This is Home, Part 45 - Getting help

This is part 45 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Getting help

When I was in the first year of high school, Jean and I stayed in Huntsville.

I had a teacher that threatened us with a lot of consequences if we didn't know the divisions of land, such as the SW quarter of the north section, the NW quarter of the southeast section, and so forth.

I was worried about it. Not a single student in that class knew how to do it. I tried to figure out what to do and finally got up the nerve to call Walter Wright, the County Assessor, and ask if he would explain it to me. He was one of Uncle Doc's students.

He told me he had to work late that night and that he would have his secretary explain it to me if I wanted to come over at that time.

It was night already. Aunt Edith had made Katie go to bed and had gone to take care of some old lady. I don't know how I convinced Jean to stay by herself. The house creaked at night and the old lady Aunt Edith was taking care of in her house whispered her prayers for hours. Jean and I sneaked out a lot of times and went to the movies.

Anyway, when I got to the office, the secretary Frances Werntz was waiting for me. She was all dressed up, heels, hose, pretty dress, hair curled and makeup on. Including jewelry, if I remember right. She was slightly chubby but she looked fantastic.

She was very nice. She got out a county map and spent quite a bit of time explaining it to me. I understood it perfectly.

Next morning when we had the class the teacher asked if anyone knew how to do it. No one raised their hands, so I didn't have the nerve to either. Then with an expectant look on her face, she said, "Maudie?" I shook my head. She went ahead and explained it.

I have wondered, whenever I think of it, why she looked at me like that. I think I now have the answer. Small town women spend a lot of their time gossiping. Some of what they say is true, but most of it is not. They can take a grain of truth and enlarge it until it is unrecognizable.

Anyway, apparently someone had told her. This time it was true.

The next time I saw her was when I was working for James L. Stone, Real Estate. She was Mrs. James L. Stone. They had twins and she was expecting again.

This is Home, Part 44 - Daddy stands by a friend, Uncle Doc

This is part 44 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Daddy stands by a friend

Daddy was a Mason at one time. Mom told me about it.

Albert Hooper was nominated for membership and was rejected. Daddy quit because he was being loyal to Albert. He said something like if Albert wasn't good enough to be a Mason, then the Masons weren't good enough for him. I think Mom said that some of them tried to change his mind.

Uncle Doc

Uncle Doc belonged to the Masons. He received his 50 year pin when he was older. I read somewhere that he belonged to the Shriners, but I don't know anything about the truth of that.

He had a more active social life than Daddy. Of course, he was single.

He used to go up to Maudie and Irvin Williams' house at night sometimes and play cards with them and talk.

Every now and then, he would also stay a few days with Albert Hooper and Zack and talk. I had the impression that Albert's farm was pretty isolated.

I think he also went to see Roscoe and Dora Mae. Mom told me that one time Roscoe was about to lose his farm and everything. It must have been around the Depression. Anyway, he asked Uncle Doc for help. Roscoe must have given someone a note, because if his things had been mortgaged, it wouldn't have helped. Everything was transferred to Uncle Doc's name. Knowing Uncle Doc, he had a lawyer do it. He always wanted everything legal.

After Roscoe paid back his debt, Uncle Doc transferred everything back to him.

I used to have different men telling me that they had gone to school to Uncle Doc. They all laughed and said he made the same speech each year at the start of school. It was something on the order of this: "I'm going to be your teacher this year. We have a great deal of work ahead of us. I'm going to help you all I can. We are going to get along just fine and you are going to do what I tell you. If you don't, I'm going to whip you."

I asked him one time if he really said that and why.

He said that he did say it. He said in those days, parents kept their children home to help with the farming. He said there were 16-year-old boys still in grade school and they were much taller and heavier than he was. He wanted them to respect him and, I think, be a little afraid of him. He said after the speech he never had any trouble with them.

I think Roscoe was one of his pupils. I seem to remember that he talked about Uncle Doc's speech.

Uncle Doc had a more serious and quiet personality than Daddy did.

I don't know how I would have gotten through grade school without him. He helped me with my lessons. I really had trouble with my arithmetic, especially with questions like this: Jack left home at 9 a.m. and drove 50 miles at 35 miles per hour, stayed three hours, then drove back home at 45 miles per hour. What time was it when Jack got home?

I hated that kind of question.

Uncle Doc helped me memorize things I had to memorize, like poetry. He listened to my spelling. Night after night, he sat at the kitchen table and helped me.

One time he was in the hospital for a week or two. Each night Daddy put his reading glasses on and sat down in his rocking chair in the living room by the lamp on the sideboard that Sharon has and helped me.

When Uncle Doc finally got out of someone's car out front, thanked the man for bringing him and started walking towards the house, Daddy breathed a very audible sigh of relief. Then he closed the book and we all went to meet Uncle Doc when he came in.

There was snow on the ground and Uncle Doc had on his heavy overcoat.

Uncle Doc was still helping me in high school. One year -- senior year maybe -- I took bookkeeping. They had us adding long columns of figures in our heads. I couldn't get the same answer twice, so Uncle Doc added them in his head. He didn't have any trouble.

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 31 - Missouri Hen House

This is part 31 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Missouri Hen House

A Missouri Hen House (the plan's name) was built sometime when we were in grade school. It was two story. I don't remember what the first story was like.

Upstairs over under the roof on two sides of the building was no floor, just chicken wire. There may have been wood under the nests. All I saw was straw on wire which slanted and had a sort of wire depression near the front where I stood. The hen would lay an egg and, when she moved, the egg would roll gently into the wire depression or trough.

Sometimes, the hen doesn't like it when one takes the egg away and tries to peck. This solved that problem.

The hen house was large enough to be a barn. It had a lot of nests.

It was built past the brooder house, near the fence with the woods and swing on the other side.

The hen house had a door that opened out from the upstairs. Nothing was under it. It was like the barn, but the door there is used to put bales of hay in the barn. This one was probably for straw.

Most of the hens were happy with the new hen house. Some of the older ones insisted on staying in the two old hen houses past the wash house.

I remember when Uncle Doc couldn't get one out of the yard -- it had sneaked in -- so he put corn in the back yard on the snow for it. We were looking out the window and saw a rabbit hop up to the corn and start eating it.

This is Home, Part 30 - Lamps, the Black Forest clock

This is part 30 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Lamps

Mom had a lot of beautiful lamps. One was pale pink, with embossed roses. It was glass, tall and graceful with a tall, slender chimney. She had one with brass, antique-looking feet and painted roses, and another that had gold trim and an old-fashioned picture on the side. That one was red. There was also a similar one that was pale blue. There were three plain glass ones with glass chimneys. One with a red base and a black Scotty. I loved that one. She brought them with her when she came out here.

The interesting one was the Aladdin lamp. It was metal. It gave out a white light. However, the inventor wasn't really thinking what he was doing. The flame had a small wire above it with a top and two sides. Stretched over the wire was gauze. It kept catching on fire and Uncle Doc kept rushing out and throwing it in the snow. We kept using it because it put out a lot more light than the other lamps. We could see to do lessons better. An ordinary lamp put out more light than a candle, but not a lot.

The Black Forest clock

Mom bought a Black Forest clock about the time I started high school. It had a door near the top in front. Instead of a talking bird, the children -- a boy and a girl -- came out if it was going to be a nice day. The old witch came out if we were going to have bad weather.

It really worked. I guess the extra dampness in the air made the witch come out. I remember looking at it before I left for high school. It was hanging on the wall in the kitchen, by the front door.

I remember stopping to look at the clock as I was leaving for school in the springtime when the air felt alive, heavy with moisture, and movable.

It felt wonderful and interesting, not just hot and dry like it does out here in Arizona, It made me feel alive.

