Five Years Old With Two Little Brothers

Side Show
They hadn't been married long.
Dad took Mama into a sideshow tent in Mineral Wells.
A boy put a tire pump hose in his mouth.
A man pushed the pump handle--up and down--up and down--
The boys stomach rose up---up--- up. Mama watched and got sick.
The man took her into the back room and she set on a cot.
A boy was there, throwing up.
He asked, "Did that make you sick too?"
Dad told that on Mama for years.

Starting to School--remembered in her 99th year
I was five years old and had two little brothers, Cam and Dock. Uncle Jim, Dads
youngest sister, Anne's husband, gave me a little tan dog for my birthday. Sometimes
I can even remember his name. It's the only thing that I can remember them giving me.

We lived less than a mile from the new Willow Pond schoolhouse.
The old Willow Pond school, was a mile closer to town.
It really did, have a pond and a willow near it.

John Washington Glover donated the land for the new school house.
He had already donated the land for a cemetery, after a grandson had died.

Uncle Billy Hittson donated the new school building
It had a big high belfry and the bell was two feet across.
It could be heard for miles when the rope was pulled.

My cousin, Julia Minerva was three years older than me. We always loved each other.
Her Mother was my Mamas only sister, Theresa, our Aunt Tressie.
They lived a mile from us, the other direction from school.
She come and stayed two weeks with us, to get me started in school.

We were ready the first morning--- I decided I didn't want to go.
They talked me into going, and then I backed out again.
Mama said, "You don't have to go if you don't want to.
But you do have to make up your mind."

We were standing in the back door and heard the bell ring.
I said, "Yes, I'll go."----- We held hands and just tore out.
We got there in time to go in, at the second bell.

My little dog come on into the school house with us all. I didn't know it.
I looked down---and there he set---with his head stuck up.

And just like Mary's Little Lamb--- "He made the children, laugh and play."

The teacher asked my Uncle Charlie if he knew the dog. He did, and he carried him
outside. Uncle Charlie was Mamas youngest brother. He was thirteen years older
than me, and a student too. The school just went up to the eighth grade.

At recess the kids were mean to my dog. They threw rocks and chased him,
until he crossed our fence. He waited for me there, every day, under a big old mesquite tree.
I couldn't make him stay home. He would sneak along in the bushes, by the side of the road.
By the next year he had forgot, and stayed home with my little brothers.

The school building had two front doors. The boys and girls lined up in separate lines.
As they went in the doors, the girls turned to one side, and the boys turned to the other.
There was a big closet for each. There were nails for every ones coats.
When we went outside, a monitor brought your coat and gave it to you at your desk.
There was a boy monitor and a girl monitor. We all wanted to be it.

Granmama gave me a little straw lunch basket. It had two little doors on top.
A cloth inside would fold over my sandwich. We had no paper to wrap any thing.
My bread was always a biscuit. Mama never could make real good loaf- bread.
Both my Grandmothers could. She beat them making biscuits.
Inside my biscuit, would be sausage, egg or jelly. She always made good tea cakes.

We didn't have peanut butter for years.
I had a little bottle of milk with a stopper.
Just some little glass bottle from around the house.
Sometimes I put some clabber, with a little sugar on it, in a big mouth bottle.
All bottles had cork stoppers, you always saved them to use again.

My little dog would carry my lunch basket home in his mouth.
He would give it back to me, at the corner

The First Car 1901
"For every baby--you lose a tooth", the old saying goes. Mama had a lot of trouble
with her teeth. I was in the first grade.
Granmama come to stay with my little brothers.
Mama went on to the dentist in Granmama's nice buggy.
Her buggy horse was 'Old Coot' A pretty red horse with white spots.

Granmama and Dad had warned her about meeting a car, she hadn't seen one.
The first one had come to Mineral Wells. Mama was on the road and heard it.
She jumped out of the buggy and tied Old Coot to a fence post.
She put an old coat over his eyes and tried to calm him.
If there had been a gate there, she would have opened it and led him off the road.
Old Coot rared up and down, rared up, pawing---just scared to death.
---Mama didn't get a chance to look at the car. She never forgot that time.
She would show us that spot on the road, nearly every time we went past it.

Later, a rural mail was delivering mail in his buggy. He was trying to calm his horse,
like Mama did. The horse was so scared and bucking. The man was trampled to death.
In town, the horses hitched to buggies and wagons were just scared to death.
Loud banging, roaring noise and white clouds of smoke. There were lots of runaways.
On country roads, some farmers run out with their shot guns loaded.
Their hens were so scared, they flew off, and couldn't lay eggs.
Their cows would break down gates and fences, and run and not have any milk.

