Growing up

Growing up 

We grew up in the country, and two of my siblings and I went to a country school.

When we moved to the city, my siblings attended Brandon Elementary School, and some attended the free Maud Lindsey Kindergarten.

My first- and second-grade teachers were Mrs. Jones.

She would start every morning by having the class recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, and then we would say a prayer.

Mrs. Jones had a word wheel that was full of beginner words that we practiced every day.

Our first readers were the Dick and Jane and Sally Series.

Look, Dick, look, look, see Spot run.

Help, help, said Sally.

The best time of the school day was when our teacher let us go outside; that was when all that built-up energy exploded into fun.

We would jump, run, hop, skip, and swing, no matter what the weather, hot, cold, snowing, raining, or even when the sun was shining brightly.

When the teacher called us back inside, our energy was still high.

We would come running, all the while the teacher would be saying, DON'T RUN!

I can still remember that tragic day when my best friend and I came running into the building after being told to not run.

We were the last ones in line at the water fountain, and I can still remember how great that cold water tasted.

The water only slowed us down for a few seconds, as we ran down the hall.

I was suddenly stopped, not by a teacher, but by a door, for I had run straight into the latch of the lunchroom door.

The next thing I knew I was on the floor blood running down my face.

I was taken to the first aid room, where a bandage was applied to a gash, which was above my left eyebrow.

You would have thought that an accident would have slowed me down, but think again.

  

As children growing up in the country, we had to make our own fun, and we had very vivid imaginations. Our horses were made of sticks, and our boyfriends were characters from the television shows we watched.

A big-screen tube television set in a wooden cabinet, playing black-and-white shows, was our first.

We watched many westerns, including Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Have Gun, Will Travel, and Maverick. My favorite show that wasn't a western was Adventures in Paradise.

Everyone detested the nights we had to watch the president make his speech because he was on every channel.

To improve reception, my dad brought home a power line pole and mounted our antenna on it.

The Power pole had spikes staggering up it, which allowed him to walk up to the top.

My dad had to use a ladder to reach the first set of spikes, not sure if that was to keep us from climbing to the top.

When we were not watching television, we were outside, which was most of the time.

There were just a few neighborhood kids who lived nearby, who were close to our ages.

My friend, who was an only child, lived down the road from us with her parents, her grandparents lived next door, and her grandmother was a Cherokee Indian.

My friend's parents had several detached buildings scattered around their home.

One of those buildings contained a variety of discarded clothing, hats, purses, and shoes. 

We would go inside this building and dig through each bag, trying on different dresses, shoes, and hats to find the right one to wear that day.

Our imaginations would take us to faraway places.

I would find myself aboard a large schooner with Gardner McKay, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

A storm would be brewing, and our boat would be rocking back and forth, as the waves tossed us to and fro, which did not matter because I was standing next to a dark-skinned, browned-eyed man with his brown hair blowing in the wind.

We could always smell food cooking from my friend's grandmother's kitchen, and when she opened that screen door, holding a plate of sugar cookies, we knew it was time for a break.

Her grandmother would call us and say, I have hot cookies and some fresh milk, and we would come running.

The older we got the more adventurous we became.

We played all the time in the forest, but were told not to go near HORSESHOE BLUFF.

For some reason, we did not listen, and off we would go, walking along the cliffs and climbing down from very tall trees to reach the base of the bluff.

We loved watching the cascading waterfall as we walked up the inclining bluff.

Such an enticing, dangerous place, where creatures could hide.

We could pretend to be cowgirls or Indian girls, that we're free to play wherever our hearts desired.

My imagination never stopped!

I would be swinging my legs back and forth, pumping that swing higher and higher, stretching my legs upward towards the sky, and hoping to touch the clouds. 

I would belt out a song that I had learned in church while I was swinging. 

I felt like a bird as the words flew out of my mouth.

The big oak tree held tight to the long cabled rope, as I twisted the rope tight as a tick, and when the tension was released, around I would go, getting drunk as a skunk.

What fun, and I would do it repeatedly.

My dad was very inventive, for he made us a go-cart. 

He used a wagon frame, a lawnmower motor, and a rope to make it work.

You would crank the Go-kart by pulling the string attached to the motor, but to turn it off, the spark plugs had to be pulled out.

There were more than enough hickory nuts to feed the forest animals and us.

We would grab several large paper sacks used to bring our groceries home and take them into the woods, where we would fill them with hickory nuts of every size, kind, and variety we could find.

We would return home with our nuts and find a good spot to crack them open, but first, we had to find two rocks, one to place the nut on and another to hit the nut with.

We would retrieve one of the mother's large mixing bowls and fill it with cracked open nuts,

Then we would take the bowl full of nuts inside and pick the goodies out with the edge of a bobby pin.

In the early spring, when we knew we were going into town, we would get several paper sacks, fill them with Polk salad, and sell them there.

Our house was built along the side of a hill; from our kitchen and bedroom windows, we could see for miles the forest.

In the distance, we could see an extensive power line that looked like the kind that is used by a Radio Station to pick up radio wave frequencies.

Our house was built by the sweat and brow of my parents over many years and was never completely finished during the ten years I lived there.

I can still see and feel the inside of our quaint Spot on earth, which we called home, where we felt safe from the environment that surrounded us.

Our home began with just three rooms, but grew as we grew, from one bedroom into three.

Some of our walls were covered with sheetrock, while we walked on plank floors.

Our kitchen was filled with a long table, with just enough chairs for each of us to sit.

There was a stove, a refrigerator, a huge sink with cold water piped into our kitchen, and an extensive bar for storage, both above and below.

The only plumbing in our home was in the kitchen sink, and that was where we got our bathwater.

The water had to be boiled and poured into a huge tub, along with cold water, which every child shared for a bath.

I remember once sharing the tub with my bride doll, and after putting her head underwater, all her hair fell out. She no longer looked like a bride.

Raising eight children was not easy, especially when you put them to bed, only to be awakened by laughter and talking.

Very few cars drove by our house, so at night the only things that we could hear were the sounds outside.

We could hear the crickets rubbing their legs together, the croaking of frogs, June bugs, July flies, owls hooting, wolves howling, and sometimes we would listen to the sound of a woman screaming; this was our mountain lion.

No curtains hang on our windows that face the forest; there was no need, what forest animal was going to peek inside?

Every now and then, the moon would peek inside; sometimes she would blink when the clouds covered her.

The fireflies could be seen throughout the forest as the night filled the sky.