This is Home, Part 28 - Electricity, mail, Mom shopped, the lunch counter, crops, gardens and pesticides, no irrigation, the plane in the pasture

This is part 28 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Electricity

President Roosevelt's rural electrification program worked. Somewhere around my Freshman year, we got electricity, as did our neighbors. The white light was lovely compared to the yellow lamp light.

Mail

The men had moved the mailbox up by the garage. The carrier came by in his Model A. I used to run out and get the mail and he started holding out Edgar's letter to me and saying, "He sent you a letter today."

Sometimes, when it was cold and bad, the mail carrier would come into the house, sit by the fire awhile, and have a cup of coffee and talk.

Edgar and I used air mail stamps on our letters. They were five cents. A regular stamp was three cents.

Mom shopped

Sometimes, Uncle Doc would take mom to town while we were at school. When we got home, we would find new skirts and blouses on our beds. Sometimes, we would have sweater sets instead. Socks, too, with either.

I liked -- and still like -- wool skirts because they fit well and feel good. Of course, they had to be dry cleaned.

The lunch counter

When I was in college, I had a friend, Nancy, who worked at a pharmacy. They had a lunch counter she worked behind. I used to eat there everyday. I could get a grilled pimento cheese sandwich or a ham salad for fifteen cents and a Coke for five cents. No tax. Sometimes, I would have the chicken salad sandwich for 20 cents plus a Coke for five cents.

Things were a lot cheaper then, but income was less.

Crops, gardens and pesticides

Crops and gardens were never sprayed with anything on either farm. No other farmer in our area sprayed crops, either. The noise of a plane close to the ground and a cloud of what looks like dust is not something one could hide.

The soil on the big farm was very acid. Sometimes -- years apart -- Daddy would lime the fields to improve the soil. I can only remember this happening three times, but it could have happened when I was gone.

Actually, I think the acid soil was responsible for the beautiful color of the flowers and how well everything grew.

Daddy planted more grass in the yard for several years, then waited a few years. He had a sort of sack-like thing with a strap over the opposite shoulder that he put seed in and threw it out by hand as he walked around the yard. The yard was planted with bluegrass and some other grass. I keep thinking rye, but the description in the dictionary doesn't sound anything like the grass we had. The grass was very tender, cool blades that were single. It actually felt soft. The yard was covered with grass. So were the pastures.

No irrigation

There was also no irrigation. Water was provided by the frequent rains.

We had a changeable, capricious weather pattern. There was a saying back there: "If you don't like the weather, wait a while and it will change."

The plane in the pasture

One summer day, a small private plane landed on the rise in the pasture. This was the pasture between the house and the mailbox. The side David and I saw.

The men must have seen it come down, because by the time the pilot walked to the house, they were all coming into the yard. They got the container or containers of gasoline the pilot needed and he invited all of us to come see his plane. So we all walked over in the pasture with him and admired the plane.

See, one never knows what interesting thing will happen on a farm! I must have been in late grade school or early high school at that time.

This is Home, Part 27 - Edgar, Edgar joins the Navy, square dancing

This is part 27 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Edgar

When I became a Freshman, I saw this really dreamy guy. I kept meeting him in the hall when we were going opposite directions to class. He had brown wavy hair, blue eyes, and wore glasses. He was also wearing casual dress clothes that looked really good on him. No blue jeans like everyone else. His clothes were also pressed with sharp creases. I found out he was a Junior and his name was Edgar Taylor, Jr. Bea's brother-in-law and Howard's younger brother.

Martha and I started calling him "Mr. Glasses" so hopefully the other kids wouldn't know who we were talking about if they overheard.

I had a date with Edgar during the latter part of my sophomore year. He took me to a calico hop at the school.

After school was out, we dated a lot. He gave me his class ring to signify we were going steady. I put medical tape on the inside and wore it on my ring finger.

He had graduated from high school at the end of my sophomore year.

Edgar joins the Navy

Edgar had to spend some time in the armed forces, as did all young men. So he joined the Navy for four years. He came home every chance he got. Just like in the movies, he hitched a ride. Then sometimes he got a leave.

He was stationed in San Diego finally and from there was sent in a ship with his division to patrol the waters around Korea. I didn't know where he was until later; everything was secret. I wrote to a San Diego address and the letter was sent from there to him. We tried to write every day. Sometimes, the mail didn't get through and we would not get any letters, then would get several.

We had fun when he got a leave. We went to movies, went to see Bea and Howard where we played cards and laughed, went walking in the pasture, and sometimes went to a teen hangout where we drank Coke, talked and listened to the jukebox.

Square dancing

One time we went to a square dance at Edgar's parent's home. Edgar and James tried to show me how, but it was hopeless. I couldn't understand what the caller was saying. James was Edgar's younger brother.

Funny -- Mom said she used to love to square dance. Her father fiddled for dances, sometimes.

Uncle Doc used to like to square dance, too, he said.

After we came home from a date, we used to sit in Edgar's car by the garage with the yard light blazing in and talk.

This is Home, Part 26 - How to find a husband, a Freshman in high school, Martha, skating and Charley, Bea divorces, remarries

This is part 26 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



How to find a husband

When I was in high school -- all the way through it -- the girls did not plan to work. They intended to get married, instead. Even in college, this was true. They just went to college to find someone to marry. The magazines during that time had all sorts of advice on attracting a husband. Part of the advice was listening to his opinions instead of expressing yours. Never admit that you know things he doesn't. Never beat him in any kind of game. Encourage him to talk about himself and his job. Listen and look interested. Make him feel important.

They even had advice on manners such as who walked down a movie theater aisle first behind the usher. We had ushers with flashlights who found a seat for people then.

Articles like this were in Redbook, Good Housekeeping and other magazines of this type. Even Glamour, I think it was.

A Freshman in high school

Anyway, high school was a lot of fun, except the punishment for being a Freshman girl was dressing in blue jeans for a certain time period. I didn't have jeans, so Aunt Edith or Bea borrowed a pair of Edgar's from his mother. They weren't a bad fit, except the waist was larger than mine and they were a lot too long. I wore a belt and rolled them up. We were supposed to look like boys, so no makeup. I only wore lipstick and powder anyway, so that didn't bother me too much.

Martha

I kept getting to the room I was supposed to have a class in earlier than anyone else, except this tall girl with light brown shoulder length hair and big blue eyes. After we had stood together for several classes a day waiting for the door to be opened, for maybe a couple of days, we finally started talking.

We became best friends and walked around together. We stayed all night at each other's homes and sometimes we stayed weekends.

Her name was Martha Riley. We had the same initials and our fathers were both named Ernest, so they had the same initials.

When I first told Mom about her, she said she remembered seeing her at the grade school graduation.

Skating and Charley

Martha and Jean got along well. One time they decided to see if they could skate. Mom said it would be all right if they skated along one side of the wall in the South bedroom, since the "room size" carpet left quite a bit of space along the sides. Mom was just going to redo the floor later if it needed it.

Anyway, they took turns skating along while holding onto things. I think they finally got bold enough to go outside on the walk. I don't remember them falling.

Charley, Daddy and Uncle Doc came home for dinner. Someone talked Charley into trying skating. It wasn't me -- I didn't think it looked like fun. I thought it looked like work and maybe a broken bone.

Charley put on the skates and tried to skate on the walk. The first thing that happened, his feet shot out from under him and he landed on his back. He looked so funny that everyone laughed, then asked if he was okay and helped him up. He was, but I don't think anyone skated after that. It was time for dinner, anyway.

Bea divorces, remarries

Bea and Bob were divorced after he came home. She met Howard Taylor, later, and after awhile they were married. Howard was good looking. He had dark hair and blue eyes and a nice smile. I liked him.

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.