Car toolboxes had picks and shovels, to dig out of mud holes. They carried wire
cutters, to cut fences and drive around big mud holes. That really made farmers mad.

The tires were hard rubber, less than 3 inches wide. Wagon and buggy rims were metal,
2 and 3 inches wide. They all went down deep in the mud, then passengers got out and pushed.
The first cars were well nigh helpless in the mud.
Somebody looking on, would laugh and holler, "Get a horse."
And it did take a team of horses, to pull a many a car, out of a mud hole.
When it dried, it was rough---real rough.

Many early fences were made out of rocks, stacked flat on top of each other.
A rock fence was built all the way around Mamas home place.
That was a lot of rocks. The earliest, muddiest stretches of roads were improved
by being filled in with the rocks, from these fences.
Most of the rocks were beat into pieces, by men with big hammers.

There was no gravel or pavement, even in town. The streets were narrow.
In places there was not room to pass.

People considered the automobile, a young mans toy, when it first come out.
Anyone who bought one, still kept their horse and buggy and their wagon.

My first school
Mr. Cheaves was my first teacher, he taught at least 30, up to the eighth grade, in one room.
Before that, the trustees just wouldn't hire a woman teacher.

I always thought I was his pet, I got out of so many things.
One little girl had snot hanging down, real often.
All the others got in trouble for laughing. Mr. Cheaves always by-passed me.
"She's to little" But I knew better than to laugh.

He had two real mean boys of his own, and they got whippings nearly every day.
They would laugh behind his back, "He didn't hurt me. He can't make me cry."
It was common for some students to get a whipping every day.
Mr. Cheaves' willow switch stood up in the waste basket. A teacher wasn't no good,
that didn't whip the kids, And then when you got home, you always got another one.
Teachers were more lax with girls. I never got a whipping at school

Younger kids would go to school with the older ones, and stay all day,
when the Mama had to go to town, or if the Mama was sick, or went to a funeral.

I had earache so much and missed so much school--that I just nearly started over
the next year. When I had earache, what I liked best, was one of Mamas good warm biscuits.
I would put the biscuit over my ear. I would tie on a head scarf,
to hold the biscuit in place. When the biscuit fell out, my little dog got it.

Dull Knife
Once Grandad come back from Arkansas, with a railroad carload of pore stock.
When they drove them out of the car, there lay a little horse.
He may have been born on the trip. He was so near dead; weak, slick and nasty.
He was nearly starved and had been stepped on, but not hurt.

Us kids---me and Cam and Dock, wanted him.
Grandad would have shot him if we hadn't. He couldn't stand up.
We used a bottle to feed him.
We would get together and hold him up, and get him to walk a little

He got stouter and we would lead him to water and put the baby on him to ride.
Us kids must have named him, he was so poor and boney. "Dull Knife."
Lead him, and he would out-walk you---and step on your heels.
Turn around, and he stepped on your toes.
He didn't mean to--- I've still got a toe I can show you, the nail came off.

We did 't have a blanket or saddle. We all rode him, just as many as could hang on---
until they fell off the back---our good Dull Knife.
When he got a chance, he would jump the fence into the garden or peanut patch.

When he growed up, Dad claimed him for his saddle horse.
Of course by then, there were plenty of horses.

More school
Mr. Miller and Mr. Culpepper were my next teachers. Then women started, and
I never had another man teacher until I went to school at Palo Pinto. We all loved
the teachers and respected them. There were no tricks. Boys and girls took turns
cleaning the windows and sweeping the floors. Everyone was willing, and the teachers
saw that they did it right.

We brought our tablets and pencils from home. We wrote on the back of all our papers.
The pencils were cedar, with the eraser glued up into the end, no metal was on them.
They cost one cent, for ten pencils. Dad cut them into, so we wouldn't waste them.

The big girls would help the younger, and liked it.
There were charts, with pages that turned, with pictures too.
“The cat can run. The cat can see. The cat can play." School was well equipped.

Games
At recess it was lots of fun, the teacher was right out in it. In "the Farmer in the Dell,"
the farmer marched over and picked a wife out of the circle. In "Wolf over the River,"
there was just one wolf. But when he touched another, he was a wolf too.
That would soon end, and we would play, "Marching around the Mulberry Bush."
My cousin Adelle, always wanted to be "It," and she usually was.
She would just have a fit.

