Memories and Writings of Josephine Kerns Murphy Our Neighbors the Crows

I shall tell about the Crow Indians as I have known them for years as our neighbors.  My father's ranch, which my brother Jack now owns, lies west of Pass Creek and is bounded on the north by the Crow Indian reservation.  Pat and I bought a ranch two miles farther west between my father's ranch and the Little Horn River, and it too, is bounded on the north by the reservation.  For years Indians were our close neighbors and our most frequent visitors.  Even after moving to town, because we lease land from the Crows, we have Indian callers on the average of one a week for they are always trying to get more money advanced on their leases.

My folks moved to Wyoming when I was four.  My mother received letters from her friends back east, ("back east," in those days was Iowa, our horizons were narrower then), posing such questions as these:  "Aren't you afraid there will be another Indian uprising?"  "Aren't you afraid when you are left alone on the ranch with your children that you will all be scalped?"  "Aren't you afraid the Indians will steal you out of house and home?"

The first question shows that people were not well informed about Indians.  To them an Indian was an Indian.  They did not realize that the Crows had allied themselves with the whites against their enemies the Sioux, that the Crow regarded the white man as his friend, and had been given one of the best reservations agriculturally, in the United States.

Some of our neighbor women, who came west before my mother did, confessed that they had lived in dread of another Indian uprising.  One woman told about a time when her men were away, that a neighborhood bachelor came whooping down on their homestead, flailing his arms and crying, "Flee for your life.  The Indians are on the rampage again.  And they're going to kill us all.  Flee for your life."  She saddled her horse, snatched up her little son and away she went with the Indians in hot pursuit.  She could hear the hoofbeats of their horses.  One Indian reached for her scalp but got only her sunbonnet which saved her life.  She spent the night with neighbors and returned next day rather sheepishly, finding her scalped sunbonnet on the way back on the twig of a tree which she had ridden under.

The only Indian uprisings my mother had to write home about were uprisings from her bountiful table.  Every day was Thanksgiving Day for us with an Indian for atmosphere, minus the turkey of course.

Old Arm Around His Neck was so charmed with my mother's lemon pie that he asked for the extra piece to take home to his squaw.  Dad remarked:  "One piece of pie for two squaws?  Aren't you afraid of bloodshed?"  (Old Arm Around His Neck had two squaws).  Mamma wrapped the pie carefully and asked him how he was going to carry it.  He unbuttoned his shirt and placed the piece of pie on the shelf made by his belly.  This worried us children, but our parents assured us later that no sooner was the old Indian out of sight than he would decide the pie would ride much better inside than out.

There were opportunities for Indian scares if one were so inclined.  The Indian was learning the white man's ways, but he still had much yet to learn.  He knew to shake hands solemnly all around when he came to pay his respects and again when he left, but he did not know to knock on the white man's teepee.  He simply raised the latch and walked in.  Catfooted and moccasin-clad, his presence was unknown to us until we either smelled him or saw him.

One day I was playing paper dolls on the rug when I smelled Indian.  The natural Indian smell is not unpleasant; a combination of campfire, sage brush and home tanned buck skins.  I looked and saw a small pair of moccasined feet, my eyes traveled up some trousers, to an open vest and a shirt, to long black braids twined with red flannel, to an aquiline nose and high forehead, to a Bob Totmen black hat with high, uncreased crown, and still higher to the tip of an eagle feather.  I can't be blamed if I say:  Indians aren't as tall as they used to be.  He had been standing there quietly marveling at a white child's play.  I can't recall being even startled.

One Sunday morning we children were all tumbling on our parent's bed.  Kate suddenly said, "Oh Mamma, there's an Indian."  Standing in the doorway was Old Black Eagle shaking all over with silent laughter.  He said, "Mas chili, mericoti, papoose, bots sotu."  In other words he approved of the whiteman and his squaw because they enjoyed their little children just as Indians do.

Mamma had her Indian scare.  The men had been gone for a week helping neighbors thresh.  She had been canning service berries.  Every evening a new wagon load of Indians arrived to camp in our barnlot overnight.  The following morning they left for the foothills where the service berry patches are best.  Indians by the way, do not can service berries.  They dry them.  Sometimes they mix them with squaw-chewed hamburger into a kind of mincemeat which is dried to form something like pemmican.  I think in the winter they dump some berries into their meat stew to make a well balanced menu.  The service berry has always been an important item in the Crow Indian's winter diet.