This is Home, Part 19 - The times improve, Miss Evelyn plays detective

This is part 19 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



The times improve

President Roosevelt had reopened the banks soon after he took office and instigated a number of different work programs to put people back to work. When it was time for one of his fireside chats, we were all in front of the radio listening. There were no more soup lines. The tramps stopped coming by, and business executives were no longer selling apples on street corners.

Miss Evelyn plays detective

Miss Hazel only taught during my first year at school. We managed to get through three more years of school in spite of the fact that we had Miss Evelyn as the teacher. She was absolutely unbelievable. I kept telling Uncle Doc that I wanted him to get rid of her. He just said, "I have to hire whoever has the best qualifications."

Every winter Jean and I managed to come down with bad colds, heavy croupy coughs, sore throats and sometimes lung congestion. Mom used to use something similar to Vicks on our throats and, if need be, chests. Then she tore a flannel cloth into a square, held it around the lamp chimney to heat it, and put it on us. The heat felt really good.

We even managed to get flu sometimes. Then the doctor came.

One time when we got back to school, Miss Evelyn interrogated us separately in the cloak room. I think Mom had sent a note. She wanted to know why when one got sick the other one did. She wanted to know why we had missed school. She wanted to know where the one she was talking to felt sick and where the other one felt sick. She asked what the family said about it. She also wanted to know if a doctor had been called. Those are just some of the questions. She thought of more.

We went home after school and told Mom, Daddy and Uncle Doc.

Next day, Mom and Uncle Doc went to school with us. Mom was really mad and Uncle Doc wasn't too happy. Mom told her that she (Mom) didn't understand what she had been trying to do and that when she was told that the children had been ill, she should accept that and not question them about where they had felt bad and who in the family had said what. Mom said that she had never heard of such a thing.

Uncle Doc told her that she had been hired to teach and that was what he expected her to do. He sounded quite calm and firm. He also said questioning any of the students in the cloak room was not part of her job.

I really couldn't stand that teacher. I used to have dreams that I was flying just out of her reach and she couldn't catch me. I used to swoop down toward her in the dreams and fly back up when she grabbed for me.

This is Home, Part 15 - Democratic speakings, voting, Uncle Doc, influential Democrat, ninety candles, Uncle Doc the judge, election day

This is part 15 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Democratic speakings

Back home at that time, we had what was commonly called Democratic speakings. I don't even remember hearing about Republican anything.

At the speakings, the Democratic women sold food such as pie slices, ice cream and cake, sandwiches of mutton, beef, barbequed pork or whatever.

The candidates would speak, we would listen and clap. People would also hand out cards for the candidates.

They were getting ready for a local primary election. Something we just had.

Voting

I remember when I first voted back home. There were two large circles at the top of the ballot. One was Democrat, one was Republican. If one wanted to vote a straight Democratic ticket, one would just put an X inside the circle at the top. I did.

Uncle Doc, influential Democrat

Uncle Doc had been a member of the Randolph Democratic Committee for years. Mom had a Missouri Blue Book from 1913 that had been sent to Uncle Doc because he was on the Democratic Committee. There may have been earlier ones. Mom said he was a young man when he joined. Uncle Doc's name, J.D. Rice, is in each of the Missouri Blue Books as on the Democratic Committee from Randolph County, Sheriton Township. The actual name of the Blue Book is Official Manual, State Of Missouri. You all have one for your year of birth except Sharon, who was born in Scottsdale.

Back to Uncle Doc. He became influential in the candidates the committee supported. I remember candidates coming to the farm to talk to him and being sent over to where he was working. There the candidate was in a suit and tie with nicely polished shoes, while Uncle Doc had on faded overalls, a blue shirt and work shoes. Not every candidate, but some.

I also remember hearing committee members asking Uncle Doc who he planned to support.

Uncle Doc met Harry Truman, shook hands with him and talked to him. Truman later became President.

Ninety candles

Uncle Doc went to Jefferson City to some Democratic Committee meeting in May 1960. He came back and happily told me that they had surprised him with a birthday cake with ninety candles on it. He said it looked beautiful with all the candles lit. I was so glad for him. We had celebrated his birthday just before he left, and had only put something like three candles on it so it would be easy for him to blow them out.

Uncle Doc really worked to elect the candidates he liked. He recommended them to people he was talking with and he arranged for Democrats who had no way to get to the polls to be picked up and driven there and back.

Uncle Doc the judge

Uncle Doc worked as a judge on election day. As he got older and was under stress, his handwriting got shaky. Mom worked as his secretary and did the writing. After Uncle Doc died, she became a judge.

Election day

Election day was strange. When we got home from school, there were no snacks waiting for us and Mom wasn't asking how our day went.

Usually, it was cold, but the roads were passable and Charley picked us up from school in his car. We went home to get Daddy, then to the voting precinct in Darksville so they could vote and get home before dark.

It was always well after dark when Mom and Uncle Doc got home. They had to help count the votes after the polls closed.

School, by the way, was always from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. for all grades. We didn't have kindergarten.

Daddy, Uncle Doc and Albert Hooper were the school board the entire time we went to school at Hickory. Daddy was President, Uncle Doc was Secretary-Treasurer, and Albert was a board member.

This is Home, Part 13 - The seasons change: Colored leaves and holidays, autumn in Missouri, Thanksgiving and snow, Mom sewed, Christmas

This is part 13 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



The seasons change: Colored leaves and holidays

Summer had drifted by. It was autumn or fall. In Missouri, autumn is a spectacular time of year. Very beautiful -- with trees of red and trees of gold. There was a vine that had dark red leaves. There were a lot of trees. There was a wooded area between us and Wayman Hill. It was on the side of a larger hill and very spectacular when all the trees were dressed for autumn. We also had at least ten trees in our yard, but only some changed color. Four were cedars.

In school for years, we were supposed to bring in different kinds of leaves and trace around them and fill in the veins. Then write the name underneath. I also remember vases of colored leaves. Mom used to also send a bouquet of autumn flowers.

For just about every holiday -- major -- we made booklets of pictures related to that holiday. For some holidays, we gave plays. I remember the windows being decorated with witches on brooms for Halloween. Uncle Doc or Daddy actually brought a shock of corn with pumpkins (they raised a few pumpkins, too) that were put around it.

Autumn in Missouri

Autumn back home is like no other place I have lived. There are certain days with a pale drift of sun, a gentle breeze, and a feeling of something lost just beyond the reach of memory. Slightly sad days with something long forgotten that can not be remembered. A drifting kind of a day. I could almost hear voices in the wind. Strange. I never thought that I would ever live any place but there.

Thanksgiving and snow

November and Thanksgiving. I don't remember about what Miss Hazel taught or did but usually there was the mandatory play and the whole neighborhood came.

Finally I was out of school for a few days. Jean and I watched Mom make pumpkin pies by the double kitchen windows while big flakes of snow came down outside. Soon the fence posts were wearing little caps of snow and the bare branches of the trees were wearing snow. The whole scene looked like a winter wonderland. It was beautiful and cold.

The men weren't that thrilled. They swept the snow off their gum boots outside when they got back and headed straight for the stove in the living room. After awhile they took off the mittens Mom had made them, their lined blue jean coats, their sweaters, and caps. They took off their boots and stretched their stocking feet toward the fire. There were always chairs setting around the stove waiting for them.

Frankie headed behind the kitchen stove. The stove set out quite far from the wall because of the stove pipe. It was a nice warm stop. Frankie slept there all year around. Sometimes the men sat around the kitchen stove when Mom wasn't working in there. Frankie sometimes moved his legs and feet when he was asleep. Uncle Doc smiled and told me Frankie was chasing rabbits in his sleep.

Back in those days, dogs were fed scraps from the table. Mom used to tell Daddy not to feed Frankie when we were at the table eating. But Frankie always got under the table and waited. Pretty soon, with a guilty little grin, Daddy would be holding a bite of meat out to him. It was only the first.