All our Mamas made balls for us. They would use thin strips of cloth, and sew and
sew, as they rolled, to keep it from tearing up. Or get a sock to raveling and roll it up.
A little rock was inside, to give the ball some weight.
The boys whittled our bats out of tree limbs.
Boys and girls both played jacks. We had little rubber balls, and we used little rocks.
They were just as good. We set on the ground, or if it was bad, we set on the floor inside.
The boys always had marbles and played with them. Us girls played at home sometimes.

They dug a new water well, near the new school. At lunch and recess we would draw
a fresh bucket of water. We run to be first in line, and we all drank out of the same dipper.
Sometimes, somebody poured a dipper of water on our hands to wash them.
We shook them three times to dry them---we all had chapped hands.
At home, we had a mixture of salve and "taller," beef fat, to rub on our hands.
We got the salve from the Watkins Man He came to our house in an old rickety
patched-up buggy. He peddled liniment, liver regulator, laxative, brushes, face powder,
flavorings, and toys, such as jacks and balls. Us kids would run in and look,
we didn't touch any thing. We knew that we got our toys at Christmas.
Our grandparents on both sides, gave us things.
We never had to worry about not getting anything for Christmas.

We did not have a restroom or bathroom, no toilets. No one did at home.
We went "outdoors," that was the word, "outdoors".
The girls run up on top of the little mountain, or part way up. There were lots of big rocks
it wasn't ever muddy there. The boys went the other way, There was no way they could
step around and look. If someone had to go during class, they didn't go that far.
Valentine, everyone made everyone a little one, just as long as there was a little heart on it.
We made teacakes. We would cut both ends out of a can and bend it to make a heart
shaped cutter. There was no coloring, we might put a raisin, or pecan on top.

Easter, we would have an egg hunt at school, boiled chicken eggs. We colored them
with yellow sassafras root, crayons and crepe paper strips. We wet it, and it made stripes.
Before cake coloring, we boiled the red fruit, after a prickly pear bloomed, a pretty red.
Mama always put in a big goose egg, for a prize egg.
Usually they took up a hat collection, for first prize.
May Day we would have a May Pole Dance.
Going in and out, around and around a pole, with ribbons tied to the top of the pole
A big Thanksgiving and end of school program too. We were all in everything.

Our biggest school program was Christmas.
When Mama was a little girl at home, no one had ever heard of a Christmas tree.
Her half-sister , Aunt Josie, come to spend Christmas with them. She told them about a
Christmas tree. They made her go out in the woods and show them one. It was cedar.
They cut one-- big enough for the school, it touched the ceiling.

Every Christmas after that, they always had one, at home and school too. All during the year,
they saved pieces of red or blue colored paper, for stars and things. [I still save little
pieces of colored foil to make stars.] We would make paper chains out of colored
construction paper, and fold and cut paper dolls, holding hands.
We would sew popcorn and red berries on a string. There were thin tinfoil icicles.

Sometimes we had real candles on the green Christmas tree. They were beautiful.
They were about the size of my little finger, a little longer.
They stuck into a little metal holder, that clipped onto the Christmas tree.
There was a tiny built-in cup, to catch the wax.
It was hard to clip them on, where they would stand up straight,
and their flame wouldn't touch the tree.
They burned so fast---by the time they were all lit-- they had to be blowed out.
Grown-ups always had to do it. They were so much trouble, that no one used them long.
People were careful, fire was so dangerous---I never heard of a fire, from candles.

Before the Christmas school program, we drew names. Everybody got a present.
Maybe a peppermint striped stick of candy, a box of six crayons, pencils, little balls,
jacks, small fire crackers, or tiny china cups and saucers.

Before we ever saw a car or train, there were small tin and glass ones. We imagined
the whistle and smoke. Bought dolls were expensive. They had china heads, and their
hands were always molded shut, to keep their fingers from breaking off.
The bodies were cloth. You couldn't play with them, the heads would break so easy.
Our Mamas made rag dolls that we played with. We thought they were awful pretty.

There was always Mr. and Mrs. Santy Clause. One year my cousin, Julia, was Mrs. Santy.
She wore a little peaked red cap and called out names and handed out presents.
She was so tiny and Santy Clause was a big man. Today, June 5, 1995, I asked her if
she remembered that. She had a big laugh and remembered Santy's name too, John Autrey.
There was lots of imagination in all the school programs. Everyone in the community came,
and had a part if they wanted to. Whether young people were in school or not, they come
and made up plays and would be in dialogues.
They would have things that were to rowdy to have at church.

