ordered the first atomic bomb dropped on Japan. They still refused and kept fighting. After a second atomic bomb was dropped, they wanted to stop fighting. The formal surrender was signed on September 2, 1945 (V-J Day) on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. World War II was over.

The men come home

Lawrence (Mary Ellen's husband) came home. So did Bob Bolton (Bea's husband). Denver Williams came home with a bride, Caroline, from the South. So we acquired a Catholic girl in a community that was Baptist. Most of the servicemen came home, except for a military force which we maintained overseas.

The jobs that had been filled by their wives were given back to the soldiers. That sounds strange today, but in those days, women were usually housewives. However, some of them liked working and missed their jobs.

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 18 - The double cousins, fun with Bea, Bea and I ride Tony, with an unexpected audience, Bea visits a saloon, Bea wins at hide and seek

This is part 18 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004. In the "Bea and I ride Tony..." story, where her father and Charley were coming back with the wagon and Frankie, Frankie was a dog, a fox terrier.



The double cousins

There is something I almost forgot. Jean and I had something special -- something that most people don't have. We had three double cousins. Daddy and Uncle Doc's younger brother Elliot married Mom's younger sister Edith. The children they had -- Mary Ellen, Lola Bea, and Katie Jane -- were our double cousins. We all had brown eyes and brown hair. Mary Ellen was the oldest, about nine years older then I was, Bea was six years older than I was, and Katie was about a month younger than Jean.

Fun with Bea

Mary Ellen and Bea used to come and stay for awhile with Mom, Daddy, and Uncle Doc before I was born. One time, when they were small, she left them with Uncle Doc while she went to town after something.

When she got back, Uncle Doc was sitting grimly reading the paper and Mary Ellen met her with eyes "as big as saucers." Mom said, "Where is Bea?" and Mary Ellen whispered "She stropped Uncle Doc." She pointed to where Bea was hiding under something. Mom thought it was funny. Sounds like she was the only one.

Bea was so much fun. I used to love for her to come. She would stay for weeks at a time.

She was the one who climbed up the ladder in the manger and got the baby kittens down from the loft so we could play with them.

She was also the one who went walking with me in the sheep pasture, stepped into a ditch, and sprained her ankle. She climbed on the stile over the fence and went to the mailbox with me.

Bea and I ride Tony, with an unexpected audience

One time when she was there I decided it would be fun if we rode Tony. The men were in the field. At least Daddy and Charley were. Anyway, I put a rope or halter on Tony and led him to the road beside the car house. I got him to put his front feet in the ditch and I climbed up the embankment above him. I got the bridle on him and the other off. I couldn't begin to lift the saddle, so I just left his back bare.

Bea and I had rolled our hair with metal curlers, which is what they had then. We decided no one would see us anyway.

Bea thought it might be fun to ride him, so we took off down the road. On our way back we suddenly saw Daddy and Charley driving back down the road with the wagon and Frankie. We were being smart and just as we were passing them we kicked Tony and took off at a gallop toward the house. When we got there, the farm insurance agent was talking to Uncle Doc. We couldn't get Tony to stop, he ran around the house a couple of times.

Uncle Doc and the agent ran and waved their hats in front of him and yelled "Whoa." They were going around the house on different sides. Tony stopped all at once and we fell off. We only sustained a little damage -- Bea got some curlers bent. She was mortified because she fell off in front of the insurance agent. She said later that she thought Daddy knew and had put the bridle on for us. Mom said "Maudie, what makes you act like that?"

Bea visits a saloon

One time when Bea was there we went to Moberly. Bea was a teenager. Mom bought her a pair of white high heels and a white purse.

We decided to get some ice cream. The ice cream parlor was on that street. Bea was trying to go in and pushed the wrong door, the saloon door. There was a bar with nothing but a row of men sitting, drinking. When the door opened, every single one of them looked our way. Bea was so upset that she hurriedly backed out, caught her purse on the door, and tore the handle. Nice women didn't go in saloons.

Bea wins at hide and seek

One summer evening, Bea, Mary Ellen and Lawrence, the boy who lived on the farm next to them, came over to see us. Lawrence was good looking, had sort of gold blond hair and was Mary Ellen's boyfriend. Bea had a best friend at school; I don't know if she was there. I can't remember if it was during the long twilight we had back there or during one of the bright moonlight nights, but anyway, we decided to play hide and seek. One time Bea hid so well she couldn't be found. Whoever was 'it' couldn't find her and the rest of us were trying to figure out where she was.

We only had the front yard to hide in, and she wasn't anywhere. Finally, the person who was it gave up and we heard a laugh. Bea was up in the oak tree by the garage. It had limbs that were high off the ground and very rough bark. I don't know what kind of oak it was; Missouri has several different kinds.

Anyway, she had climbed on top of their car and climbed up into the tree from there.

Bea was less than five feet tall, very slender, had light brown, wind blown hair, brown eyes and a mouth that turned up at the corners. She had a lot of energy and was always hungry. When her family brought her over, the first thing she did was raid the table and cook stove. And she never gained an ounce -- the rat.

This is Home, Part 16 - Cemetery clean-up, the gravy yard, the cemetery on the farm, mowing the yard and the pasture

This is part 16 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Cemetery clean-up

Albert had been their friend since they were in school together and maybe before.

There was a graveyard named the Barnhart Cemetery a mile or so past the school. Daddy, Uncle Doc and Albert used to get together every year to mow the grass, trim and remove anything that shouldn't be there. They also straightened the tombstones. David and I visited it when we went back home in 1997.

Grandpa and Grandma Rice and Aunt Joann were buried there. However, I think they were moved from the big farm between Jacksonville and Darksville. Their tombstones were beautiful and looked new. I think they were made of granite.

We had a cemetery on the farm and everyone was moved when the farm was sold in 1952. I remember Daddy and Uncle Doc saying some of the people being moved had to have new caskets and tombstones. Some of the people were moved to Huntsville Cemetery. I think Grandpa and Grandma already had relatives buried at both cemeteries. I guess Daddy and Uncle Doc wanted them close to the farm.

However, Daddy, Uncle Doc and Albert are gone, so there is no one to take care of the Barnhart Cemetery. When David and I were there, some of the tombstones that were very tall and in three pieces had fallen down. Grandma's, Grandpa's and Joann's won't because they have a single large tombstone each.