Mom sewed

The mittens mentioned above were the only thing the men wanted to wear on their hands. Daddy said Mom's mittens were the only thing that would keep his hands warm. The outside of the mitten was made with what I think was called feather tick. It was the dark gray and white striped material that was commonly used on pillows. Then another material or two was placed inside the feather tick, and finally a soft white material that was called a sheet blanket was placed on the inside. Mom made them on her sewing machine. She brought the edge of the sheet blanket forward, folded it on the outside of the gloves and sewed it down.

They looked good and they did feel warm. She always made them each several pairs a year. The gloves also resisted dampness.

Mom's sewing machine came in handy. She used to make us skirts and dresses when we were little. She also made dresses for herself. She recovered chairs and they looked professional. She made drapes and contains for the windows. She also made cloth dolls to entertain us on gloomy days. they had yellow yarn hair. She also made clothes for our dolls.

She "pieced together" (made) a lot of quilts also. Our pillows were white ones with embroidered flowers on them and sometimes lace along the opening. She made the cases and did the embroidery and lace. She hooked rag rugs in her spare time. They were round and used to be tightly put together. They were throw rugs. They were made from left-over material torn into stripes and sometimes from unfaded material from clothes. Even pajamas.

Mom also made and embroidered dresser scarves and scarves for the lamp tables. She often edged them with lace.

She also made herself new aprons.

Another thing that she made was footstools. She used to buy coffee in tall, wide metal cans. I know each can was at least two pounds, but it could have been more. When she got enough cans -- maybe eight or nine -- she put sand in each can, fastened the lid on, wrapped them in upholstery cotton and tied them together. Put cotton in any vacant space between them. She also cut two solid pieces of cotton the same size as the top and bottom of the foot stool. She had made a pattern that had the top and bottom separate from the sides. She sewed it on the sewing machine as much as she could, then put the fastened together cans in and finished it. When she finished, it was a footstool covered with cotton inside. Nothing ever shifted in it, and one never felt the edge of the cans. The outside covering was a heavy cotton material that didn't seem to wear. I have one somewhere.

Christmas

Since today is Christmas, I am thinking about Christmas on the farm.

We usually had the tree up about two weeks before Christmas and we took it down the day before New Year's day.

When it was time to get the tree, Mom would always say, "Now Ernest, we don't need a great big tree this year. Just a small one." Daddy would smile sheepishly and drive off with the horses and sleigh to get the tree. He loved Christmas just as much as we did. Frankie always went with him.

Sometime later Daddy came back with the cedar tree and yes, he did it again. It was too tall to stand up in the living room. So he had to saw part of it off. It smelled so fresh and wonderful. Of course, it should. It had just been chopped down over in the pasture. Jean and I -- and Daddy -- could hardly wait to get it up. Sometimes he shook snow off it. He always swept the snow off his gum boots before he came in. Gum boots were rubber boots that came up to a few inches below the knee. A couple of pairs of heavy, tall socks were worn with them, but no shoes. They were not made for shoes.

Finally, he had the tree up. We already had the decorations out. No electricity, no electric lights. We had beautiful breakable ornaments to put on it. Some of them were partly frosted. A few had Christmas scenes, a few were half an ornament with a deepening color and design. We also put foil icicles and a garland on it. It always had a silver star on top. Mom helped us decorate.

We knew Christmas was the birthday of Jesus and that he came so we could go to Heaven someday by believing in him. It was fun and exciting waiting for Santa, but still that period of time felt holy. The silence of the snow covered countryside probably contributed to this feeling. There was a peace not found today.

On Christmas morning, there were oranges, apples, nuts and candy for everyone. Two pairs of new overalls for Zack. Plus a sack of all the treats. He was a neighbor who was in college with Daddy and Uncle Doc. Zack got measles or something similar that caused him to run a very high temperature. He never recovered -- he became like a child of probably nine or so years.

He always came to our house to see what Santa had brought him. He ate Christmas dinner with us. His brother Albert was probably enjoying the quiet. Albert stayed a bachelor and spent his life farming and taking care of Zack.

Daddy, Uncle Doc and Charley got new mittens sometimes. I don't remember what Mom got.

When Jean and I were small, we found dolls, stuffed toys like bears, little rocking chairs sometimes, slates and chalk and other things. Plus all the food.

The bears that we had were different than the bears that children play with today. The ones we had were stiff, not soft like the ones today. Their faces were different and they had heavy wires in the legs and arms. The legs and arms were movable. Sometimes the heads were, too. They could sit, stand and walk with help.

As we got older, we found sweater sets, skirts, pen and pencil sets. Also a huge dark blue box for each with powder, perfume, toilet water set on a white silk interior. It was called Evening in Paris and was in dark blue containers. The scent of the perfume "Intimate" that I used to buy reminded me of it.

Back to Christmas. We never had turkey; we had pork roasts, usually. Mom always fixed a fantastic dinner with different kinds of pie. One of them was usually mince pie. At that time it was called mincemeat and actually had bits of meat in it.

One time on Christmas, when I was in early grade school, I followed Daddy outside in the snow. There were sleigh tracks near the yard fence but in the sheep pasture. I showed them to Daddy and told him I thought they were from the night before when Santa brought the presents. He agreed that it sure looked like it. Jean and I were delighted.

This is Home, Part 12 - School, Uncle Doc and school, chores and school, Mom at school, school, box suppers

This is part 12 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



School

All of a sudden the unbelievable happened. School was starting and I was expected to go. I felt like a queen who had just been dethroned.

Daddy and Uncle Doc had a cousin who taught school. He was young and his last name was Sears. He had come by every once in a while and taught me how to say the alphabet and read some. I could also count some.

When I started to school, I started in the second grade at the age of seven. You wouldn't believe how much I hated school.

To add insult to injury, Mom invited the teacher, Miss Hazel, to stay with us for awhile! She thought it would make it easier if I knew her. However, it just meant I could never escape her.

After a short time, I decided I couldn't stand the idea of going to school. I refused to go and I ran out of the house and under the honeysuckle bushes. They were like shorter trees and were quite wide.

I ran under one of the bushes and Mom and Miss Hazel tried to surround me and grab me. The bush was too wide and too low. They couldn't reach me. I just kept zooming from one to another. They tried for awhile longer, then finally gave up.

Miss Hazel went to school, but I stayed home.

No one yelled at me or spanked me. They didn't do that type of thing. They just went on with their work and ignored me somewhat. They answered questions, but just didn't engage in a conversation as they usually did. They made it clear they disapproved, without a word.

Next day I went back to school. I didn't do that particular thing again. I thought of others.

I went to school in a one room school house. There was a little room we entered first. It was a cloak room, but one wall was covered with books. It also served as a library. It also had a front porch before the cloak room. The front porch had a concrete floor and a roof over it.

Toys consisted of a ball and bat, chalk to play hopscotch on the porch, and a rope to jump while two other children turned it.

I don't know how many kids were necessary to have a school, but I do know there had to be a certain number. We probably had around fifteen or sixteen my first year. I found a picture of a year where I was probably around the fifth grade and there were sixteen children. The school had windows down one side and one in the library. I don't remember windows on the other side of the school room. We had to depend on the windows for light. No electricity. This teacher and the ones following made us go outside at noon and the two recesses. They also wanted us to join in playing. I wanted to stay inside and look at the books and later, I wanted to read and draw pictures. I hated baseball. It was so boring. I didn't mind playing hopscotch, tag, or jumping rope.

Uncle Doc and school

I asked Uncle Doc one time what he played when he went to school. He chuckled and looked like he was remembering. He said there was nothing to play with when he went to school. However, he said, there was a big tree with long branches. So, a bunch of the boys grabbed a branch and pulled it down. One of the boys got on it and they released it. The branch went back up in the air and the boy on it shot up even higher.