In one program, a man was laying down in a box.
Another man had a big saw and was going to saw his legs off.
I stood up---- throwed up my hands, and screamed the bottom out,
"MAMA, DON'T LET THEM CUT THAT MAN'S LEGS OFF.
MAMA, DON'T LET THEM CUT THAT MAN'S LEGS OFF."
She couldn't shut me up, and had to carry me outside.

Mama's brother George and his wife Chloe, always had charge of giving the news.
One couple was going to get married in secret--- it was announced.
They would exaggerate everything and change the names in jokes. It was lots of fun.

A Methodist church was built across the road. John Washington Glover donated the
land for it too. It was white and had a cupola. It had an organ and there was lots of singings.
The Glovers were always big singers. Big fifth Sunday singings took turns at different
churches, and always dinner on the ground. We would spread a white sheet on the
ground and put the food on it. There were lots of things for young people to go to and do.
They were real strict about what they had at church, no parties, nothing rowdy. You
couldn't hardly get a program fixed up, that they would call ok. Us kids enjoyed what
we had and thought we was having a big time---just like you-all do now.

Granmama's boarders
Granmama and Grandad lived across the road and down a ways.
Grandad was gone from home a lot, he had brothers Tom and George in Arkadelphia,
Arkansas. George had a big auction barn for stock, Grandad liked it there.

Granmama got lonesome. Sometimes she had three grand kids staying with her. She raised
Fred, {Fredda May] from eight months.

Teachers
The teachers boarded with her. That was food, and washing on the rub-board, too.
They were paid thirty dollars a month.
I didn't think they ever paid her any thing, it couldn't have much.

One teacher walked into her room, at Granmama's, and Granmama was reading her letter.
Granmama said, "Oh, I was just admiring the pretty handwriting."
And laid it up-side down. After that, the teachers left all their letters laying around.

Men teachers were usually married and couldn't board with school families.
They didn't like to stay away from their families. Town schools paid a little more.
After Mr. Culpepper, the trustees hired all women teachers. I liked them all.

Cam was eleven months younger than me.
Mr. Culpepper saw him outside at home, one day, "Why aren't you in school?"
Cam said, "I ain't got no collar and tie, like Jean and Roy", his cousins in school.
Mr. Culpepper told Granmama. She laughed, and bought him a collar and tie to wear.
Cam went off to school the next morning, so proud.
When he got home from school, he had them in his hand, and never wore them again.

Dad was a trustee, from the time that I started to school, until the last one of us finished,
26 years later. He had a high school education, very few men had that.
Even some teachers, hadn't gone to school past the eighth grade.

Teachers only had to please the trustees that hired them. Seldom did the trustees visit.
If there were state laws about the age or time to start school, we didn't pay any attention.
Bob Glover went to school at Willow Pond until he was 21.
School started when the trustees decided that most of the cotton had been picked.
It ended in the spring, usually March, when everything in the field had to be hoed.
We never had to stay out of school to work, some kids did.

Clothes
Mama always had a foot treadle sewing machine. She could sew good.
She made the boys shirts and our dresses.
She could set down and cut out a collar, and she never had a store-bought pattern.
There were no dresses to buy. If a Mama couldn't sew, there was a grandmother, aunt,
or a neighbor to help them out. Our Mama was always helping somebody.
My dresses most all had a sailor collar. The style was to the middle of my knees.

If Dad thought my dresses were to short, he would say, "They are cutting high water."
That meant that if I waded in water, my dress was so short that it wouldn't get wet.
Just like now, some went to extremes, and had real short or real long dresses.
When I wore a skirt, I could roll it up and make it shorter--- when Dad wasn't around.

Three was the most school dresses I had. Always a petticoat, outing in the winter, and
made out of flour sacks, in the summer. Always black sateen bloomers, with elastic below
my knees. You wanted them to show a little bit. They were full and kinda bloused over.
At first Mama didn't know how to cut the back of bloomers, longer.
So mine rode up and cut, when they were new.

I was supposed to wear a 'union suit'. But I broke out with little patches of red bumps that
itched, and I couldn't. Boys and girls both wore them. They were white ribbed knit cotton
and buttoned up the front. There was a flap in the back, that would hang down,
when it wasn't buttoned up at the waist. They come to our ankles and wrists.
We put our union suits on, at the first cold spell in the fall.
We wore them until the first day of May---
or the first frog that we could find, and bring and show Mama.
If we took them off, and put them back on again, we would take cold, and get sick.