Barnhart Cemetery is quite small.

The gravy yard

That reminds me, I used to call a graveyard a gravy yard when I was small. Mom, Daddy and Uncle Doc used to keep correcting me and pronouncing it for me. I remember saying, "See -- that is what you are saying." I got so irritated one time that I said "Spell it." Then I remembered that I couldn't spell. It would be a few years before I started to school.

The cemetery on the farm

I remember walking over with Mom to the cemetery on the farm. It had a nice fence around it and a metal gate. Outside the fence it had cedar trees. It was on a high rolling hill like the house, barns and other buildings.

Mowing the yard and the pasture

Once, Daddy mowed the front yard of the house with a mower he used in the pasture. It was made of iron, was pulled by two horses, and had a blade that was very long (probably four to five feet) that was on one side. Daddy pulled a lever to fold the blade up when not in use. He couldn't mow the sides and back of the yard that way because of the trees and bushes. They bought a push lawnmower and later a gasoline one. I tried to mow with the push one but didn't get very far. Charley usually did it. We had a large yard.

Daddy mowed the pasture to keep the weeds down so the cows and sheep and horses could get to the grass. Besides, I think he liked the way it looked.

This is Home, Part 10 - Willow whistles and cat's cradles, the switch, my swing, helping Mom, Jean and I ride Tony, canning, Daddy and summer heat, churning the butter, ice cream, lettuce inspection

This is part 10 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Willow whistles and cat's cradles

In the spring, when Jean and I were small, Mom would cut a little branch off the willow tree and cut a piece about 3 or 4 inches off, cut a little hole in the top and cut a path in the inside (I think), also she slipped the bark off and made us each a whistle. Charley did it too, sometimes. They each could make us a cat's cradle with string and also make other things. I never could remember how to do any of it, although they tried to tell me. They could make a blade of grass sound like a whistle.

The switch

Mom also found other uses for little branches -- probably willow. Jean and I kept arguing and were driving her crazy. She cut off a branch and made a little switch which she laid on top of the warmer on the stove. She said if we kept going, she would switch us. She used it as a threat several times after that until Jean took it down and broke it in two. She didn't bother replacing it.

My swing

I was telling Daddy one time that I wished the swing under the mulberry tree would go really high. Sometime later, he and Charley came with two horses and a wagon to a tall tree at the edge of the woods with really high branches. I went along as they tied a rope over a straight branch and Daddy fitted on the board seat he had made for it. I had my swing and this one did go really high. I felt like I could see everything. Just like a poem I liked.

Summertime was a really nice time on the farm for me. Days that were not too hot, filtered sunlight and puffy white clouds of different shapes. I spent a lot of time laying on my stomach on the floor of the South room reading, after I got old enough to read. I had the Nancy Drew books, Kay Tracey books, and lots of westerns. Uncle Doc used to read them and discuss them with me. He bought me my first Wyatt Earp book, "Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal."

Uncle Doc told me that when he was growing up there wasn't a lot of information that wasn't local. He said that the information received about happenings at other places was reported by people going through.

He also said that when he was young, he remembered hearing about Wyatt Earp. We used to talk about the O.K. Corral. If he had still been around, Uncle Doc would have enjoyed seeing it when I finally went there years later with my children and husband. I thought about him, and missed him.

Helping Mom

Sometimes, I helped snap beans or shelled peas. As I got older, I made different kinds of salads. But I really didn't help Mom the way I should have. I did things sometimes.

Daddy used to tell me to help Mom, but she really didn't encourage it. For one thing, she had an enormous amount of work to do and she was very fast while I was so slow I don't think she had time to wait for me. Maybe she wanted us to grow up carefree because she was working hard when she was just a little girl. Anyway, I feel guilty.

She used to tell me to talk to Jean. Jean was afraid of all the animals, except the dogs and cats. She really didn't pay a lot of attention to them, either. Later, she especially liked cats.

Jean and I had the same background, but you would never know it. I loved the farm and all the animals, except the ones that tried to get me.

Jean and I ride Tony

One time when we were small, I took Jean with me and followed Daddy as he watered Tony. When he started to lead him into the barn lot, I wanted to ride. He put us on Tony. Jean was behind me. We were going up the little incline from the road into the barnyard when Jean moved a little farther back.

She said, "I'm falling, I'm falling." I told Daddy. He stopped Tony, checked where she was sitting, and said, "No, you're all right." Jean slid off of Tony and held on to his tail all the way down. Tony just stopped and stood there. Maybe this is one reason she didn't like animals, but she was afraid to begin with. Daddy and Uncle Doc had a little brother who died when a horse kicked him in the head. Daddy was careful with Jean. She just didn't -- maybe couldn't -- hold on to me except very lightly.

Jean hated the farm. She didn't care about all the things I thought were interesting. By the time she was in late grade school, she wanted to live in a big city with lots of things to do and especially lots of dresses to buy. She wanted to do things with people her own age. I was so bored talking to her about clothes and styles. She has lived in Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles and Phoenix since she grew up. She has had a lot of beautiful clothes. I guess she knew what she wanted.

Canning

Anyway, back to the summer. Mom carried vegetables from each of the gardens and canned them. It was really hot in the kitchen when she was canning. Mom was proud of her canning. Daddy made, or had someone make, a lot of shelves in the cellar for her and she canned until they were all full and nothing left to can.

We had an apple tree with yellow apples, pear trees, several kinds of cherry trees, an apricot tree, two mulberry trees, a tree with damsons. She made preserves from some of these and canned them. We had little tiny yellow tomatoes in the garden. She made preserves of them. She said we could have some in the winter that way. Daddy and Uncle Doc also bought a basket of red apples, which she turned into apple sauce and other types of canned apples.

She made dill pickles and bread and butter pickles.

All this time, she was cooking three meals a day. I don't know how she did it.

When I was little, I remember Daddy or Uncle Doc sweeping the front porch for Mom. Then entertaining me so she could get dinner on the table.

Daddy used to come home for dinner, wash his face, neck, and hands. And also comb his hair. His hair was still dark, with threads of gray, and had a wave. He was in his sixties.