They also took hold of each others' hands and formed a long line, then they started running in a circle with the one on the inner end hardly moving. They kept going faster and faster. The ones on the outer end started being flung off. I think it was called Crack the Whip.

Chores and school

Uncle Doc told me one time that when they were in school, they had to get up early and do all the chores each morning before they left home. On a farm, this would mean milking the cows, feeding and watering all the animals, and maybe letting some out. I hope they weren't expected to cut out holes in the ice so a herd of cattle could drink. I'm thinking of farm chores.

No matter what the weather was, they had to walk to school. I don't know what school they went to -- maybe Darksville. Hickory didn't look that old.

At night they did the chores again.

Mom at school

Mom told me one time that she could run faster than anyone at her school. She also said she could climb trees. I guess this is what her school did.

School

When the East Fork got out, there was no way for us to get to school. I don't think it affected any other family.

Miss Hazel moved to Elmo Hudson's house beside the school while the weather was still good. Elmo and his wife had no children, but the teachers always stayed at their house thereafter.

I'm suspicious that the school board or just Daddy and Uncle Doc may have given them money to keep the teachers. Elmo Hudson and his wife were not known for their generosity. They were also a pain in the neck. Especially Elmo.

Mom bought blinds and curtains for all the windows at school. She bought a rod to run along the stage which covered one end of the room. Then she bought material for stage curtains. She sewed them and put gold colored rings on them so they could be drawn open and shut. Our family contributed all this.

There was no water, so a large water container (cooler) was bought.

Miss Hazel was young. She was tall with red shoulder length hair. She was actually a pretty nice teacher. I just did not want to be told what to do or to spend time away from home.

The sideboard at Sharon's house used to be in the living room on the farm. It had a square mirror on top. Miss Hazel used to come down, get on her knees in front of it and comb her hair. I have no idea why. She had a perfectly good mirror on top of a dresser in her room. Also, a very tall mirror on a dresser in the hall next to her room.

Box suppers

In the spring or fall, grade schools back home had a unique way of raising money. They had box suppers.

Each girl student had a box full of food that she shared with the person who bought it. The boxes had lids that were beautifully decorated with ribbons, flowers, anything that looked good. Parents and anyone else who was interested came, and the boxes were auctioned off and sold to the highest bidder.

Jean and I were in a panic even sharing a box with Roscoe. So Mom pointed out the boxes that Jean and I were taking to Daddy, Uncle Doc and Charley. They outbid anyone else.

The women who came also brought boxes. So did the teacher.

Dream - Trying to fix tardies at school, and other confusion

On Monday, Memorial Day, May 31, 2010, around 10:00 AM-12:50 PM, I dreamed I was at school, near the end of the term, maybe the end of the whole thing. I had had several tardies, along with some other students. They had gotten very strict about it, to the point where if you weren't there when the bell rang you had to go to the office and get it taken care of. The teacher gave you a tiny thing to take with you, some little paper. Now they even had something where the office gave you tiny little colored things, maybe about an inch and a quarter, mostly gray blue, that had a phone number on it that you had to call to get it settled before you could go back to the class.

It was near the end of the school day. After a class a teacher told me he had fixed some of my tardies. I had had four, but he showed me on the little card, about the size of a vertical business card, that he had taken off three, X'ed them out and fixed it so that they were canceled. I still had to go to the office for the other one. He had done it to some other people, too.

I went to the office. A girl was ahead of me, and the person was explaining to them about the phone number. It was an odd number, given in letters for the last four digits. It didn't seem long enough for a phone number, but I was probably expecting an area code, though I didn't think of that back then. The calling-a-number requirement was something that had been initiated by the corporate people in charge, and apparently covered all the schools owned by that company.

It was getting late and I had to get back to class, but there turned out to be confusion about the class. The two that I had to go to were being held at the same time. Some of the students were in one room and some in the other. The students realized what had happened and a lot of them were joking about it, though some seemed subdued and worried, more in one of the rooms than the other.

I didn't know what to do. I went back and forth from one room to the other, trying to find a teacher I think. When one finally showed up, he started immediately running the class. I tried to talk to him about it, but he wasn't interested and just looked mad, like I had bothered him for something that wasn't his problem. Meanwhile the bell had rung and I was late for two classes being held at the same time. I saw the students in the one I was in bending over their tests, hard at work.

I went back to the office, trying to explain what had happened. The woman gave me the two little colored papers and was carefully explaining about calling the number, and then I had to give them a number off the paper apparently, and maybe explain my situation. She didn't give me a solution about the classes being held at the same time, maybe just saying that she would have to look into it.

I left and hurried down the hall. The place was set up something like DeVry, a big square with a hallway that ran around the edge with rooms on each side. I was trying to find a phone. I think I saw a couple, but they were already in use by other students trying to fix their tardies. I finally left to go somewhere else, that I thought would have phones. I think I left one of the little pieces of paper on something on the covered sidewalk around the school.

I went to the other place and was going through it. It seemed like a hospital, and was laid out like DeVry. Going down the hall quite a ways I came across some phones. They were hooked up to some video displays set into the walls. Some of them were being used. I saw a video game was being played on one, and it had something on the screen that might be important, a little rectangular box with numbers in it, and a smiling and frowning creature standing off to the right, who might have been an ogre but who looked something like the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil character. I couldn't get the person to give up the phone to me. A man was letting his son play the game to pass the time so he would have something to do while they were waiting, someone was having an operation evidently. A phone to the right of it had another video game being played, something with a genie I think. It didn't look useful to me.

I went back and forth between them for a while. There was another phone or two to the left of them, but I think one of them was being used by someone to make a call. I wanted to use the video game with the box on the screen that might be useful too, and I didn't know if I could find it on my own. The person playing the video game that had the box finally stopped and left, with his father, but now the screen was dark.

I started looking at the number on the little piece of paper again. It was not the number I remembered seeing on it earlier, the same one that had been given to the others. Now it was a regular number and it had one of those free area codes on it, starting out something like 1-877-... I was puzzled, but assumed I would have to call this one. I couldn't understand why there had been a change. I wondered if I had to give them a number when I called. I had left one of the little papers back at the school, and wasn't sure if it was still there. It would delay me a lot to have to go back and get it. It was getting late and the classes were almost over now, I thought. I wasn't sure what I could do to fix it, but I would try to explain what happened and hope something could be worked out.

I went off to try to find someone who could explain about getting into the program I had seen on the display, the video game. I started trying to go to the upper stories, hoping to find a nurse or someone who could explain it. I went to one of the corners to take the stairs, but I found that they were being worked on. They were roped off with yellow tape, and a young man and a young woman were painting them. They were maybe eight to ten feet apart, doing different sections. The wood had been kind of a dirty dark color, but was being painted yellow. The stairs themselves were much simpler constructions than I had expected, being simple boards nailed together, even the railing just seemed to be 2 x 4's. It was a very wide open area, much more so than I expected, with the stairs going back and forth beside themselves, at shallow angles.

I reached out and tentatively touched and took hold of the yellow tape, preparing to go under it anyway. I paused and asked the young man if it was okay if I used the stairs, I didn't need to touch the railing and I would try to just walk on areas that hadn't been painted or were already dry. He said sure, somewhat jovially, and said to watch out for the paint, some of it was wet.

I started to carefully walk onto the stairs. Some of the steps were partly painted, sometimes with the painted part not covering it completely, not put on heavy enough to get into the surface everywhere, creating a kind of fog effect, with a lot of the old surface showing through, like the brush or roller had been too dry when the paint was applied, and it would have to be painted over again. While most of it immediately ahead of me was dry, the one I had to step on first was wet, one of the partially painted ones. I stepped on it and quickly on to some dry steps, apologizing. I was touching the railings too, but they were either partly dry or hadn't been painted. I was heading up, at least at the moment. The stairs also led down, to lower levels.

