Title: Grade School Years 2 of 2 12-5-8
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Blog Entry: Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} e School Years 1-27-03 I’ll try and tell some about my time spent with Bonner’s and then I’ll tell about my time spent with Coffe’s. Karl Bonner and I spent a lot of time together when we were in the first part of grade School and before school age. We were the best of friends and did everything together. Our lives were very different but at the same time similar because we were little kids and hadn’t been taught to look at possessions, status, etc. with any importance. My parents could feel at home in any social, or economic setting, and didn’t judge others. The only exception to that was daddy wasn’t a big fan of The Pope or Democrats. Can ya believe that! My dad was a Republican! There has never been one before or since with a bigger heart. Anyhow Karl and I were good friends and most of the time that we spent together was at his place. Maggie was babysitting me often while my folks were on a trip someplace. She treated me like one of her own. If Karl had to carry water, I had to carry water and so on with Karl’s other chores. We gathered eggs, fed chickens, took water and food to the men in the fields, drew water from the well, and on Saturday nights took our turns at the bathtub. The bathtub was a round galvanized tub, which was brought in the kitchen on Saturday nights after Supper. Water was heated on the cook stove to be mixed with cold water. The whole damn bunch used the same water. Girls first, Women second, then males starting from youngest to oldest. It was an event and not looked forward to by everyone, especially Karl and me. We had been the crick or pond or rain or something to get us wet and figured that should be good enough. Plus every day Maggie made us wash (pronounced worsh) our face, hands, neck, & ears. All this Saturday washing was customary and for Church on Sundays. Staying at Bonner’s didn’t get me out of church; it just sent me to the Assembly of God Church instead of mine, the Christian Church. These two churches are both Christian and Protestant but were different like day and night. The Christian Church ya wore suits, ties, shined shoes, & the women wore Fancy dresses and big hats. We sat in our church and were quiet except for when the congregation was supposed to sing or do a benediction in unison. We dressed and behaved to impress each other. We had sins in our church but I don’t know what they were except for the Ten Commandments and the way I behaved in church. (This is in no way a put down on the Christian church or the Assembly of God church. They were and are wonderful people and I loved those church.) The Assembly of God Church was a whole different deal. They are close to Pentecostal in their practice of worship. There weren’t a lot of fancy clothes at the Assembly. Bonner’s got there by hitching up old Joe to a flat bed wagon that had rubber car tires on it and down the hi-way we went with Ralph at the reins and Maggie sittin’ right next to him with her big hat and the rest of us in the back. The Assembly had a place to park a horse and wagon. (My church didn’t) During the service they didn’t sit and be quiet either. They was hollerin’ “Amen,” “Hallelujah,” and “Praise the Lord.” Convinced me that they at least paid attention to the preacher instead of just looking around to see who was there and what they was wearing. The Assembly Church folk didn’t believe in going to movies, smoking (I think chewing was OK”), drinking, cussing (which included “heck” & “darn”), sex (how did they get all those kids?), the Pool Hall, and a whole bunch of other stuff they didn’t think was OK with God. Near as I could tell they believed in being poor, going to church, and working hard. Just because they didn’t believe in so many things didn’t mean that they didn’t do them. When they went to the movies they didn’t want anyone from the Assembly to know about it. For instance if Karl snuck into the movies (and he did) and got caught (and he did) come Sunday at the Assembly of God Church they would be praying for him and using his name so that everyone in the church knew just who was sinnin’. Or at least who got caught. They weren’t the least bit shy about bringing up someone’s name and praying for them. Sick or sinnin’ ya got prayed for. The Assembly of God Church was very fundamental but they were good to me, to each other, and to any stranger that showed up at their door. If someone was in need they provided. The Christian Church was generous to those in need and welcomed visitors. It was just a different type of congregation than the Assembly of God. 1-29-03 Since I’m talking about churches I have to mention the Sycamore Log Church . Ok I’ve mentioned it but will write about it later. It is something that deserves it’s own title page. Bonners’s house was just off the Hi-Way a mile or so west of my house. Their house was a small two-story house. The outside was covered with tar paper, there was no plumbing, and when they got electricity all I remember was one bare light bulb in the living room. The walls had cracks in them, which were stuffed with newspaper in the winter to keep cold air out and in the summer the paper was removed to let a breeze in. Only two