Daddy and summer heat

Daddy had trouble standing the heat of summer, more so as he got older. After eating, he went down to the cellar where he rested on the cot for awhile. As he got older, he stayed in the cellar for a longer time at noon and worked later at night.

The cellar was as cold as refrigeration. There were two ways to enter. The kitchen had a door in the floor which one could raise and then climb down the stairs, which is what Daddy did. There was also a slanted outside door laying at an angle on the framework. The head was higher. This door was never locked and could be raised so one could walk down the concrete steps to the cellar. Of course, if anyone opened the outside door, the warm outside air came in. The kitchen door was later blocked off, so only the outside door was used then.

I used to follow Daddy down into the cellar and talk to him. There was an old chair down there, so I could sit beside him.

Churning the butter

There was a churn in the cellar, also. Mom used to churn butter sometimes during the weekend. Charley also came and did part of the churning. I can't remember what the churn looked like, except that it was like a large wooden bucket with a lid and a paddle in the middle. I hope what I have described is correct. The handle of the paddle stuck out the top of the middle of the lid.

I think Mom used to skim a heavy amount of cream off the milk and use it to make butter. I don't know if it had anything else put in it or around it. It may have had table salt in it.

When the butter was finished, there was thin milk left with flecks of butter in it. This was called buttermilk. Mom and Charley liked to drink it. Jean and I didn't like milk of any kind. Maybe chocolate.

Daddy and Uncle Doc wouldn't touch milk if you paid them -- not since Uncle Doc was in college and saw it under a microscope.

The butter was put into a large cereal bowl or small vegetable bowl, and set on the ice in the ice box. When it was placed on the table, it looked like half of a yellow ball.

Ice cream

Sometimes on Sunday, during the summer, they made ice cream. There was a wooden ice cream maker in the cellar with a smaller metal container in it. The cream, sugar and flavoring such as vanilla were put in the metal container. If there was anything else, I don't remember. The ice cream maker outside the metal had ice and coarse salt put in it. A handle had to be turned until the ice cream was frozen. Jean and I thought it would never be ice cream. Just before it was finished, sometimes Mom would add small slices of peaches. We also must have had a peach tree, but I can't think where.

Everyone was given a bowl of it. There was a lot left for later.

Every time Daddy ate ice cream, he rubbed his forehead in the middle and complained that ice cream froze his forehead.

Lettuce inspection

Stephen insisted that I write this down.

When Mom made a salad with lettuce, I used to carefully inspect each piece of lettuce before I ate it. They grew leaf lettuce on the farm.

I think I irritated Mom. She would say, "Maudie, I put that lettuce through several rinse waters. There is nothing on it."

I still inspected it. It was the only thing that bothered me. I was just sure it must have a little bug somewhere. I don't know what age I was. Probably grade school.

This is Home, Part 8 - The big, big turtle, taking a bath, Charley: tricks and treats, Charley and the doll, cars and tractors, cattle, crops and food

This is part 8 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



The big, big turtle

I liked to play tricks on Charley because of the way he reacted. He usually laughed. Daddy and Uncle Doc wouldn't have thought it was funny. Anyway, Daddy and Charley were cleaning out the stalls in the barn one time, and thanks to me, every time they got to the door with a shovel of manure and straw, I had closed the door. After the second or third time, Daddy said in a no-nonsense tone not to do it again. So I looked around for something else to do. I went out of the barn lot into the pasture beside it, where the pond was. I saw a huge turtle walking toward the gate from the direction of the pond. To this day, I have not seen a turtle that large. I looked around and found a stick. I poked it toward its head, trying to make the turtle tuck its head, legs and tail into its shell.

It wouldn't do it. It snapped at the stick and actually grabbed it. So I took it for a walk. When it let go, I repeated the procedure. I did it several times, then I took a good look at him. It had a face that reminded me of a snake, and taller and stronger legs than I thought possible. The shell was up quite a way from the ground and this turtle seemed to be moving pretty fast.

I was mad at Daddy and Charley, and Uncle Doc wasn't around, so there wasn't anyone to tell. I have often wondered where it went, and hoped it was far away and not in the pond across the road that the little lambs ran around in the spring and where Charley usually took a bath.

Charley was the only one of us who knew how to swim. There was a trough over in the pasture that could be used, I suppose. Just like the cowboys in the stories.

Taking a bath

When we were small children, we could take a bath in the rinse tubs, but when we got larger, it meant getting a pan of warm water and soap, setting it on the stove in the bedroom, and standing there washing from head to toe with a washcloth. One of the nurses in the hospital called that type of washing a spit bath.

We washed our hair in a wash pan. That is a pan one washes one's hands in.

Charley: Tricks and treats

I played other tricks on Charley. I used to climb up in Daddy, Uncle Doc, and Charley's lap and listen to them talk. Then I would go to sleep and whoever was holding me would carry me to the bedroom and leave me lying on the bed. Mom came in and covered me up.

Anyway, I decided to play a trick on Charley. I pretended to be asleep. He carried me in and left. I got very quietly off the bed and sneaked down right behind him. He was telling Mom, "Poor little Maudie, dead to the world. I put her on the bed." About that time, I said from behind him, "No, I'm not." He practically jumped out of his skin.

Charley used to bring me arrowheads from different places he worked on our farm. I wasn't really interested then, but now I wish I had kept them. I still have one. It looks as though they made it out of rock. Actually carved it out of rock. It has flat places on it and ridges.

He also described snakes he had killed. One of the hay fields has flat land surrounded by trees and brush. He told me one time about being chased by a blue racer in the hay field. He killed it. Sometimes, he found a rattlesnake in that field. If he killed one close to the house, unfortunately he showed it to me.

Charley bought my first wrist watch for me. It had a leather strap and lasted for years. He also bought Jean something when he bought a gift for me. One time, he went to a carnival and bought me a large red and white cow. It stood about fourteen or fifteen inches from the floor. He bought Jean a big sitting dog -- black and white with a red collar.

He also used to play ball with us. I got dragged into it -- too much action for me.

Charley and the doll

Charley gave me a little doll that his mother had given him when he was little. It had a stuffed body (straw, maybe) and white unbreakable arms and legs. I didn't know what material. It also had a white china head that looked like a cat. It had green eyes and painted ears. It was wearing a red and white striped dress and had black shoes painted on its feet.