I was talking to them about what I was trying to do, and I think one of them mentioned a way to speed it up. I saw a little wooden boat that had drifted up, outside the railing, floating I guess on air, though it seemed almost like a dark ghost water. The boat was simple in construction, like the stairs.

I climbed over the railing to it, talking now like Clint Eastwood, and maybe a little like Humphrey Bogart. I came to look like Clint Eastwood now, and it seemed to have changed to a mystery, and something about some evil people who had gone upstairs and were waiting for me, trying to stop me. They had been sent by someone. I talked some about that and about what I was doing there. I was confident that I could take care of them. There would be others too, sent to stop me when I was trying to leave, and I also had to solve the mystery of the numbers, and get that taken care of, and the answer to that mystery should be somewhere upstairs.


Earlier in the dream I had been driving to school in the gold 1970 Cadillac. There had been some problem with other cars, about them trying to stop me, threatening to crash into me, but the Cadillac, already big and sturdy, got even bigger and taller, and with even thicker sheet metal, and crashed into them, knocking them away, bouncing them way back or to the side and sometimes even sending them tumbling. I had stopped there on the street and talked to someone about it, and about what was happening, and about what the Cadillac could do, before getting in again and doing it some more. I don't remember much about it, though.

Dream - The silver giants and the dangerous devices

On Monday, May 10, 2010, in a sleep period around 9:00 AM-12:45 PM, I dreamed I was in a place like DeVry (a college I went to), square, with halls around the edges. It was at least two stories, maybe more. I spent a lot of time wandering around. Sometimes I went to different stories, but there was some difficulty in doing so. The passages going up or down were generally at the corners, and it was more like climbing up out of, or going down from, a big square hole in the floor. Sometimes I climbed up on top of things, even narrow room dividers. I'm not sure exactly what purpose the place had, though it seemed to be partly a school, but also partly a business, maybe even partly a hospital, and had a big area with women doing what seemed to be secretarial and bookkeeping work. I occasionally talked to people I met, teachers and others.

At some point, after I had gone to the second floor, I went back down, an awkward business, and went around to the back, outside. I was on a back corner anyway. It was cool and there was a slight wind, and the light was dim, like it was late afternoon. The sky looked gray-white, almost overcast, streaked with dirt. Things were changing, feeling more ominous.

I was at the southeast corner of the building. I went a little way along the back, and stopped and talked to someone there. He talked about someone coming, and pointed perhaps 50 or 60 feet further along, where a strange figure stood, silver in color, like a statue frosted with aluminum. It was about 8 or 10 feet high, and heavily built, especially the upper body, and had a huge head. It was almost like a Pan figure, a goatman, though it wore some clothes, also silver, pants and shirt and vest, that seemed much too small for it. It seemed to be some kind of ancient minor god that had been awakened and summoned. It was talking to a man and sometimes glanced in our direction. It seemed like it could be dangerous, but it didn't have any personal interest in causing a lot of trouble, and was talking with the man to see if he knew when the person who had summoned him would arrive. He basically seemed to lack direction until that happened, though he had been given a general idea of what was planned. I couldn't hear any of it, it was a matter of what the man next to me said, which wasn't much, and just being able to feel what was happening, and to partly picture it.

It was seeming very creepy out there now, and potentially dangerous, and the man next to me was warning me to get away. When I wasn't doing it, and just slightly backing up, he kept doing it, telling me I had to leave now.

I went back around the corner, and to the front of the building, sometimes looking back, and I think it was probably this time that I left and went out in the parking lot. It was brighter now, sunny, and things felt a lot better. Showing how I could take longer steps than normal, I began actually gliding through the air to extend it, to oohs and ahhs from the people watching. I went past the front of the building, going mostly west, and stepped across a small dividing area of curbs and dirt and brush and across a small road and another dividing area, to another parking section beyond, gliding most of the distance.

There was some question, though, about a device. A tall man was there, who had followed me part of the way across the parking lots. He looked kind of rural, like a tall farm worker. We talked briefly about the device and what it meant. I think it was something left in the parking lot by someone. I decided I had to go back to the building, maybe to tell them about it. I didn't really want to have to go all the way back there. I may have left the device where it was, probably did. It wasn't real big, something mounted on a square bottom that was maybe 12 or 14 inches across. I didn't know what it was for and why it was left, though there was a feeling that there might be some danger about it, like it might be a bomb, and I had a feeling that there was a bad guy that had been lurking around that had done it. I don't think I ever saw the bad guy, except sometimes as a dark presence, not close to where I was but off quite a ways. We didn't know if he or whoever left the device was going to come back and get the device, either.

I went all the way back to the building, back to the back corner, and was trying to get up to the second floor. I think I ended up going up and down two or three times. Someone had to point out to me how it was done, and I think it was in fact a little different than before, though part of it was that I had gotten a little rusty, I felt. There was a lot more activity now, too. I climbed up the homemade ladder, a wide rickety structure of old boards, with the steps just being big thin boards, on edge, with the flat side nailed to the front of the two boards that made up the sides. There were actually two ladders, one that went perhaps two thirds of the way and another one that loosely hung down at an angle partly over the top of the one below. The passage was also very cluttered, mostly filled with other things, some of which projected out in the way. The passages had been cluttered before, though.

At some point it was noticed that someone had left a device there, on a square piece of thin gray board or metal, about 8 inches or so across. It was something somewhat complicated, held down by a gray metal strap that was bolted to the bottom. It had something in it like a gray flare, but shorter and wider, and softer looking, like it was made out of cloth and stuffed. It had wires and tubes too I think, along with maybe a few other things. I noticed it for a while before I said anything, but one of the times I was using the passage I finally said something about it. I was intending to leave soon and I just couldn't leave it that way. Some people looked at it and picked it up, and I think I even held it for a while, maybe even taking it up with me and asking about it with the people up there, the women in the apparent secretarial/bookkeeping section. I did go up and ask about it, even if I didn't bring it with me. One of the women in the secretarial/bookkeeping section was talking to me about it, while I got up on something, a tall room divider near a wall I think, and crouched down on it, near the ceiling. As I talked to her from about 10 feet away, she was sometimes talking to other people on a phone that was mounted to her head, with a small microphone that came around to the front. She said she called someone about it, but hadn't heard back yet.

I noticed that she had something similar herself, on the floor beside her, though less complicated, and the padded gray tube had turned and was turning, bending in the middle at a place past the strap, forming a short right-angled section. I said I wondered if that was it, that they had been sabotaged, changed so that when they started doing that they became dangerous and might do something.

I had a white plastic pen in my right front pants pocket. They had been given out by the company, lots of them. They had the company name on them, it was kind of a commemorative thing, with advertising. I wondered if they were all going to change, become like that, that it had been something that was planned, and the one in my pants pocket might be changing now, I felt that it was, becoming wider and softer, as part of the transition to something else, and that they might all become bombs, or whatever it was that the enemy had planned for them. With so many around, practically everywhere in some parts of the building, it was going to be very difficult to stop it, to find them all, and everyone might have to leave, evacuate.

Dream - I am at a school, but can't find my class again, and I had left my backpack and briefcase there, I go outside, but they have a new tardy policy and I am too late getting back

On Monday, February 21, 2011, around 11:00 AM-12:20 PM, I dreamed I was in school. Though I think initially the place may have been something else, it was school now. It was apparently something like DeVry, though it was laid out more like my high school, but was still different from either one. It had some landscaping out front, with a short slope down to the parking lot. The buildings were long, and set up in two rows. I was in the building on the far left, around the middle, but not quite that far. My sister was there for a while, and we talked for a bit, but she then left, having to go somewhere. There were very few people around when she was there.