John ran to the barn to inspect each new arrival, then panting and excited, told us who our newest neighbors were.  But on this particular day he sneaked back to the house and told us these Indians were strangers, and cross and cranky.  An old squaw had chased him and told him to vamoose.  The bunch lay around in the tent singing, "ki yi, ki yi."  Mamma and I went down to the cave where I handed her the jars as she arranged them on the shelves.  Then it became dark.  Standing in the doorway, was a huge Indian brave.  His foretop had been cut to about four inches and greased so that it stood out straight making him look like a fierce wolf, and that we learned was his name, "Bad Wolf."  He said, "Firewater."  Mamma said, "Firewater no got."  He said:  "All white man gottum firewater."  Mamma said, "No got."  He said:  "Me Bad Wolf, killum white squaw no give um firewater."  On the shelf nearest him was a row of whiskey bottles.  I chuckle whenever I think about those whiskey bottles.  My father had been raised in a teetotaler family where it was thought better to have your right arm cut off than to take a drink of whiskey.  But whenever he or Uncle Bill left the ranch, Mamma's last words to them were always, "And don't forget to bring home the whiskey bottles."  Once Uncle Bill returning from a trip to Aberdean proudly displayed whiskey bottles all over himself.  Mamma was as pleased as if he'd placed a set of havalind china on her table.  She used these whiskey bottles for vinegar.  So she said to Bad Wolf, "help yourself."  He did and spat.  And she said, "Now git, and don't you stop gitting until you come to the reservation gate."  And he got.  The last we saw of them they were whipping their horses into a gallop headed for the reservation gate like the devil himself was after them.  So Mamma's big Indian scare was one heap-scared big Injun.

Perhaps I can scare up an Indian scare for myself.  A lump-jawed cow is not acceptable on the market, and since she is not acceptable on the market neither is she acceptable on the rancher's table.  She, tho she may have only an infected thorn in her jaw, is a total liability to her owner.  But an Indian will eat her.  So Dad used to send word whenever he had a lump-jawed cow, and Indians would come and camp in our barnlot and butcher and have a feast.  We girls were sternly forbidden to visit an Indian camp, but a nine year old boy can't be kept away from anything that is interesting.  John used to report to me just how they did everything.  Apparently they were as thrifty as our modern packing companies, of whom it has been said, "They save everything on a pig but his squeal."  John said they washed the guts out in the creek, then cut chunks off which the children chewed raw like chewing gum.  He said they washed out the stomachs and threw them onto the wagon bed for later use.  He said they pierced the gall bladder, let the bile spill over the liver, then cut chunks of the liver and ate it raw too.  And he had had some.  The old squaw had told him it would make him grow big and tall like her son and live to be very old like her father.  And now he wanted me to have some too.  It was good, really good!  And if I would go down and have some, and if the folks found it out, he would take all the blame.  Or else he would never tell, because he wanted me to have some because it was good, really good!  Tho I was naïve and trusting then, I strongly suspect now that my brother was telling me a cowardly lie.  He hadn't the courage to have some as he said.  I was his guinea pig.  I wasn't hungry for liver, but I was curious, so I skipped down to the barn with him.  An old squaw offered me a tidbit from the tip of a huge butcher knife.  I took it with my teeth, rolled it around in my mouth and spit it out because I said it tasted like it had too much pepper on it.  John's eyes turned from wonder and admiration to disgust.  He had been cheated out of a spectacle of me suddenly springing up tall like Alice in the Wonderland.  He said I didn't keep my bargain.  The old squaw chuckled gently like a prairie chicken.  So actually, my Indian scare, was not of the squaw wielding a huge gory butcher knife, it was of my brother who snorted about scaredy cat girls who couldn't keep a bargain.

Then, my little brother, Jack, Dorothy's husband, had his Indian scare too, come to think of it.  Old Chief Knows His Coups had always had great admiration for John, because of his blue eyes, light hair and fair skin.  He told us he too had a white boy, only a year older than John.  He had bought the boy as an infant from his white mother, who hadn't wanted him, so sold the child cheap, for 20 ponies.  I remember how we begged old "Moses" as we called him, to bring his white boy to play with us.  And he did.  And he was a white boy surely, tow headed, very blue eyed, with pink and white skin.  But he only stared at us when we boasted.  He did not answer our questions.  He did not follow instructions in our games.  He played around with a stick.  For years I thought he was simple minded.  It was incomprehensible to John and me that a white boy could not speak a white boy's language.  When Jack was the toddler in our family he used to climb into old Moses' lap.  He was a beautiful child, and although his eyes were brown and not blue, and his hair hanging in golden ringlets to his shoulders was not white, old Moses hinted often to my mother that he would like to add Jack to his collection of little white boys.  He pulled a big watch out of his pocket, which he said had been given him by one of Custer's scouts, and offered to trade the watch for Jack.  Mamma, in a gay and heedless mood said:  "It's a deal."  After Moses had been gone for some time Mamma missed her little boy.  She called.  No answer.  So she called his dog, for Tippy was gone too.  She heard a whining in the currant bushes and there she found Jack, hugging Tippy tightly in his arms.  Jack was seeing to it that my mother did not keep her end of the bargain.

Old Knows His Coups was my father's special friend.  In the early days he called four times a year, with a young man to act as interpreter.  Often he became impatient with the way the conversation was going and told things his own way, which was in sign language.  We children gathered around wide eyed as Old Knows His Coups mounted his horse, then after many sleeps, discovered and slew the enemy, fastening the scalps on his belt.  That's what Knows His Coups means, many scalps or great warrior.  And, imagine my delight after I was grown, to discover Chief Knows His Coups picture in some of our books on Western History, and to see his portrait in the Northern Hotel in Billings.  He was famous.  But to me he was always old Moses who wanted a collection of little white boys.