I kept it for years, but I only have the head left. I have it in a safe place and always think of Charley when I see it. He felt like family. I miss hem, too.

This was either before school or during grade school.

Cars and tractors

Charley liked cars. He kept trading for a different one. Hood ornaments were a big thing then. So his cars had chrome or chrome-looking ornaments. Ours didn't.

Speaking of cars, I remember when Uncle Doc had to get out of the car to insert a crank in the front of it and crank it to make it start. It must have been the Model T or Model A, or something like that.

Daddy never learned to drive. He did all his farming with horses. In 1948, the Rice Bros. of Randolph County won a De Kalb corn growing contest with 141.48 bushels per acre. They received a plaque with this information on it. The plaque also had a little gold colored ear of corn with wings. There was also a certificate that I took off the wall so it wouldn't fade, and now I can't find it. It is here somewhere, though.

Practically everyone else was using tractors. Daddy and Uncle Doc bought a new tractor -- green and yellow -- only to find out that Uncle Doc couldn't take the jolting. He had nephritis the whole time I knew him and before. It is a kidney disease that causes chronically inflamed kidneys. Charley could drive the tractor, but it was also difficult to start. It was a brand that was and is well known. It was an Allis-Chalmers or a John Deere.

Anyway, they sold it later and bought a smaller one that hugged the ground more. It was a Ford.

Tractors can be hazardous to operate where the land has hills and hollows. Someone Daddy and Uncle Doc knew died when his tractor turned over and fell on him.

This was not that unusual. There were quite a few accidents reported in the paper.

Cattle, crops and food

Daddy and Uncle Doc raised black Angus cattle and sheep for sale. There were also a few hogs and maybe a couple of horses or so.

They raised crops of corn, Timothy hay, soy beans, wheat, winter wheat, oats, and alfalfa. There may have been others. They sold what wasn't needed as food for the animals.

Late each fall when the weather was cold, three of the hogs were butchered for meat. Coarse salt was rubbed into the outside of the meat to preserve it. It was cut into large parts first -- parts such as hams and bacon.

I remember when pieces of meat were fed into a meat grinder to make sausage. Salt, pepper and sage were added. Then the whole thing was mixed in a large galvanized tub. The grinder was fastened onto the side of the tub.

Mom usually cooked liver the first night. Uncle Doc liked it, but Jean and I hated it. Mom started cooking sausage, too, so we would eat some of the meat. There were huge crocks -- bucket shaped -- containing lard. Some meat was packed into large containers.

Daddy and Uncle Doc never smoked the meat. They preserved it with salt, instead. However, during one winter our whole family was sick in bed with the flu. A neighbor, Roscoe Wright, who lived two or three houses above us, came down and butchered, sugar cured and smoked the hogs for us. Every day, he fed all the animals for us, milked the cows, and did anything else that needed doing. I don't know what we would have done without him.

This is Home, Part 7 - Plowing with Japie, Little Tony, Grandpa, Buster and Rowdy, Tony

This is part 7 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Plowing with Japie

The garden near the ice house was the one where I "helped" Daddy plow sometimes when I was little. Daddy had a single plow and was walking behind it with the reins (long ones) fastened around behind his neck. He would have to remove a hand from the plow to pull the reins and try to keep Japie (Jap-ee) off the rows of garden plants. Japie came to us with that name. Daddy always asked the names of horses he bought so they would hopefully respond. I think he had Japie for a long time. I keep thinking she was around thirty. I might be wrong, maybe she was only in her late twenties. She was old, didn't hold her head up very high, and didn't really care where she slowly walked. Daddy was back there yelling "Gee!" (go) and then "Haw!" (stop).

When I asked if I could ride, he put me on her, put the ordinary reins in my hands and said to pull on the opposite rein to keep her off the garden.

I didn't have a lot of luck, but I helped some. After awhile I told him I was hungry, so we both went in for a peanut butter and cracker snack. Then back to the garden.

Little Tony

Daddy bought me a little Shetland pony when I was little, probably around seven. There was a bright red buggy with him and a little saddle. His name was Tony, so we called him Little Tony, because Daddy already had a saddle horse named Tony. Little Tony was so beautiful. He was white with black spots. He had tiny little feet, and white eyelashes. He was also really stubborn. I did better with him when someone was there.

One time I rode him when no one was around. He took me up the road and refused to turn when I tried to turn him. He only turned his head. Daddy, Uncle Doc and Charley came home for dinner (lunch) and Charley came running up the road after me. I was almost to the neighbor's house when Charley came and turned him around. I was really worried by then. I was wondering if I would break anything or if the pony would walk on me if I just slid off.

Grandpa

Grandpa must have noticed. He was staying with us for awhile. He was the only grandparent I ever knew. He was Henry Albert, Mom's father. Her mother died when Mom was eleven and Aunt Opal was a young baby. Mom said her mother had to stay in bed for a long time. Her mother died with kidney failure. Mom's older sister had married and moved to Colorado, so Mom took care of her two younger sisters, Edith and Opal. Mom said when she went to school, she had to carry Opal along, because there was no one to watch her. Mom had a hard time. She washed clothes, fixed meals, took care of the house and helped raise her sisters. Aunt Opal always called Mom her "sister mother."

Grandpa had a mustache and was a very kind man. He used to sit on the back porch and talk to us.

Buster and Rowdy

When the pups got larger, Daddy or someone gave part of them away, but Jean kept one and I kept one. We couldn't think of good names. We showed them to Grandpa. He came up with names. Jean's dog was Rowdy (it looked like a police dog) and mine was Buster. Buster looked like Old Yeller in the movies.

Grandpa died when I was in the sixth grade. He didn't survive an operation at Kirksville to restore kidney function.

My Aunt Joann died in her forties from kidney failure, also. She was Daddy and Uncle Doc's sister. She died before I was born. She had not married and lived at home with her parents and brothers. There was another sister, Mollie, who married a Dean and moved to Jacksonville. Mollie also died before I was born.

Tony

Oh, well, back to Tony, the saddle horse. Daddy went walking over in the pasture every night after the milk cows. I wanted to go, too. I was little and it was fun. However, my legs ached every night, and Mom was up rubbing them a good part of the night.