We were initially in one of the empty classrooms, and then wandered across the hall, more to an administrative area, which was also pretty empty, and maybe to a restroom there briefly. As she left, more people were showing up, students. It was almost time for classes to start. The place became busier and busier. I wanted to find a restroom, looking for one on the original side of the hall, where I knew a couple were. I had trouble finding them, but I think I did eventually find one somewhere, maybe back on the right side of the hall, though it seems I did find something on the left. I had trouble then finding the class I was in before. The rooms seemed different, some of them bigger even, with unfamiliar students and teachers. The students, sitting in their seats, turned and stared at me as I peered in the rooms, or glanced in the windows as I went by. I had left my backpack and books in there too, maybe even a pale brown briefcase.

I kept going back and forth, sometimes over in the administration area too, and classrooms past and behind it, and also way back toward the front. The rooms in the front half on the administrative side were mostly offices, with a few at the very front on the other side also offices, but I glanced in them too, just to be sure. Sometimes a woman, generally wearing glasses, looked up at me from behind a large desk, at the back of the room. The rooms on the classroom side tended to be much larger than those on the other side of the hall, with some of those on the other side being very small indeed. Though the administrative area in the middle had large open areas with the offices, they were small themselves, and had only partial walls, perhaps only four feet high sometimes, and were largely open to the very large carpeted highway in that area. As I went back and forth in the hall, some of the offices did seem to change to classrooms, but at the same time some of the classrooms enlarged to be partly offices, sometimes with rooms joining together with big open areas between them, though closed off with doors to the hallway, except for the middle of the building, where a very broad hallway went through, and they became open rooms with short four or five foot walls.

Classes ended and there was a little break until the next ones. I went back in the rooms around where I had been. Most of the students were gone now. I looked among the chairs but didn't see my backpack or anything else I had left. I hoped that it was given to the teacher, that someone had noticed it and said that someone had left them, or the teacher had noticed them, and perhaps the teacher had put them behind his long desk, or maybe had them put in a lost and found somewhere, though that would mean they would be more trouble to get. A teacher was still there, but though he looked at me like he wondered why I was there and what I was doing, he continued talking to the student in front of him, from perhaps ten feet away from me.

I started to wonder if I should leave. It seemed late in the school year, and I only had a few days left. Did I even have any more classes today? I wasn't sure. It seemed I might have missed a couple trying to find my stuff. Were they important, was there anything in them that I had to know, or to do? It seemed there might be an economics class. I thought they were sometimes in the afternoon. They didn't happen every day, just two or three times a week. Thinking on it, I realized that I hadn't attended one for a long time, maybe missed most of the classes. There was still supposed to be a final I thought, maybe today, if I hadn't missed it already. It might have been on a previous day, or maybe was going to happen today or tomorrow. I didn't know just when the class was going to be. It was possible I had already missed today's. I couldn't even remember where it was supposed to be, or what room it was in. I thought it was more to the back, maybe on the other side of the building, or on the hallways leading there.

I walked through that area, back and forth. It seemed to be late in the afternoon now, and there weren't many students in this area. Sometimes I saw teachers looking back at me, from their classrooms, looking concerned, and sometimes they looked something like what I thought my teacher looked like, but not quite. I wasn't sure what good it would do me to take the test right now anyway. I had missed most of the lessons and hadn't read most of the book. I really needed to study some before I took it, as much as I could in the day or two before the test, if I could put it off that long, if I could convince the teacher to do so, or to give me the test if I had already missed it. I went back toward the other side of the building, still looking, still hoping to find my stuff. The hallway through the middle was carpeted and very large.

At the corner, on the far side and the left from where I currently was, was a four or five foot wall partially enclosing what looked like a bar, and in some sense was, with a long counter and stools, but though it served refreshments, and liquor I believe, it also acted as a lab bench, where advanced genius students worked on special projects with, I think, military significance. I wondered if my stuff might be behind the counter/lab bench. A couple of teacher's assistants were behind the counter, and they and the students were talking in low voices. The teacher's assistants had small smiles. I wandered through the area and looked at the bookshelves against the wall on the other side, and wandered back toward and into the classrooms, through the large open connecting areas. Classes were still being held, but there were fewer students than before. I eventually went toward the back, toward the exit. It seemed now to be between classes again.

Outside, I looked around. It seemed to be early afternoon now, and there was bright sunshine. The building had wide concrete steps leading down to a broad plaza that ran between the buildings. Though earlier in the dream I was in the building at the far left, now it was the second over from the left. I started wondering if I was in the right building, and should check the one at the left, though I thought it was just used by non-seniors. They had recently started a crackdown on people who were late to class, and had put monitors at the outside doors, and if you were caught you had to go to an office somewhere and get a special pass. It was mostly about humiliation and inconvenience, and it seemed to me that it would inconvenience the teacher to have the students, with their special pass, come in really late after having to go through all that, and the teacher then having to stop what he was doing and take the pass. I started heading off toward the other building, while some of the students looked worried at me, like they were wondering what I could be thinking, to do something like that, go away from the building, when there was so little time left.

I went inside the other building and down the hall a ways. It was as I thought, something used by younger students. I turned around and headed quickly back toward the exit, and then out into the broad plaza, and started making my way quickly back toward the other building. There were still quite a few students heading for the entrance there, clustering around it, trying to get through. Some teachers or other representatives were slowly going up the steps, sometimes looking a little amused, and some came from the inside too. The people doing this were in a rotation, with different ones assigned at different times. The ones going to the building went through the glass doors. One of them looked something like a younger version of Mr. Gatti, an artist who had been the art teacher at my high school.

I tried to hurry, but I was getting tired, and my legs were too tired to move fast enough, unable to go up the long steps fast enough. The Mr. Gatti lookalike came slowly back out, talking a bit, holding a short skinny dark pole in each hand with a triangular white flag on each one. He carried them to places in the concrete marked with pale X's and placed them in holes there. If you hadn't made it past that spot by now, then it was too late. I was almost there but not quite, coming in from the far side. I hoped I might be able to convince them to just let me in. Several other students were trapped there, too. It seemed silly to have to go through all this, especially for me and because of who I was.

They finally got to me, but there some trouble for some reason. I was finally given a paper, that was wider than it was tall, a form with things jotted on it, and told to take it somewhere to my left, into a side entrance from where the part of the building there formed a slight arc here, but the people I saw didn't seem able to have anything to do with this, and the few who did know something about it weren't able to help me, and in any case the thing I was given was incomplete and actually had some wrong information, a bad case number I think.

I went back to the big desk there outside, on the concrete, and waited again and then tried to get it straightened out. I started to irritatedly wonder/worry if they were going to bring up something that had happened quite a while back, maybe over a year, a mistake people had made that had quickly mushroomed into outrageous accusations with people looking suspiciously at me, even after I had explained it all and hopefully straightened it out. Someone did start to bring the earlier paper in though, coming from the right, from back behind things, and another person frowned and started saying, "Hey, aren't you the one?" I started irritatingly explaining it again, how I had met with someone who came on school grounds, who had been a speaker I think, and some people had seen me, and misunderstood who he was, and thought he was a radical communist, terrorist even, and it grew to where I was a member of a radical communist organization, and trying to get a situation where an atomic bomb could be set off, near the school, and it was all garbage, or something to that effect. I looked at their faces now, still with frowning suspicion on them, though that was lessening into an unhappy acceptance, like they still weren't quite sure about me. The Mr. Gatti character looked calmer and not quite as suspicious, though he still looked like he wasn't sure he believed me, but was willing to let it be someone else's problem, if it turned out to be one. He was looking different now, heavier, changing even as I watched, then becoming less overweight again. He looked less like Mr. Gatti though, and I wondered if he might be a relative, perhaps a son or nephew.