I was the last one in our family to be honored by a call from the old chief.  When he heard that Kudtha's daughter had returned to live at the ranch with her husband, he rode, though very old then, the 14 miles from Wyola with his 10 year old grandson to call on me.  I am ashamed to say that at the time I was only irritated.  I had told Pat, "You must stop work and go to town for supplies, or I'll have nothing to cook."  So Pat was gone.  It was three o'clock and old Moses patted his stomach and said, "Me heap poor."  I opened a can of corn, scrambled our two remaining eggs into it, fried some side meat, pulled out some stale cake and whatever else I could find, and taking the little boy by the hand said, "Come eat."  Old Moses spoke a few words to the boy who turned his chair and sat facing a corner, and Old Moses fell to and ate with gusto.  I was sick with shame.  To be sure, this skimpy meal could not compare with my mother's remembered feasts, but why hadn't he waited until we had chickens and a cow and had raised a garden?  And that poor little boy had ridden 14 miles!  No sooner had I finished thinking these bitter thoughts, than grandpa pushed his chair back, patted his stomach, and said, "Me heap full."  Then he spoke to his grandson who ate and believe it or not there was a little left over.

I was hurt for years about what I thought was Old Moses' insult to me.  Then one day another incident made it all come clear.  I had stopped at a café in Lodge Grass.  An Indian came in with his 10 year old son and four big full grown men.  For himself and friends he ordered two hamburgers each, a bowl of chili, piece of pie and a cup of coffee.  The small son, forgotten sat trying not to twist on his stool and staring at a box of candy bars on a shelf.  I was getting madder by the minute, and was about to klomp that selfish papa on the head with my purse and say, "Why you mean old thing, you!"  Then after they had eaten awhile with many smacks, he nodded his head sidewise to the waitress, indicating his son, and said, "Same for him, only milk."  He was unable to keep the glint of pride out of his eyes.  And the son too looked pleased with himself.  Then I knew that Indians too have ways of disciplining their young.

My father's name, "Kudtha," means, "Laugh Much."  The strange names Indians give to their white friends are never given in ridicule or derision, they are meant respectfully to describe his most salient characteristic.  My father was jolly so he was, "Laugh Much."  Uncle Bill was, "The Old Man," because a childhood bout with diphtheria had left him stooped.  Ray Powers is "Big Boy," because he has the short legs of a boy compared to his deep chest and broad shoulders.  Matt Tschirgi is "Slant Eye," because of his drooping eyelids.  Pat Murphy is "Red Shirt," because he always wore a maroon red shirt when he left the ranch on business.  No doubt Porter Kennedy and many others have their special names among the Indians.

As for that last question:  "Aren't you afraid the Indians will steal you out of house and home?"  I maintain that while some Indians steal, it is not natural for an Indian to steal.  They don't feel right about it.  My folks used to leave the ranch house empty for months at a time when we children were taken to some town for a school term.  Nothing was ever locked up.  Nothing was hid.  It looked as though we planned to return tomorrow, and when we did return tomorrow nine months later, everything was as we left it.  I suppose one reason an Indian doesn't steal is because many of the things a white man will sell his soul for, to possess for the sake of prestige, an Indian has no earthly use for.  My mother's sterling silver spoon collection still lay in the sideboard drawer, her havalind china was intact below, as was her ruby glass, and netted lace doilies.  And as for my father's tools and farm equipment, they are connected with work and no Indian is interested in anything connected with work.  But one would think they might have been interested in the extra bedding on the hanging racks in the attic, or the cutlery or kitchen utensils, or my father's artillery of guns and ammunition, or in stores of food in the cave.  I can only conclude that an Indian does not feel right stealing from a friend.

But if an Indian asks you for something and you tell him you can't spare it to him, beware!  Once an Indian sat watching my father struggling with a week's growth of whiskers.  He told Dad when he grew a whisker his squaw pulled it out with her teeth, and if Dad would make his squaw do likewise his troubles would all be over.  Neither Dad nor Mamma fancied the advice, but Dad got out his "other" razor, a gold handled one, and showed it to old Haunts the Arrow.  Dad considered his gold handled razor too fancy for any good use, but he showed it to all his friends for their envy and admiration.  It was a great conversation piece.  Old haunts the Arrow admired the razor so much he asked Dad to give it to him.  Dad said he couldn't spare it as it was a gift from his sister.  Since she planned to visit us that summer he had to have it handy to shave with when she came.  He took it from the Indian and lay it on the piano.  When his friend left, so did the razor.  It was gone many moons.  Mamma, doing her spring house cleaning, found it on a little cross piece on the back of the piano.  How it got there nobody knows.  Once an Indian bought a horse from us.  After the deal was completed he asked for the hackamore.  Dad said no, the hackamore was worth more than the horse, he couldn't spare it.  So he took it off and tied an old frazzled rope on the horse's neck for the Indian to lead him home by.  But the hackamore apparently went along too.  It was found only after many, many sleeps, under the hay in the feed stall.  How it got there nobody knows.  It is seldom a Crow is worth his pull as a ranch hand, but we had one once who was so good at fencing, my father let him use his best fencing pliers for the job.  The Indian was so pleased with those pliers he said, "When me go, pliers go too."  Dad said "Oh no they don't.  I stole those pliers from the Burlington.  You can't buy them that good in a store.  I can't spare those pliers.  They stay here."  But come payday, the Indian must have considered those pliers as part of his pay.  They were found a year later under a pile of old gunnysacks.  How they got there, nobody knows.  I do not know if the Indian had voodoo gifts like the Negro, or if he is very clever at slight of hand.  But I do know that if your excuse for not giving him what he asks for is on the grounds that you can't spare it, beware, because you soon learn you can spare it, and for a longer time than you thought.