Then Daddy bought Tony, a saddle horse. No more leg aches. Every night we went riding on Tony. He had such a nice gait -- about as easy as a rocking chair. Tony had definite ideas, though. When Daddy put him in the barn and gave him food and water, he tried to kick the barn door down. Daddy turned him loose in the pasture next to the barn lot. That's the pasture where we had cute little colts every spring.

Anyway, it had two or three other horses in it. Tony went over, backed up and kicked them. Daddy had to move the other horses out into the big pasture. There was only a well there with a big wooden trough, while the pasture where Tony was going to be staying in solitary splendor had a nice big pond.

We went along for quite a few weeks riding Tony after the cows.

Then one day, Daddy got a different horse for us to ride. It was not a saddle horse and didn't have the nice gait. I kept asking for Tony, and saying he rode nice and this one didn't.

After about three nights, Daddy and Uncle Doc got in the car to go somewhere. I asked them where they were going. Daddy said, "Down the road a piece." I wanted to go, too, but they wouldn't let me and drove off.

That night when we went after the cows, Tony was back. I was delighted. I found out later that Daddy had sold Tony to the man who frequently bought livestock from us. I think Tony was going to be auctioned off. Anyway, Daddy had gone and bought him back. He had to pay more than he had received when he sold him. Wasn't that nice of him to get him back? I had a really special Daddy.

Years later, after we moved to the farm by the highway, Tony came to the fence one time. Stephen and David wanted to feed him and we didn't have anything with us, so we pulled out some grass and they gave it to him. He died on the farm when he got old. He lived longer than both Daddy and Uncle Doc.

This is Home, Part 5 - Uncle Doc chopping wood, baby animals, the baby pig and its mother, trying to put the calf in the wagon, washing clothes, making soap, making cracklins, the lamb in the kitchen, baby chicks, Frankie and the cattle

This is part 5 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Uncle Doc chopping wood

Since we burned wood in the stoves and the cooking stove was used three times a day, Uncle Doc chopped a lot of wood. He used to tell me to stay back at the fence because I could get hit by a flying chip. I wanted to see what he was doing and I kept getting closer. He kept stopping to tell me to move back. He was really pretty patient.

When I offered to chop some because it looked like fun, he chuckled. He was using an axe with a sharp blade on each side of the handle.

I also remember that he cut his foot with the axe one time -- probably thanks to me.

Mom came out and took a picture of us once, but she had both of us move back to the fence.

Baby animals

There are so many fun things to do on a farm. Every spring the bushes and trees burst into bloom. Everything looks like a fairyland. Wild flowers grow along the side of rural roads.

There are baby lambs, baby colts, baby pigs and baby calves. Mom used to take Jean and me to see the baby lambs go in a ring -- one after the other -- around the pond bank. They would run around the pond and every once in awhile several of them would jump to the side with their back feet. They were expressing the joy of being young.

The colt with his long spindly legs, short curly tail, and big eyes could be petted sometimes. After they were a little older, the colt or colts would run around the pasture, kick their heels high and pretend to nip at each other. They would also roll in the grass.

The baby pigs were cute, too, with curly tails like corkscrews, and I always wanted to play with them, but I listened when I was told that the mother pig would get me.

The baby pig and its mother

After asking repeatedly every time I saw the pigs being fed, I finally talked Uncle Doc into letting me hold a baby pig. He had just fed the adult ones and they were all eating. He looked at the mother pig, then grabbed one that was by the fence. He gave it to me to hold. The stupid little pig started screaming the minute he picked it up and didn't stop. No up or down, just one note. The mother pig left the food and came at a dead run towards the fence. Uncle Doc held out his hands and said "Quick, Maudie, give me the pig." He got it back inside the fence and on the ground just in time to stop the mother pig from going through the fence. They are large and very heavy. The fence was wood.

Trying to put the calf in the wagon

One of the milk cows had a cute little calf one time. It was a few days old when I asked Daddy if he would put it in the red wagon I had with me so I could take it to the house and play with it. He told me no, it had to stay with its mother. I was determined, so I asked Charley after he left. Charley said no and left, too. So I decided to do it myself. Unfortunately, I found that I wasn't even strong enough to lift one of its legs into the wagon, no matter how hard I tried, and I did try.

I sat in the wagon myself trying to figure out how to get it there and finally gave up.

Washing clothes

Mom washed clothes once a week. We had a building in the chicken yard that had a washing machine and tubs. When Jean was a baby someone named Bessie came and did the washing.

We used to have three big black caldrons. Bessie used to make a fire under a couple of them and put the white clothes and sheets in boiling water with lye soap in it. She took them out with a stick and put them in the second tub to rinse them. I remember Mom washing small things in the kitchen with a washboard.

There was an interesting thing about Bessie, she didn't want Mom to pay her with money. Bessie said her husband would just take it and get drunk. She wanted food, so Mom fixed a container with a lot of meat and vegetables for her. She wanted "fat back," she told Mom, to cook with beans. Bessie was black and a grandmother. She wore a kerchief over her hair like "Aunt Jemima" on the syrup bottle.

I remember when we got a new gas washer. It had a pull cord like a lawn mower to start it. Mom had a lot of trouble getting it to start. She had a washer with movable rollers that she put the clothes through into the first rinse water, then into the second. Bluing was put in the wash or rinse water, I can't remember which. The bluing made the clothes, sheets, whatever, whiter.

The way she ironed was interesting. She had two or three irons made of iron that she heated by placing them on the stove. Even the handles were iron. She used to use one iron until it started to cool, then put it on the stove and get another one. She sprinkled all the clothes with water and rolled them up tightly before ironing. She let them set awhile. Sometimes, she starched some of the washing. Starch had to be mixed and cooked and the items dipped in it, then wrung out by hand.

She washed a certain day of the week, hung the clothes on the line, then brought them in and ironed and folded them. Then she put them away. Washing took up most of her time that day. It was a big deal. She even ironed sheets and pillow cases. Mom loved the smell of clothes that had been dried outside in the sun and wind. They smell fresh.

Making soap

Mom heated one of the cauldrons to make soap when we needed it. It was lye soap made with lard, wood ashes, lye and I don't know what else. She was proud of how white and mild it was. She cut it into rectangular cakes. It was a lot like ivory.