rooms in the house were heated. The living room had a wood stove for heat. It was one of those oval designs that stood about three feet high. Maggie kept a pot of water on it all winter to put some moisture in the air. The other source of heat was in the kitchen, which was at the back of the house. It was the Cook Stove, which as I have said was wood burning. In the winter both were putting out heat all day and had the coals “banked” at night for starting a fire in the morning easily. (If ya knew how) No firewood was wasted while everyone slept. On very cold nights Maggie or one of the older girls would heat up a flat iron (that’s an iron for ironing clothes but was solid cast iron) on the Cook Stove and iron the sheets to warm them up before getting into bed. (Warming the sheets was a very common practice with farm people in the Ozarks) Karl & I slept upstairs. Since there was no plumbing the bathroom or “outhouse” was just that. A little “two holer” out behind the house. That was a quick cold trip when ya made it in the winter. In the summer it wasn’t a place to spend more time than necessary. There were flies, no ventilation, hot, smelly, (although plenty of lye was poured in the holes) and then there was the fear of snakes and or spiders down there that had access to the parts of your body that was hangin’ down the hole undefended. There really weren’t and snakes but I was convinced that some hid in there just to bite me in the ass, or worse. There was Sears or Montgomery Ward catalogs which were used for TP. I’m sure you have heard stories about the TP deal. It’s true. Catalogs, old newspapers, or anything else ya could get your hands on. Corncobs I never saw used for anything except to sell to tourist. On using catalogs, the glossy slick pages were the last to be used right after the ladies underwear section. If we just had to pee during the night there was a coffee can under the bed for that purpose. There was a Sycamore tree just outside the bedroom window. Karl and I would have pissing contest in the summer time. We had to piss through the window screen and try and hit those little balls that are all over Sycamore trees. We had pissing contest anywhere and everywhere. Outside the house in any weather or season if ya had to piss ya just did it where ya were. If there were people around ya would look for a tree or a bush. We did have manners! The women kept “Slop Jars” under their beds to take care of their bodily functions. These could be pretty fancy and ornate but at Bonner’s they were just white China . One more thing about nature calls and I’ll move on. ( don’t want anyone thinking I have a fetish or something here ) If a #2 was required away from a facility designed for such use a country kid learned real young which leaves worked good for TP and which ones didn’t. As kids Karl was braver, more aggressive, and more adventurous than I was. For instance the barnyard started on the barn side of the crick and went on up a slightly sloping hill to the barn. The barnyard was soft earth. Years of cow crap and cloven hooves made the entire area pretty soft to fall on or walk on or whatever. Karl may have invented something similar to “snow boarding” without the use of either snow or a board. Just his butt and the soft earth (& cow crap) of the barnyard. What he did was get behind one of the milk cows, grab her by the tail, kick her in the ass, sit down and hang on. I can see him know. Cow running like crazy around the barnyard, behind her Karl is hanging onto her tail, his feet up in the air, his ass bouncing & flying across the ground, and he is grinning and hollering. He knew that every time he did that he was gonna get a whipping (called whuppin”) but he didn’t care. The ride was worth the whuppin’. I think I tried that trick a time or two but was unsuccessful. Bonner’s had a horse named Joe. He was just a plain old workhorse. He pulled wagons for trips to town, for trips back in the timber to haul wood, to haul hay from the hay fields or for anything else that needed hauled in a wagon. Joe pulled plows when it was plowing time. In the fall he pulled tree trunks after they were trimmed. He did just about anything and everything that required more muscle than a couple of men had. Joe was just a gentle, sway backed, work horse that lived on a rocky farm that had no tractors or anything stronger than Joe. He worked hard and was well appreciated, taken care of, & valuable to that farm family. Joe had this big spine bone down his back that seemed to hurt the crack of my little ass when Karl and me rode him. Bonner’s didn’t own a saddle (that I knew of) and probably wouldn’t have put one on Joe if they had of owned one. We rode the horse some but not much. I remember one time when I was real little I fell off of Joe and landed right under his belly. I was scared that he would step on me. Joe was smarter than I was and just stood still looking bored to death until I got out from under him and he could walk away. Bonner’s also had milk cows. I don’t know how many but they produced more milk than was needed for the family and they sold some to the cheese factory every day. After milking was done every morning and evening the milk was poured into big milk cans which were taken down to the crick where a deep hole had been dug out and the dirt