I got the pass, or rather the precursor to the pass, a paper that I had to take inside somewhere and get the real pass from. It seemed kind of a waste of time now, and I wondered if I should even bother or just go home, and come back again tomorrow. Still, as I went toward the middle of the building, and the administrative area, I kept my eyes open for someone who might help me. Looking up at times, with my head still down looking at the paper in my hands, I saw a woman standing up behind a desk, in the middle area, behind a low wall. She was looking my way, and looked a little like someone I knew, from the time I worked in Nevada, the red-haired woman in the Supply department, in the Purchasing section. I wondered if she could help me.

Dream - Cars and fake cars, rock displays and fountains, and barking, painted, seal-like creatures

On Friday, July 31, 2009, around 2:30-6:25 AM, I dreamed I was at some place a little like my old elementary school, and perhaps where the school is, though it and the surrounding area were a little different in the dream. I was in something like the multipurpose room, but it was laid out the other way, north-south, and was some kind of grocery store, an older style one, with simpler shelves and displays. It also sold other things, and had a long tall counter, with a few people behind it, along the east side of the room. I was there a long time, with someone else, perhaps two people. My mother might have been one of them, but someone else was also with me. I mostly wandered around the store by myself. There was some worry about rain and flooding, and it became important to leave soon.

A little later, not long before I left, I went to a wooden replica of a sports car, apparently a Lamborghini or Ferrari or something like that. It was made of two rough, somewhat splintery, light brownish orange wooden halves, put together around the bumper level or just above, so that it had an upper half and a lower half. It was nearly life-size. I pulled the halves apart, pulling the top one up some, doing it a time or two, then a little later started taking the top section apart in small splintery sections, though it had appeared to be carved from a single piece of wood. I was a little surprised that it was coming apart. The pieces almost seemed to be breaking/peeling off, but they were fairly regular in shape, like it was intended to be that way. I had been trying to show someone the car before we left, perhaps my mother, perhaps someone else, then I was outside trying to walk home.

I remember earlier going to the place, walking up there toward it in the dark, with someone with me, perhaps 15 or 20 feet to the right, and us talking some. It was still dark when I left. One or two people were out there with me, some distance away. We sometimes talked. I was trying to walk home through the neighborhood, but they wanted to go a different way and were in more of a hurry. They left, though I'm not sure they went together. I think one or more of them might have ultimately used a car.

I wandered back and forth a bit, without getting very far west. The houses were small with small yards, in rows that ran east-west. They got much smaller then, with the alley between them not even wide enough for any but the smallest cars. I started going west, then down a street that was almost aligned with the school, a little north of center. Things expanded again and the yards became huge.

Several houses down, on the left side of the street, I came across a small car parked there. I think it was initially empty, and I looked it over and fiddled with it some, even looking inside it and feeling things inside it and fiddling with them. Someone else was nearby and it was bothering them, and they were trying to talk me out of it. I don't know if the person was one of the people who had come with me or was one of the people who had been in the school/store. I think it bothered them that I was doing this to some stranger's car.

Then a young dark-haired woman, who long ago was one of my teachers, came out of the house to the left and got in the car. I'm not sure what school I knew her from, it could have been my elementary school or high school or even DeVry, where I went to college. Perhaps she was even a combination of some teachers. She got in the little car and fiddled with things, trying to get it ready to go and started up. She had a smile on her face and seemed only vaguely aware of me, then she talked to me about what she was doing in a somewhat absent minded way. She seemed to age a little after a few moments, perhaps becoming around thirty or in her mid thirties, and had a little bit of a hassled look, though she was still smiling. At this point she may have looked a little like Mr. Monk's dead wife, Trudy (from the "Monk" TV show), though with dark hair, but she still looked more like one of my teachers. She finally got everything like she wanted, I guess, and left.

I wandered off, going some to the west and then turning to the south and going through the neighborhood, partly between houses I think, getting to a minor cross street that looped up and ran north-south for a while before turning back to the west. I felt that some people were after me now, in a small way, maybe disturbed by my wandering around and through the neighborhood.

I came across an area that was more open, with wide spaces between buildings, which didn't always seem to be houses. I was going south still. Not far to the east, a little ways behind the buildings, the land went into a rounded slope heading down to a creek or ditch or canal. The land here seemed to be mostly rock, though some places had dirt. At least a couple of places had rock displays, flat, somewhat irregular rocks stacked on top of each other in a rough square, perhaps six or eight feet on a side and perhaps a couple of feet high. The displays had a few buildings between them and were to the back, with old, worn, colored walks leading back to them from the main walk that ran in front of the buildings. They were wet, either from rain or an associated small fountain or both. I think I went back to the first one and then back to the second. I started picking up some of the irregular decorative slabs, cleaning water off of them.

A young relative came up, perhaps a cousin, a teen-aged girl, and I talked with her about about the displays. She helped with cleaning the water off some. We weren't just wiping water off, a little bit of wet dirt and grit was also being wiped off. Then she went off somewhere, perhaps to a car to go somewhere else. I think she had originally came in a car with some other people, with someone else driving. The car was parked maybe one or two hundred feet away to the southwest, though I think it moved closer, more directly west.

A little later, a car pulled up beside and a little behind a building a couple of buildings back to the north, and one or two people got out to do something in the buildings. Some kids were left in the car, maybe with one or two adults. One of the kids pointed toward me and was saying, "Say, isn't that the person people were looking for?" After continuing a bit with it, the kid was finally able to get the adults' attention and the car came closer, I guess after the people in the building got back in, though I'm not sure all of them did.

Then a young woman in the car started throwing things at me, sometimes hitting the rocks and sometimes hitting me. I think one of them hit me on the left temple/cheek area. They seemed to be rags or paper towels that had been wadded up and dipped in a small can of white paint. It was drizzling rain too, and the paint was running off in thin diluted streaks. I started wiping it off the rocks. I recognized her as a former girlfriend, not of mine, but of the character I was now playing, which seemed separate from the real me. It seemed ironic that she was doing this. She obviously hadn't recognized me, and I wondered how long it would take until she did. The car came much closer, pulling up beside me perhaps only six to ten feet away, and she was still yelling at me and saying how she was going to contact the authorities, and was still throwing wadded, dipped in paint things at me and was about to throw another one, when the cousin came back and quickly went over to her and explained the situation and told her who I was. The woman stopped, then, looking at me a little uncertainly, but with recognition. We talked briefly, then, though I don't think I got too close to the car.

Then I went further east, to where the dark rock went in a sharp rounded slope downward. It was still drizzling rain. The slope turned almost vertical, then mostly flattened out, though it continued downward in a shallow irregular slope, apparently eventually leading to a lake or perhaps the sea. Beginning on the sharp slope, and in a huge mass on the more level area below it, were large, very fat gray seals or perhaps manatees (though they had seal-like heads). A small can of white paint had been thrown out on them, perhaps a more tan one, though I'm not sure. They were making almost continual barking sounds and moving their heads and upper bodies this way and that, sometimes moving to different positions, milling around a bit, and moving the small can from one animal to another with their noses, the can moving downhill from one animal to another but also going back and forth to the sides. A lot of the animals had white streaks of paint running down them, mixing with the rain. It finally seemed like almost all of them did. They were a protected species, whatever they were, and there was concern in the town about their welfare. I could even hear a distant discussion, people far away somewhere, closer to the downtown area I guess, talking about them. I hoped the paint was nontoxic and wouldn't hurt them.

Jumbo Elephant

This is a song the teacher taught us in kindergarten or first grade:

Jumbo Elephant, Jumbo Elephant,
You have such a great long nose,
Jumbo Elephant, Jumbo Elephant,
It reaches to your toes.
Jumbo Elephant, Jumbo Elephant,
You live in a great big zoo,
Jumbo Elephant, Jumbo Elephant,
We'll come and visit you.

There was also a song about a giraffe, but I quickly forgot that one.