Aunt Opal and her children were visiting one time and she helped Mom make soap. We had a big, old, black and white dog (Pete) that looked somewhat like a St. Bernard. He slowly followed Aunt Opal around that day and died that night.

Making cracklins

Mom used to also make cracklins. She cooked small, fat pieces of meat until the grease was gone and only a crispy shell was left.

The lamb in the kitchen

It used to snow into the spring sometimes, and the wind was very cold. Sometimes the lambs started coming earlier than they were supposed to and at least two or three had mothers who wouldn't have anything to do with them. They would wind up in a big tub in the kitchen by the fire. Daddy put straw in the bottom of the tub. We usually only had one at a time. The little lamb stumbled around the tub and never stopped going Ba-a-a. I liked being able to pet it but by the middle of the afternoon, Mom was ready to throw it out. She had listened to it almost all day.

The lamb was fed milk in a large round bottle. The bottle was washed by shaking buckshot around in the water. The bottle neck was too long and narrow for any type of brush.

I don't remember how long the lamb had to stay or how we got it to be quiet if it was overnight. Seems to me Jean and I were delighted to find it still there a day or two afterwards.

Baby chicks

Every spring Mom bought five hundred baby chicks. They were cute, soft, yellow and fluffy. She had to make the corners of their brooder house round to keep them from all crowding into a corner and killing themselves. They had a round heater with an extended roof around it so they would be warm under it. Every night at 2:00 or 2:30 a.m. she had to go check them to see if they were okay.

One time Uncle Doc went to town and came back with one hundred pound sacks of feed for the chickens. After carrying them, he had to see the doctor because he had injured his back. He had his back taped up for weeks afterwards. The doctor tried to tell him that sacks weighing a hundred pounds were too much for him, since he only weighed a hundred and thirty pounds himself.

Frankie and the cattle

Daddy's cousin Frank Rice and his wife Valere gave me a little fox terrier when I was a baby. He was born on my birthday. He was small, and white with tan spots and ears. We named him Frankie. When I got him, I was too little to play with him, and later when I tried, he happily went to work with Daddy. Daddy loved dogs and horses. I think he just liked animals. Frankie stood on the wagon looking pleased as Daddy left.

In the winter back home, the cattle have to be fed as they no longer have grass. Daddy and Uncle Doc had a herd of unfriendly Aberdine-Angus (or black Angus as they were called at home). Daddy and Charley were pushing feed for them off the wagon, when Frankie managed to get off on the ground. One of the cattle was ready to go after Frankie when Charley leaped off the wagon to get him and Daddy threatened the cow with a pitchfork.

The herd was started with registered black Aberdine-Angus.

When I was a teenager and used to walk down the road to the mailbox, every time I passed by the pasture where these cattle were, some were always standing under the trees along the road. At least one of them would back up, lower its head, and paw the ground. I used to wonder if they could come through the barbed wire fence. I wasn't even threatened by a bull; they were cows. The bull just ignored me.

Dream - The thieves, the horse, and the battle

On Friday, May 28, 2010, around 9:30-10:30 AM, I dreamed I was at home, looking out the back window, by the kitchen table, with my mother. We were irritatedly talking about people getting in the backyard. It was probably late in the day, getting toward evening. We saw some kids going along the top of the fence, but then it seemed like it was the concrete fence across the alley, not the wooden fence we have. Then a woman was out there and took the kids, slowly, to the backyard of a house a little to the west and across the alley from us. She was talking to them, pleasantly it seemed. Then she got a call in the house, which someone there evidently transferred to her cellphone, and she was saying something like, "Is that the spammers again? I have to take this." As she got back to the house, talking and listening on her cellphone, she turned and looked back at me. I somewhat grimly waved at her, and she waved back.

It got dark. My mother was worried about someone getting in the yard. I went out and looked around a bit. Things were not exactly as in real life. I think the two male mulberry trees were still there, and there were a few things sitting around, on the porch and in the yard, that aren't there in real life. I located a pickaxe, but I think it was mostly the head, I think the wooden handle was mostly rotted away. I picked it up and may have carried it to some place on the porch. We also had a dog we don't have in real life, a medium-to-large size one, as well as at least one small one that may or may not have been similar to ones we have or have had.

I went back inside and told my mother that I didn't see anyone, and told her about the pickaxe, which could be used as a weapon by us. Things were taking on an increasingly chilled, ominous feeling, like something was going to happen. It seemed important that we leave a message about the pickaxe, and send a message about it to some other people, in case they needed to get one, and so they would know about it, and so there would be a record of it if something happened to us. My mother had put something on the refrigerator, held by a magnet, a kind of violet strip of old thin construction paper, with straight lines drawn on it dividing it into boxes. I was talking back and forth to my mother about the measurements, while she was trying to call someone and leave a message. I was talking about the approximate measurements of the head, how big it was, and was giving the thickness of the shaft, which seemed important. As I had measured it near the head, it was something like 2 3/4 inches, and I was writing it in some of the boxes, then I realized I had gotten it wrong and it was actually 3 3/4 inches, and I wrote it in another box. I needed to change the others somehow, I might have to do it later. Then I thought that it would be good to make a small drawing of the pickaxe head, so that there would be no question about how it looked. Then I saw that my mother had already done it, on another narrow scrap of the same paper, that was a little to the right of and partly over the paper I was writing on. The image was drawn vertically, and a little crudely, but was good enough. It was much bigger than I would have done, maybe half a foot or so long. I had been intending to draw a much smaller image.


Then the woman and the kids were back at the fence, near the gate. She was telling them to go inside the yard and get something. They went over the fence and started digging in the yard, and came up with some pale shallow plastic things, like things to put paint rollers in when you are trying to put more paint on them. One of them had a huge pile of scratch pads [small blank notepads, around 3 x 5 inches] from the radiator shop, with advertising on them. It wasn't what they were looking for, though, they were looking for something else.