covered with rocks so that the hole would remain a hole. Into the hole of cold water went the milk cans. The closest thing on the farm to refrigeration. Then there were a few goats. A male named Billy (everyone with goats had one named Billy) which Karl and I rode sometimes. When we could catch Billy one of us would sit on the front of his back facing forward, holding his horns to steer while the other one of us sat on the back part of his back facing backwards to twist his tail to make him go. Billy didn’t go for that any more than you might expect. Thus he wasn’t easy to catch and he got his licks back by butting Karl or me every chance he got. The had hogs, not very interesting. They had chickens, ducks, geese, guineas, bantam (pronounced banty) chickens, & at least one mud hen. I don’t know what the hell that was but they called it a mud hen and it seems like I asked why it was called that and was told because they tasted like mud. I have accepted that answer for the past 55 years without thinking about it so I’ll just accept it for another 55. Most of the critters weren’t much fun for little boys except for the ones I have mentioned. Karl had a dog that was meaner than hell but he was ok with us kids. There were cats all over the place, especially the barn. They were made welcome because they caught mice. For the same reason any time a black snake was seen in the barn he was left alone because he caught mice. Snakes were not welcome in the chicken house. They would swallow eggs. In the chicken house there were rows of straw nest. Each separated from the next one by a board. I don’t think the hens needed privacy but maybe they did. Some of the boards had a hole drilled through them that was just a little too small for an egg to fit through. The idea was if a snake swallowed an egg in one nest, slithered through the hole partway and swallowed another egg he would be trapped. Sounds logical and from what I was told it worked. I don’t know if I ever saw a snake trapped that way or if I just think I did. I was a little kid, didn’t live on a farm, was naïve and gullible, so I got told a lot of stuff. Some I know is true others I don’t know one way or the other. Since I’m talking about the farm critters I can say pretty much for sure that they were all necessary for the Bonner family to live. Joe worked, the cows provided milk, cream, butter, & some cash, the goats provided milk & meat, hogs provided meat & lard, chickens & other foul provided eggs and meat. When Bonner’s had fried chicken it wasn’t just fresh it was walking an hour before it was on your plate. The cats caught mice and the dog kept foxes out of the chicken house. (most of the time) I was grown and out of the army before I ever heard of anyone buying cat or dog food or anyone spending vet money on cats or dogs. Ozark cats and dogs fended for themselves and got some table scraps and that was it. They stood a lot better chance of getting shot than they did of getting doctored. I’m sure some fox and coonhounds went to the vet but I don’t know of any instance. I’ve seen coonhounds lay around and lick their wounds for a long time without any money being spent to doctor them. 1-30-2003 Everything that Karl & I did was not destructive and didn’t get us into trouble. We climbed trees, played “Cowboys & Indians”, played marbles, wandered around the farm and timber looking for interesting things, and happily allowed our imaginations to take us on wondrous adventures. Karl didn’t have much in the way of toys. I remember that he had a pretty good collection of marbles, which were kept in a jar in the living room closet. He had “cats eyes”, & some big “aggies”. I have often wondered how valuable those marbles would be today to collectors. They were passed down from older siblings and for all I know could be worth lot’s of money now. Karl also had another two toys. They were both spinning tops. One of them was a dreidel. That is a small wooden top that you wrap a string around, and holding the string in your hand and throw the top. As the top unwinds from the string it is spinning very fast and it’s gyroscope qualities come in to play when the top lands on the floor and it will spin for a long time when done properly, which by the way takes some practice. The other top is now definitely a collectable item. It was metal, about 8” or so inched in diameter, hollow inside with holes on the outside. They had a bright paint scheme and were operated by sitting them on the floor or some flat surface and repeatedly pushing down on a lead screw type of shaft, which caused the top to spin. When it got to spinning real good the holes in the top whistled. As far as I remember that was about it for toys that Karl owned. But there was the crick between the house and the barn. Going out the back of the house you would exit from the kitchen to the back porch. Just to the left of the back door when exiting the kitchen there was a table with a bucket if water above which hung a dipper on a nail. The dipper was there to dip into the bucket for a drink of water. The same dipper was for everyone’s use. Family or company, if ya want a drink at the house ya used the same dipper except at meal times. At meals everyone got a glass or jar or something to drink from. The water was dipped out of the bucket on the porch