Old Whiteface

     Old Pansy, the Jersey cow Mamma had bought with the last of her career-girl money in Iowa, had died.  She had not recovered from the shipping, and the sudden severe changes of the western weather.  We needed milk cows.  I'm sure we already had some because Kate and Bert toddled down to the barn every evening with their milk cups, which Uncle Bill obligingly filled.  Warm milk nauseated, whereas the barnyard held great fascination for me.

One day I was in the barnyard an innocent by-stander, when Papa drove in a handsome whiteface cow with her new tottering calf.  Her face was up and her nostrils were snorting.  She saw me and lowered her head at a run.  I took for the fence.  John screamed, "Lay down like a squaw and roll under."  Which I did.  But I came up too soon on the other side and tore some rips in my dress.

Next I had to face my mother.  We had not been long on the Wyoming ranch.  She was having to cope with new realities and frustrations.  She could not keep us neat.  Our hair became windblown, our shoes were always muddy and our clothes ripped and torn from crawling through fences.  She had pleaded with us many times to be less thoughtless.  Up at the house my mother cried in despair:  "Oh dear, whatever in the world will I do with you?  I mend, and I mend, and I mend.  And you don't care.  I have half a notion to dress you in overalls, like a boy.  Then everybody will point their finger at you and say:  "Ticky ticky tom boy.  Half girl, half boy!"  I knew this threat would be something terrible.  I felt shame to the very core of my being.  A girl in boy's clothes!  I hated Old Whiteface with all my heart and soul.  I left my mother in the sulk.  It was not my fault at all.  The fault lay with that old cow taking after me.  That's how my secret summer long feud with Old Whiteface began.

Supper was always before the milking, and if I slipped away while everybody was still eating and talking, I was hardly missed.  By going around the barnyard, and up the big hill a short ways, I could step down on the bouncy straw roof of the long shed.  And there I encountered my enemy.  Jumping up and down and flirting my skirts I taunted her until she was nearly wild with rage.

Also, Whiteface was a very bright cow, half-human nearly.  Some cleats had been pounded into one of the huge cottonwood pillars.  Whiteface had seen my brother use them as a ladder, and once she actually stood on her hind legs in a rage and clawed at those cleats trying to climb and get at me.  Talk about bull fights.  I've seen bullfights in later life.  They can't compare in sheer thrills with my fights and battles with Old Whiteface.

She learned stratagems and verses.  She might ignore me for a long while, eating leisurely at the hay rack, until I thought she was tired of the game and had forgiven me.  So down the cleat ladder I would start and there she was, pawing the dirt, waiting behind my back.  I believe it was all good for my heart, my adrenalins and whatever else I had.  I bloomed into health.  I certainly was not pining away from boredom.  It was the highlight of my day.

Once I decided she had given up the cause as lost, and was interested only in getting fat.  So I walked very lady like with great poise, toward the little foot bridge across the creek.  Then—here she came!  I made it to the little bridge in the nick of time.  She said, "Oh well," and turned her back.

I had my eye on the heavy wooden gate, against which Kate and Bert leaned, (since they were forbidden inside), while they waited to swig their cups of milk.  If I could make it to the gate, I could climb up, for never in the world could I return to the strawshed.  A continent or great ocean lay between it and me.

I crossed over, but stood irresolute because it just might occur to the old gal to cross the creek, which she could do easily.  But that cow thought she was a human, I guess.  She started to cross the rickety little bridge, then animal instinct told her the open spaces of the bridge was no place for a human cow to put a cloven foot so as she drew back, I flew for the wooden gate and safety.

Hate breeds hate.  The two little ones were never allowed again to lean against Uncle Bill as he milked; and once when all the men were gone to the mountains and Mamma was alone to do the milking, she learned who was boss on that ranch!  Mamma went to the house, changed into man's clothes, tucked her long, black hair under Dad's hat and tried it again, but was defeated.  So she had to turn the calf in with the cow.  But the calf could not begin to take all the milk, and Whiteface refused to share with any other cow's calf, so her bag spoiled, and Whiteface had to be shipped.