I was getting mad, and told my mother that I was going to go out there and stop them. I was intending to scare them off and gather up the scratch pads and take them inside, but when I went out and started walking across the yard toward where they were, or had been, I suddenly saw a huge horse, light brown in color, striding purposefully toward me. It was probably around 8 or 10 feet high at the top of its head. I started backing away. The big dog, which had come out from its place of hiding on the porch, stopped and started to back up a bit, too. I turned and started going more rapidly back to the house, the horse was moving too fast. While its eyes looked a little uncertain, it seemed that it intended to head right for me.

I got inside and got the back door shut and I think locked, and went around the counter to the dining area, telling my mother what happened. I went back to check on the door, staying back by the end of the counter, and saw that the horse was bashing at the window in the door with its hoof, looking angry. It didn't seem that the window could stand up to it, and probably not even the door itself. I saw the window, which was longer now than in real life, bending sharply inward, taking its thin metal frame with it, and the window cracking in several places, with big horizontal splits going across it, like it was a plastic sandwich reinforced glass, like a car windshield, and not just regular glass.

I went away, back into the dining area, nervously talking about it with my mother. I went back then and checked, expecting to see that the horse had its hoof and leg through the glass, but instead saw that it was a man there, with his leg hanging through. He was wearing a black mask over his eyes and a black bandanna around his head, and was evidently a burglar. I went back in the dining area and nervously talked to my mother about maybe somehow trying to get the pickaxe. I couldn't remember where I had left it though, was it somewhere on the porch or out in the yard? Then I went back and found the man had gotten most of the way in; his arms and body were in now too, only his other leg was on the other side. He was holding a very small gun in his right hand. I went to him and started trying to twist his leg around. He was looking at me surprised, like he was thinking, don't you see have a gun? He kept trying to get the gun pointed properly at me and I kept twisting his leg and moving it around and up in the way. Then suddenly he had it in his other hand, with a clear shot at me. I stopped, there wasn't anything I could do to block it. I let go and backed up some, wondering if he was going to shoot me, then abruptly he had a another small gun in his other hand, too. He took my mother and me hostage, and took us along with him. He didn't seem really interested in what we had in the house, at least for now. He wanted us to do a job for him, to help him steal something, I guess to prove our loyalty, and in any case make us useful. We left and went out into the night with him. The area now seemed more like Fallon, Nevada than Arizona.

He sent us toward a supermarket. We were supposed to search in the trash cans out front for something that was left by an associate, something from the store. He stayed well away, in the darkness by another building, but it was pretty dark where we were too, not much light to look at the things with. We took out some things. Some of it looked a little interesting, like the paint roller-type shallow container I had seen in the back yard, but we didn't find anything like we were supposed to be looking for. It hadn't been described, only that something would be left there, but we didn't find anything useful or valuable, at least toward the top, where presumably it would be. Something had evidently gone wrong, or maybe he hadn't been able to get out here with it yet.

Suddenly, there was a commotion of some kind in the store. He had evidently been found out. We hurriedly left.

We were wandering around then, wondering what to do. It seemed like a good time to talk to someone in law enforcement, get them involved, but we were also afraid that the man, the crook, might be mad at us and try to hurt or kill us. We finally decided to try to find someone. I remembered seeing a man a bit earlier who I knew was a police detective. We went back to the general area where he had been and eventually found him. We told him about what had happened. He listened and was trying to devise a plan about what to do. He talked to someone on his cellphone about it, and we went to a place where I had earlier seen the horse parked on the street, in a parking place. The horse didn't look so big now, more like the size of a normal horse. I told the man that the horse might know something and be able to help us, though I wasn't sure about its reaction. It looked back at us with a little bit of a mad, irritated, uncertain look as we came toward it. Then it was thanking us profusely as the man untied its rein to free it, and it started talking about how they had mistreated it. It agreed after a pause to help us, seeming to be reluctant to get involved with the man again, and then resumed complaining about how it had been treated.


My mother and I went back to our house, which looked a lot different now, but found the man and his associates were already there, and in the process of stealing some things from it before they left. The man was inside and was handing stuff out to them. Besides the man there were two other people, a somewhat short middle-aged Oriental man and a very tall muscular man who appeared part black and part Asian, and wasn't wearing a shirt. They saw us, and the head man seemed to want to get us, perhaps kill us, but they got in an argument. The others, particularly the Oriental man, didn't want to do it, and the Oriental man wanted to let us go. He was yelling at the head man, and he had a weapon that was two heavy hooked-together dark sticks. The hooks were just heavy eyelet type things and weren't sharp, they were curved around so they were almost closed and had blunt ends. He was swinging it around his head, threatening to throw it at the head man, but the head man threw an odd thin metal black piece, very slightly bent, with a wider thing at the back end, like a small light gray pipe that went over it like a handle. It hit the Oriental man in the leg near the hip, going almost straight down, and went in deeply. He screamed, but kept on standing.

The fight continued, all three of them in it, generally separated quite a bit from each other, 10 or 20 or more feet at times, throwing things at each other and yelling. It may have been mostly the associates, widely separated, fighting the boss, but it seems the associates sometimes threw things at each other too. Sometimes a couple of them got close enough together to get into a struggle, and try to swing their sticks or whatever they were holding, trying to hit the other person's back or whatever else presented a good target, or trying to stab the other person, if the weapon was of that type, and sometimes one or the other of them would get tossed or flipped. Then they might get separated by a bit and sometimes one would even chase the other briefly, till the person chased got far enough away or the fight became more equal again.

After a bit either the Oriental man or the part Asian, part black man threw some of the sticks at me. I managed to avoid them and they landed at my feet. They were apparently intended to hit with the hook and cut into a person, though the hook was curved over and blunt. It seemed the proper way of throwing them was to swing them around your head and somehow quickly unhook the one that wasn't being held, to let it go flying at whatever was being aimed at. I got two of them sent at me, still hooked together. You could hook three together, I saw it done, and let loose two and still be holding one, though I'm not sure it was done in this case. I was trying to throw them back, and I think I did, throwing both, not trying to get one unhooked, but it was awkward and I don't think I hit my target.

At some point, I saw the horse coming back, a pleasant and hopeful look on its face, but as it got closer it became aware of what was happening, of the crooks being back and the fighting. Its eyes widened and stared at the scene, and its expression drifted downward into a surprised dismay. It leaned its body back, pushing at the pavement with its hooves, slowing itself to a halt and then backing up. It turned and left, looking back once or twice at us, a nervous grimace on its face.