though. Next to the water bucket on the porch on the same table was a pan of water and a bar of soap and a towel hanging on a nail. This was for washing up before meals and was also used by everyone. While I’m on Bonner’s back porch I gotta tell about the “Farmer Blow”. I never heard the term “Farmer Blow” until a few years ago but instantly knew what it was. Most every Ozark Hillman or boy I knew used this method of blowing their nose. Here is how it works. First ya need to blow your nose and there aint any Kleenex or bathroom around or ya just don’t care if there is or not because it isn’t any big deal. Ya lean forward, stretch your neck the best you can away from your body and tip your head down a little. Now the snot should clear your body on it’s route from your nose to the ground. Before the blow ya take a big breath to blow with. Then take your thumb and index finger and place them on either side of the ridge of your nose which enables you to blow hard while at the same time pinching the thumb and index finger together moving them in a quick downward motion to catch the last of the snot and sling it on the ground with a smooth follow through motion. Done properly you only have a little snot on your finger and thumb, the rest on the ground. Then you can stand normally. wipe your snotty digits on your overalls and go back to whatever task was at hand. I saw this practiced almost daily. At Bonner’s I saw this same thing practiced by Maggie sometimes. She would be in the kitchen cooking or whatever and have to blow her nose. Here she would come out on the porch. Short, wide, feedsack dress & apron, hair in a bun, sweating profusely, lean over the edge of the porch, do a farmer blow, wipe her hand on her apron while returning to the kitchen to finish cooking or whatever she was doing. I never thought anything about it and the food was wonderful. I can continue off the porch now. After getting off the porch to the left was the well. It had a cylinder type of bucket connected to a rope pulley. (That bucket is pretty much a piece of galvanized pipe with a valve in the bottom connected to an eyelet at the top which opened the valve and released the water) To get water you let the bucket fall until it was immersed into the underground stream. Then it was time to get the water back up to the top of the well. I’m pretty sure that on Bonners’s well you had to pull on the rope which went up over the pulley to get the bucket to the top. Then the well bucket had to be maneuvered over a regular water pail and the water released into the pail. The water was clear, cold and the best tasting water on the planet. A full water pail was quite a bit for me to carry as a little kid. They were heavy and I probably spilled about as much as I carried until I got bigger. On the other side of the well was the smoke house. Smoke houses were common and used to cure and preserve ham, sides of pork, slabs of bacon and so on. When I said earlier that Maggie cooked thick bacon I wasn’t kidding. Her bacon didn’t come from any store. It was hanging on a hook in the smoke house and she would go there with a long sharp knife and cut off what slices she wanted. Maggie was not a dainty woman. (I may seem to have made some fun of Maggie but I have told the truth. Next to my mother I loved Maggie. She treated me like a loved son) Stepping off the back porch and going to the right the outhouse wasn’t very far away. Sometimes it seemed like it was a long way but it wasn’t. Behind the outhouse was the chicken house and maybe a chicken yard. I’m not sure about a fence around the chicken house. Probably because chickens, geese and ducks were all over the place. The chickens did lay eggs in the chicken house and on the other side from the nest were tiered poles for them to roost on which they did. Of course there was a rooster and he did crow at daylight. Like I said earlier most everyone was up and working way before that rooster crowed. The guineas roosted in the trees. They were better than a watch dog. No person or thing could walk up to a house at night where guinea foul lived and not be announced. They would make a hell of a racket. I don’t know where the ducks and geese went at night but they were around in the morning. From the back porch the ground sloped gradually downhill to the crick and then about the same distance up a gradual hill to the barn and on past to the fields and timber. The crick is where I have been getting to. That was the best toy that Karl had. We spent many, many days playing there. Two little boys sitting in the middle of a little crick that wasn’t more than a foot or so across in some places and so many things to do. There were crawdads to catch and or play with. Sometimes a salamander, frogs, tadpoles, water skippers, pretty rocks, and with a kids imagination anything was possible. We weren’t sophisticated enough to have imaginations that went beyond our world which at the time was confined to where we lived but little boys do have creative imaginations. It’s a shame that you have to become an adult and lose those abilities before you can fully appreciate how precious they were. Maggie would sometimes send us to the crick to gather watercress for a salad. If you have never had watercress don’t turn down any opportunity that may afford you some. Dam