My Little Brother Bert

(A true story)

I must confess, I was never very enthusiastic about my brother Bert, although he had loads of personality in his quiet, independent way.  He was born at the wrong time of my life when I was still four.  A little girl doesn't become maternal until she's around seven.  He was not my pal and he was not my baby.  I couldn't make him shut up when he decided to bawl, no matter what I tried.  He was bound to bawl himself out.  But I always had to sit with him in the log room until just that happened.  Maybe it was better than setting the supper table, which Kate had to do when I was assigned nurse-maid duty.  Sometimes he quit of his own accord, climbed up to the low window, caught blow flies and amused himself by pulling off their wings.  This, incidentally, may have started him on his life career as biologist.  After Bert dropped off to sleep, it was my duty to pick him up and put him on the bed.  Then I was free to return from my exile.  But I was not always prompt or eager to join human society.  It was fun to sit as a great god and watch the goings on of lesser creatures.  The floor was freshly scrubbed.  I enjoyed sitting on it.  A little bug in his shiny black Sunday best suit came out and said:  "Dear me, dear me, I'll be late for my wedding."  So when he was just about there I put out my big hand and blocked his way.  Bless him, he tried to go this way and that way, but wherever he decided to go he found his way was blocked.  Once he actually came and stared straight up at my face, and it scared me.  Then I thought, "Why he's only a tiny bug, why am I scared?"  Then he went back home.  Then when I was about to get up, he returned and an ant was following him.  The ant was his lawyer and legal advisor.  Said the bug, "Now watch, just see how I am frustrated in this life.  Now watch."  He started forward and sure enough, down came that barrier to block his way.  The ant came up, looked into my face until I almost panicked.  Then the ant and the bug went into a huddle.  Mr. Ant backed off.  The bug puffed out, opened his wings and flew over.  Mr. Ant went back home shaking his head.  "No brains—not even the brains he was born with," said Mr. Ant.

When the raspberries needed picking Mamma left me to watch Bert in the kitchen while she sneaked out one door with a bowl.  Bert howled of course, until he thought of the pan shelf curtained off under the kitchen table.  He started banging things around, until I feared Mamma would hear, so I stopped him and he bawled until he noticed the wood box.  Shyly and cautiously he threw out a stick.  His eyes always looked bashful when he planned to wreak havoc.  But I let him go ahead.  I thought:  "I can quickly pick them all up and put them back before Mamma comes in."  So he threw out and laughed with delight, and I clapped approval and laughed too.  Piece after piece he threw out and glowed in his new found strength.  He hurled wood clear across the room!  The stronger he was the more he shouted in wicked glee.  He also enjoyed my approval and we were becoming friends at last.  Then the door opened and in stepped Mamma, "What in the world?"  She began, then stepped on a piece of wood, lost her balance, with the bowl of raspberries flying over her head.  There went the delectable dessert with cream she had planned.  I was roundly scolded and ordered to pick up the wood, which I did though it was not my fault at all but Bert's.  I was sure now that my mother had no use for me and I may as well leave home.  So I took my little blue bonnet off its hook and left that place forever.  First I went to the gooseberry patch and picked ripe gooseberries for provender.  Then I took off down the meadow which was in wheat that summer.  I walked and walked.  It was farther to Tschirgi's than I thought.  Close to supper time too.  I plucked the ears of corn (wheat) and tried to chew the kernels as those men did on the Sunday School cards.  Wheat is slow chewing.  I wondered where I would sleep.  What would I use for a pillow, an ant hill?  And what if a coyote came and smelt me all over and licked my face and maybe took a bite.  So I fancied myself at Tschirgi's already, and I said:  "Please Mrs. Shirky can I stay all night in your barn?"  "No," said Mrs. Shirky, "you are a little run-away girl.  We don't let little run-away girls sleep in our barn."  So with a sigh I turned around and went back home.  I was deeply ashamed, but not because of the sticks of wood thrown around, or because I had run away.  I was ashamed I could not run away.

Landmarks

Two years after John, I started to school, and two years after I, Kate started, then two years after Kate, Bert.  But only what the first child does is the real landmark, the rest is sequence.  I rode behind John on old Peanuts.  Everything was new in the country in those days.  The school house was new.  Its boards were fragrant, rough, golden pine.  And as they shrank in curing, daylight made silver strips.  Yellow jackets flew around, and daddy long legs were attracted to the sour smelling rags we used to wash off our slates.  The seat desks were double.  At one time a plank down the middle separated the occupants, but these planks had been removed.  Teacher was new and young but she dressed like my grandmother, spectacles and all, with slicked back hair, long black skirt and severe blouse with a jabot.  She started the day by reading us Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.  I remember not one word of it.  This was followed by Uncle Tom's Cabin sometime later.  I do remember that little Topsy had no mother and no father, she just grew.  I shared my reader with the little new neighbor boy who was in the first grade with me.  The pictures were interesting with boys rolling hoops and girls having tea parties and there were Saint Bernard dogs.  All girls wore big sashes and hair ribbons and had naturally curly hair.  Their feet were like tiny hoofs.

I learned all about tacksis that first day and told at the supper table the difference between screen door tacksis and telephone pole tacksis.  Papa admired how smart I was about taxes especially poll taxes.

I learned about long and short division, how some numbers rode in little slings and others went under little sheds.  I got along in school just fine.  I could read anybody's book provided I had just heard it read.  But Kate, when she went to school, went me one better.  She could read anybody's book upside down.