Then the Oriental man was going off with the head man. They had some kind of carriage, like a horse might pull, but no horse this time. It was filled with stuff. They were going along beside and behind it, pushing and guiding it I guess. They had gotten pretty far away already, maybe a hundred feet. I had a couple more of the heavy dark hooked-together sticks, ones that had been thrown at me, and I took careful aim, thinking I could get them this time, and threw the sticks. They flew forward at them, scooting along the ground after a while, but still heading straight for them. It looked like I might get them. I think I even had a line attached so I could pull on it, to drag them back when they got hooked.

All of a sudden the sticks stopped and started coming back, going backward, and I saw that they had one or two more sticks hooked onto them. The tall, muscular, part Asian part black man was standing a few feet from me, laughing, and pulling on the line, dragging them back. He had thrown his own sticks at them, and hooked them. I was apprehensive about what was going to happen now, but he seemed friendly and genial, not wanting to harm me, and amused at the situation. He didn't want me to harm the others, either, or get in a fight with them. I had a feeling that I might be able to get him to help us later, maybe help us escape or even turn against the others and get them captured by the police, if I could convince him to do so. He seemed close to being able to do it, but I wasn't sure how close or if I could convince him. He didn't seem willing to let us go at the moment though, or maybe I was too intimidated to even try.

The others came back. Maybe he called and signaled to them, waved them back over, it seemed he might have but I'm not sure. We were captured again.


Then we were together somewhere else, and they were working with various things, bent over some, working at them, with some open boxes around with things in them. They were working in or near the boxes, separated from each other by probably six to eight feet, getting things ready for the next job. The head man was saying, talking about the next job, and what had happened this last time, "At least there were no witnesses."

I was standing a few feet from my mother, who was to the side and slightly behind me, and we were probably about eight feet in front of him, and I said, "But what about next time? What about the next time?" He stopped talking and lowered his eyes, looking thoughtful and subdued and a little chastened, but he continued working, bent over his box. I stopped talking too, suddenly feeling strange and vulnerable, thinking that perhaps I had said too much. We were, after all, witnesses.


More happened earlier, and some more happened in town after we first escaped, but I don't remember it.

Dream - My mother and grandmother are at the store, my mother, though dead, has been eating too much, then I'm a child running across the water of the lake

On Saturday January 29, 2011, around 9:40 AM-1:20 PM, I dreamed I was driving. It was a rural area, partly developed, mostly undeveloped. It was daytime. I kept going by a place that had horses, some out by the road even, that came out by the road. The hooves of one was even making cloppity noises, as it raised up on its hind legs and was waving its front hooves, bouncing them along something, making the noises. Though I really only saw air, it seemed sometimes it might be hitting the car side window. It had a worried, upset expression on its face. It was being urged to do it by the owner or trainer. It seemed to be on Miller Rd., a little south of where the shopping center at Camelback Rd. would be, though in the dream it was much less developed, with a lot of open space and occasional trees, seeming to have a rural, small town, out in the country feel.

My grandmother and mother were nearby in something that was like a large Woolco. It was near where the shopping center on Camelback and Miller would be, just south of it. It seemed they were staying there too for a while somehow. My grandmother, near the entrance, wanted me to go get my mother, they had to leave soon for some reason. I don't remember anymore just what it was, but it was some event they had to be at I think. I went back further in the store to find her. She was basically straight in, maybe 50 feet or so, from where my grandmother was, off to the north side of the store, like my grandmother, but maybe 10 or 15 feet out from the wall, among some short aisles. She seemed young, maybe in her thirties. She had a partial smile on her face, and her eyes looked back and forth a little. She was trying to get dressed, but couldn't get her blouse, a flannel-like affair, down over her stomach. She had gotten very fat, and her stomach and sides stuck out a lot. I pulled on it and finally got it down. I cautioned her about it, mentioning that since she was dead she evidently decided to eat a lot, that she thought it didn't matter, but though it didn't affect her health, it did have an effect. I thought that it might be partly because she expected it to.

Later, I went back to the house with the path to the lake, the one in the previous dream, written about in the previous post, but I was a little kid, maybe 8-10 years old. I ran down the slope. People, a lot or most of them kids, were cheering and hooting and urging me to run into the water. Though uncertain about it, I continued running, and ran out into the lake. The water was shallow at first. I hoped it would continue to be, but I didn't know if it would. I continued running, while the shouts continued, having turned more to ones of amazement, that I was actually doing it, while continuing encouragement, though with less certainty than before. The water had only been a couple of feet deep at first, and I was running through it, splashing through it as fast as I could. I started going so fast, in combination with my power, that I was able to run then partly on the water, only going a couple or so feet down even though the water got deeper. I kept running all the way to the other side, where it had a much sharper slope and somewhat deeper bottom, and threw myself into the thick trees and brush there, which caught me like a wall and bounced me back some. I landed on my feet near it, on the sharp slope in the shallow water near the shore. The people on the other side were still shouting, in amazement. I went around the lake back to the other side then, back to where I started.

Back on the other side, I went up the broad aisle with the strange, smooth, grayish brown dirt surface, back up to the top, and then along a lane back toward the back of my house. It was different than in the other dream, though, the surface of the side lane was flat and seemed to be similar to the broad one, though in large segments, with close seams. Some other people went with me, tagging along, some little kids, and an older teen. I might have been following the older teen.

Then we were going back, back toward the broad aisle. He had some large cloths or paper towels or something, I think he had a large whisk broom too, and I and some some other kids were helping him to clear the broad path. It had gotten some sand along the edges, creeping in in irregular ways. Now it also had broad flat railings, and I was also rubbing them, cleaning them, though I started worrying about marring the surface, rubbing at it with the cloths, getting the fine sand off it. In a few areas it did seem marred a bit, the shine muted. I kept polishing it, hoping to make it better. As I made my way down, the railing started to change too, into strange elongated car fenders in places, that also had to be cleaned, and some of them went off into the side aisles, and I worried about marring them too. Some kind of event was going to happen here soon, tonight. It was already night now, though it had been light when I arrived, though not very bright. Some people were already filling the rows. I think my father was going to be there tonight, too.

The dream had a lot more earlier in it I think, back when I was driving back and forth.