building was our best thing at the crick. We would gather mud, rocks sticks, and anything we could find to dam up the crick. Engineering wasn’t our long suit but then we did pretty good for little kids with no proper training. We would almost get the thing dammed up and it would start leaking someplace. Fix that leak and it would start leaking someplace else. (I wonder if the guys that build Harley Davidson’s got started by damning up cricks?) Karl and I may have not gotten high scores for our engineering but we would have had high grades for effort and tenacity. We would spend the whole day trying to dam the crick. Work our little asses off, get covered with mud from head to toe, unconscious of the world around us we were so busy with our dam. Go to the house for supper wet and muddy. Maggie wouldn’t allow us in the house. We had to strip off on the back porch, get cleaned up and into dry clothes before we could go in the house. Wet shoes were no problem. We didn’t wear any. Looking back on it I think Maggie, Ralph, & Bonnie (Karl’s big sister) probably liked for us to play at the crick. That way they knew where we were and that we were OK. We didn’t always play where we could be seen. Sometimes we had to go on a raid. Karl would sneak a salt shaker out of the kitchen and we would walk out past the barn till we were out of Maggie’s sight then sneak around to the left until we were on the back side of the vegetable garden. Then we had to go into our super sneak mode and crawl into the garden on our bellies like commandos (we didn’t know what a commando was) and find and pull up radishes, carrots, turnips, or whatever, wipe or knock off the dirt or at least some of it, sprinkle on some salt and have a snack. We did get in trouble for that. Several times! 1-31-2003 After we got into the 3 rd ., 4 th ., or 5 th ., grades Karl ran a trap line before school. Him doing that reminded me of my daddy talking about doing the same thing when he was a boy in rural Iowa . Anyhow Karl ran a trap line several winters on their property. Their was sort of a wagon trail that ran through the timber. It crossed cricks and there were plenty of placed for a savvy boy to successfully set traps. I ran the trap line with Karl a few times. He knew what he was doing and coached me on how to help him. He knew some pretty good tricks. One was hanging a piece of bacon or pork in a tree just high enough that a fox would have to jump for it. There was a steel trap set and hidden under the leaves directly under the bait so that when the fox jumped for the bait he would land on his hind feet in the trap. He also used a very large and strong fish hook to put the bait on to catch a fox with the hook like you may catch a fish. I can’t say for sure if that worked but I think it did. I don’t know where Karl sold the pelts but I do know he caught the critters, skinned them, & nailed the pelts on a board. Also you may have heard that an animal caught in a steel trap will chew it’s own foot off to get loose. It’s true. My dad used to hire Maggie and Ralph to help him at home sometimes. Maggie would iron, clean house, or whatever. Ralph helped with yard work or whatever daddy wanted. They must have thought we were rich but we weren’t. I sure never thought we were rich but looking back I was very spoiled and indulged as a little kid. Most clothes were made of cotton and to iron them ya had to sprinkle them with water. At my house this was done by dipping your hand in some water and flicking it on the clothes as they lay on the ironing board. At Bonner’s it was done a little different. First off the ironing board was in the kitchen, close to the Cook Stove. The flat irons were on the stove to keep them heated. The clothes were spread out on the ironing board and sprinkling was done by taking a drink of water and spraying it over the clothes with your mouth. Much more efficient method. I remember lots of times when Karl’s big sister was ironing and me and Karl were bothering her she would spray us with some water (which we thought was fun) and holler “MOMMA, COME TEND TO THESE YOUNGIN’S”! We didn’t want tended to so we left. Tended to under those circumstances wasn’t good. Everyone has heard of home remedies and they come from every culture and time in the history of man. Home remedies cure or don’t cure everything from illness and injury to bad dreams and fear. Doctors today are realizing some ancient cures really are cures. One time I was playing in Bonner’s Barn Loft. I must have been around 4 or 5 years old. I stepped on a rusty nail which was sticking through a board. The nail went all the way through my foot and I ran to the house crying. Maggie took me on the back porch and poured some “coal oil” on my wound and bandaged it up. Then she took me out to the barn, hauled herself up into the loft, made me show her which board and which nail I stepped on. Then she poured some more “coal oil” on the nail. She never said taking care of the nail was part of the cure or not but I got the impression that it was. Maggie hadn’t been up in that loft for a long time. Anyhow my foot healed up. “Coal oil” AKA kerosene was a very commonly used disinfectant. It burned like fire too! Well I’m going to leave Bonner’s now and move on to Coffe’s.
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