Hands and Feet

A little girl may stand and watch her mother work and not know all she has seen until years later.  I liked being on hand to watch my mother knead bread.  The loaves she shaped were full and pliant like her breasts which gave Bert such comfort.  The hands that worked them were deft, with freckles circling the thumbs.  She had pink fingernails.  Her hands always knew exactly what to do next and flew like birds in a berry thicket from one thing to another.  Nutmeg, take the little egg out of its nest, scrape it on the recipe, put it back, shake the fresh scraped nutmeg into the custard pie.  Whirl about, open the oven, shove something in, shut the door.  Whirl about, pick up a basket of fresh picked peas, toss them into your apron soon as you sat down, and start shelling peas, dropping the shells on the floor to be swept up later.  It was a kind of dance.  We used to play "pretend," a game where you went through the actions and the others had to guess what you were doing.  I adore ballet, it's a kind of graceful pretend game.  And I have often wondered why the ballet the pioneer housewife did at her housework had never been put on the stage.  It was beautiful.

I used to lie awake in my bed too long of morning, I know.  It was a good thing to hear my mother, two stepping around in the kitchen, getting breakfast.  Step, step, slide-step, step.  Then years later when I came home a visiting, I heard her in the kitchen.  But the tempo had changed, and I realized with a shock that my dancing mother was an old woman.

Neighbors

In the good old days we had plenty of neighbors.  Well, if not plenty, then we had neighbors.  The Dinwiddees lived less than a mile up the creek.  Mrs. Dinwiddee had been married three times.  Her first husband, the father of Fae, was an actor.  Her second husband had been her present husband's older brother, and had fathered Edna.  That's all the children she had.  She had a wonderful jinglebell laughter and was so entertaining, that when she came calling, the men found excuses to come to the house.  Mamma said she could not have gotten through those first years without Mrs. Dinwiddee's encouragement and practical advice.  I remember when Mamma seemed rather shocked after Mrs. Dinwiddee told her she had been married three times, that she threw back her head and laughingly said, "Oh, I was a gay one when I was younger."  I always thought Gay Creek was named for Mrs. Dinwiddee, because of her gaiety.  It should have been.  But I understand it was named for our "Old Man Gay," who homesteaded our place.

She had a new house and urged our mother to return her call, as it was not too far, and bring all the children.  And one day my mother did just that.  I don't know how old Bert was then, but she pushed him in that wonderful baby buggy I had so envied Kate.  From my later experiences with baby buggies, I say it was no mean feat!

That call I will never forget.  First we came to the bunk house at the end of the line or sidewalk.  Next, set back a ways because of the pens, were the two or three chicken houses, then came the ice house, and the landscaped knoll or hill against the house turned out later to be the cellar.  We stepped up onto a long, narrow el-shaped porch where the latest in washing machines sat.  Our hostess demonstrated how it worked, like rocking a baby in its cradle.  This was supposed to slosh the washing clean.  My mother looked at it dubiously and said it never in the world would do that for her.  Mrs. Dinwiddee, Mrs. Carl Dinwiddee, said, "Oh, well, Carl's shirts were hardly soiled anyway."  My father had contempt for that "Gentleman Farmer."  He had contempt for all aristocrats, although I suspect he carried some of that tainted blood himself.

Then we went into the kitchen which was something to marvel at.  There, above the cookstove was the lampshelf.  Mrs. Dinwiddee explained that the four lamps were very personal.  Each person in that family had his or her own private lamp.  Imagine such luxury and affluence!  There were long counters with bins under them, and the door to the north opened down into the cave or cellar, where crocks of butter, milk and cream sat on the flagstone-paved floor to keep cool.  The door on the west opened to the coal shed which opened into the woodshed.  In the coal shed a narrow water flume carried water out at a sharp angle to the irrigation ditch.  This flume started under the little square sink in a kitchen corner, above which was the water pump.

John wanted to pump, and was welcomed to do so.  He worked mightily, imagining himself a veritable Paul Bunyon, and I imagined the great Niagara pouring into the irrigation ditch, but when we ran out to look we returned with sheepish grins.

The dining room had built-in China closets, and opening off it was the sewing room, Mrs. Dinwiddee's favorite room of all, because she could shut off the mess and forget it until next time.

The sitting room was a sitting room with the heater still up and the wallpaper still on.  But the room which set the Dinwiddees apart from their neighbors was the Reception Room.  It was intended as the place where mine hosts received their guests in style and dignity.  That is, after the guests stealthily stepped off the sidewalk, circuited the cellar, jumped the ditch, crept low to keep from peeking in the bedroom window, and still lower to avoid the thorns in the plum thicket, then came up for air just in time to scare some wild animal off the front porch, and thus use the knocker.  There was nothing in the Reception Room except Fae's riding gear—her boots, her quirt, her crop and her leather gauntlets.  Edna and her stepfather's uncle were still out with the cattle.  Fae being frail had come in early for her nap.  "By the way, Fae should be up by now, Josephine, go out on the porch to the last room and waken Fae.  Tell her her mother wants her."