Snuff
We wore long black socks, with wide elastic garters, holding them up over our knees.
My cousin Julia, started using snuff when she was 5. Some of her aunts showed her how
to carry it. "Take a little piece of brown paper, and put a little pinch of snuff in the middle,
fold it all up, nice and flat." Then it would fit under the wide elastic garter, holding up her
socks. Julia had her teeth pulled when she was 100 years old.
She was still dipping snuff. She never could wear her new dentures.

( My mother, Julia, dipped snuff all her life. I did not know it, until she was 97years old.
My brother showed me. He brought it to her in the nursing home, and gave it to her.
I had never noticed it because my brothers, and nearly everybody used it, women too).
It was supposed to make your teeth white--- I never liked the taste.

Our shoes were always black, and buttoned up over our ankles
We buttoned them with a shoe-button hook or a good stout hair-pin.
Sunday shoes had black patent leather, on the lower part. I thought they were beautiful.

The boys liked overalls, blue or striped for school. Boys wore dresses,
until they were big enough to go school. Boy dresses were straight
with two box pleats in front, and a leather belt come through.
They were all made alike, button down the back, in tan or blue, cute little things.

Our Hair
Girls braided their hair, four little braids, one on each side and two in the back.
It hurt when Mama rolled my hair on a rag for round curls.
But it made me pretty, for a program or Sunday.
Older girls would make a roll, and puff their hair over their Daddy's sock.
Or keep the 'combings' out of the brush, to go under---and think it didn't show.

Some of my Aunts wouldn't let me use their comb or brush. They didn't want me
to get dandruff. I figured out---that you were grown, when you got dandruff.
So I sneaked around and used their comb and brush--- so I could be grown.

Girls never cut their hair, unless they got lice, and had to cut it, to doctor it right.
Our family never got lice. There was one family that had it every year.
Mama did all her kids hair, she cut the boys hair---Dad couldn't shear a dog

Baths
Saturday night, water was drawn from the well and heated on the wood cook stove.
We took our bath in the kitchen, near the warm stove. The biggest wash tub was used.
It was about nineteen inches across at the bottom, a little bigger at the top.
I was usually first. We all went thru the same water, more had to be added, along.
After we all had a bath, Mama mopped the floor with the water left in the tub.
Mama made lye soap, it had a good smell, kinda like fresh tortillas.
She used it to wash clothes, and everything. We used it on our hair too.
After we could buy soap, we had rather have Mamas lye soap for our hair.

We always had a wooden barrel, setting under the eave of the house, to catch water.
Rain water was best to wash our hair, and we put a little vinegar in the rinse.
We never heard the word shampoo or conditioner.

Uncle Billy Hittson died November, 1905
I had just turned nine and was going to school at Willow Pond. He had donated our school
building in 1901. It was new, the first year I started to school. His funeral was in the biggest
church in Mineral Wells. The river was down, and we knew the procession would pass
by the school house. The Hittson Graveyard. was on his old home place.

Our teacher said," You can stand by the road and watch if you will be real still and quiet."
It was the biggest string of people that we ever saw. There were lots of wagons and more buggies.
There were a few cars. By then the horses weren't so afraid of cars.

Everyone knew Uncle Billy, or some of his family. He owned over 160 sections of land.
He had over 60,000head of cattle under his H I T brand.
He was presented a gold watch by the Chicago Livestock Commission Company for
having shipped more cattle to that market, than any other individual.
The cattle were driven to Oklahoma, fattened on leased Indian land, and then shipped
to Chicago by rail. Grandad was an administrator of his will.

Our First Motion Picture
It come to town in a railroad car. We paid, and went in and set in a big soft fancy seat.
They started closing the window shades. My brother Dock didn't like it.
It got darker, Dock wanted, "Out of here"
It got darker. He started hollering.
It was total black--- Dock started screaming the bottom out.

Mama had to carry him out. Dock had never been closed in a tight place before.
Nobody had ever seen anybody get scared, like Dock got scared that day.
He was like that, all his life. He could not crawl under his own house.

I remember that the show was pictures of what you would see, if you were riding on a train,
and looking out the window---cows, mountains and houses.
They gently rocked the railroad car from side to side,
we felt like we were moving. The rest of us liked it.