The door of the first room was open.  The neat little room boasted its own private little heater.  It was in the second room I saw the sleeping princess, and I stood for a long time gazing.  The dark lashes finally lifted and the forget-me-not blue eyes regarded me.  "Yes, Mother, I heard you," she called.  Then she sat on her bed and drew on black silk hose, and put her little feet into black slippers and slid into a sweet white frock.  She shook out her dark curls tying them back with a little black velvet ribbon.  She stepped out, took my hand and we walked together to our mothers.  Two men were to fall deeply in love with her.  She could marry only one.  So these two, Ed Dana and Frank Heinrich, spent their lives as rivals in the cattle world.  It was Ed Dana she married.  There were no children.  Frank Heinrich, named her in his will as a farewell gesture, but after all, he had many relatives, his nephew, Matt Tschirgi being chief heir.  So, 'twas said, she actually did not need it, since her husband was so wealthy.

My Grandfather

(Albert Cooley)

I did not like my grandfather when I was a child.  He had several counts against him.  I was afraid of him.  He had periodic attacks of sick headache when he would lie like a corpse on the couch in the sitting room, only his hooked nose and van dyke visible against the flowered wall paper.  At such times he was super sensitive to childhood clutter and clatter, and we were obliged to take our paper dolls and chatter elsewhere.  Sometimes he would let out an unwilling moan, so doleful it chilled my spine.  I was afraid of him.

Then Grandpa was too particular.  We took turns on the grindstone, counting to one hundred.  Two hundred.  Three hundred.  Five hundred.  He would test the edge of the cycle bar, or scythe, or whatever he happened to be sharpening and tell us to count to another hundred.  One day my dad ordered a new invention through the Sears Roebuck catalog.  It was a pedal-powered grindstone.  This set three towheads free from Grandpa.  And I always imagined he regretted it.  Grandpa believed children should be taught patience and perseverance.

He was so unreasonably reasonable or vice versa.  I liked string beans.  This was before it was known that string beans could be safely canned.  Mamma would cook great kettlefuls of string beans in season, and when Grandpa wasn't there that was all I ate.  Grandpa was so watchful of everything we ate.  He believed children should eat bread and more bread.  And plenty of potatoes.

"But," I would protest, "I eat bread and potatoes all the rest of the year."

"Not another helping of string beans will you get," said Grandpa, "until you eat the bread and potatoes I put on your plate."  Grandpa knew everything that was best for children.

Take the matter of candy.  When company came out from Parkman, they usually brought a treat for us children:  oranges, bananas, or stick candy.  Grandpa always brought us a treat, and it was always the same thing:  horehound candy.  We didn't like horehound candy.  It didn't taste like candy should.  Grandpa said horehound candy was good for children.  So we thanked him for it, and showed none of our usual greed over it.  It lasted longer than any candy ever did around our house.  Greed was abhorrent to my grandfather.

Pests

Few stories permit a pest to enter into the action.  Can you imagine a man slapping himself on the jaw as he proposes, or a girl trying to scratch her back as she nods her head and says, "yes?"  From all the attention they are given in print and literature there is no such thing as mosquitoes, or flies, or millers in the butter.  Maybe ants at a picnic and bumblebees in the clover, but flies and mosquitoes are skeletons in the family closet.  We used fly paper, and those sheets lay on every piece of furniture in the dining room except the chairs.  My mother's sideboard, a status piece, told people we were as good or a little better than our neighbors, a stuckup piece, and stuck up it was, an appetizing sight by nightfall.  Sometimes before a meal we went to the asparagus patch and cut the feathered- out stalks.  The outside dining room door was opened, and starting at the opposite end we all drove the herd out into open pasture.  Then we could eat in peace.  We had screened doors, but somehow with children coming and going the flies got in.

There was mosquito netting to drape over sleeping babies.  Mamma was as sensitive to a mosquito bite as some people are to bee stings.  We at length learned to use the sagebrush growing nearby for evening smudges.  The fragrance was fine but the smudge as well as the mosquitoes drove us inside.  It's a ranch problem all right, and sometimes sneaks in and becomes a town problem.

As for millers, they can sputter a candle, smoke up your lamp chimneys, mess up your windows, fall into the milk and get stuck in the butter.  They are the stupidest and messiest of all critters.  But I know how to get rid of millers.  Build a house with an attic with a small access window.  Invite the bats to hang out even if they have to do it upside down.  Also have an opening available to the human part of the house.  After you are in bed you will hear flutterings about.  Fear not.  Your house is not haunted.  And do not fear they will get into your hair or suck your blood or do anything you don't want them to do.  They don't have bed bugs, according to my experience, and in the morning all you have to do is go around and sweep up miller wings.

And now I remember about black hornets.  Maybe they are bandits, I don't know, but they go about their business in such a know-how manner.  If you can forego screens on your bedroom windows and there are black hornets around, one will pick out your bedroom to police, and every morning just before sun up he'll fly in and sting every fly on the ceiling before Mr. Fly has taken that first stretch.

Juvenile Delinquent Circa

My grandmother buttoned the last button on my mother's dress, perked up the bow of her sash and her hair ribbon, and said:  "The kin we go to see today is your other Grandma, your Poppa's momma [Susannah Dunbar Cooley].  Be as good as you can.  Sit still in your chair.  Don't wiggle or squirm, and remember, 'children are to be seen and not heard.' "

My mother was as good as she could be.  She sat still in her chair, legs dangling over, tried not to wiggle or squirm, and was thinking:  "Pretty soon she'll look at me and say:  'You're as good a little girl as I ever seen.  I must go get you some cookies.' "  But other Grandma said no such thing.  She gave her a sudden look:  "Where is your knitting?"

"What?"

"You've been sitting there all this time not doing a thing.  Hasn't your mamma taught you to knit yet?  Calista, a girl eight years old should be doing some handwork.  Why when I was her age I had knit a pair of socks for each of my brothers.  Remember:  'An idle girl and a crowing hen always come to some bad end.' "

This was one of my mother's unhappy girlhood memories, for she was a sensitive child.  The criticism did not however, cause her to come running in from her play to beg for a knitting lesson.  It remained as a nagging consciousness of shortcoming.  My mother was a born tomboy.  She made the swing go so high she often showed her panties, which brought on scoldings and attempts to shame.  "Ticky, ticky tomboy, half girl, half boy," my grandmother chided, to no apparent effect.

Grandfather and Grandmother had fine plans for their daughter.  She was to become a great musician.  They bought her an organ and after a few lessons, she was required to play for all who came to visit.  These attempts to "show off" were miserable failures.  My mother, unable to bear the humiliation, finally rebelled, and was spanked for insubordination.  This wasn't the word used, exactly.  She was spanked for "showing off" in front of company.

When she became a young lady she was sent away to a school where she was to take up voice culture and piano.  I don't know what happened to cause my mother to live a life of deceit, but she dropped her music and took up typing, shorthand, bookkeeping and penmanship.  When she returned home, she did not become the church organist, or the leading lady in the choir; she got a job at the County Court House.  With her first money she bought a piano.  She became engaged, but postponed her marriage until she had filled her hope chest, this being a spare bedroom which she filled with golden oak furniture after every pay check.

When she married, she had a fully furnished house.  My dad played the piano evenings, while my mother sat and patched, since she never learned to knit.

Wyoming

In the interests of "Go West Young Man And Grow Up With The Country," the Burlington Railroad offered excursion tickets to as far as Billings, Montana.  Pap turned his hardware business over to Mamma's brother Bert, who had been his partner, and he and my mother's bachelor brother, Uncle Bill, boarded the train.  Dad's idea was to go into banking in Sheridan, Wyoming, but he learned there that the town then had almost as many banks as saloons; so he bought a ranch instead.  I have never learned the business deal he had with Uncle Bill, but Uncle Bill was off and on a part of our outfit for many years.  They preceded the family on to the ranch.  I have no memory of the packing my mother did, or of what must have been for her a hard train trip with three youngsters and another on the way.  It was what she talked about that fixed certain memories in my brain, especially that long ride from Parkman to the ranch in Mr. Parson's spring wagon.  It was spring, yes.  So for years I thought spring wagons was what ranchers used when there was no more snow for bobsleds.  Actually, a spring wagon was so-called because it set on springs.  After I learned that, I looked for, but could never find the springs.  I had in mind coils like bed springs.  I have seen wagon springs all my life and didn't know them because they don't look very springy.  They are things piled on top of each other, sometimes leather straps, sometimes hickory strips.  And, maybe now, they are steel strips.  The wagon bed rides on these.

The wheels were high and thin.  Mamma sat with the driver in front, with Kate hidden somewhere inside under blankets.  John and I sat in back on the two trunks.  Mamma said she was terrified every minute lest we go rolling down one of those high hills from tipping over.  The roads were rutted trails.  Sudden storms blew up.  One might become completely lost in a brief blizzard.  But flying with the snowflakes were blue birds.  I suppose it was April.

It was John caused me the worst worry.  Mamma had warned him to keep his hands and arms away from the spinning wheels.  But their fascination was too great.  So I worried and wore myself out.  Coming up that Slack Hill was a long old drag, still is, unless you are in a car.  John wanted out, so Mr. Parsons whoa'd the team which needed little urging to whoa.  Then when John started to scramble back in, our mischievous driver clicked his tongue and away we went at a smart trot on to a flat plateau.

To this day it is the clearest picture of any in my mind's eye:  my stocky little bit brother doing his valiant best not to be left behind.

Early Days

The Thomases were still on the ranch.  Mr. Thomas was looking for a ranch still farther West Young Man in Idaho.  Ours was a house divided, and after many years I still am not decided who had the better half.  They had the kitchen, the "little kitchen," the dining room and one of the original homestead log rooms built by "Old Man Gay."  We had the only two plastered rooms, the sitting room, and a bedroom and then there was the "incubator room."  Uncle Bill had the other log room.  Our extras were stored in the attic over the sitting and bed room, and some things were out in the "people part" of the ice house.

Ah, how well I remember that first real meal!  Papa and Bill came in from working on the Acme Ditch.  Mamma had set the boiler off from her kerosene two-burner cook stove onto two dining chairs.  We had fried potatoes and gravy.  Papa used one trunk as seat and table, and Bill used the other.  John and I came in from a cold chilly play outdoors.  John treated all this as a delightful picnic, and said, "Where shall we sit?"  We carried our tin pans over to some rugs rolled against the wall, and had our picnic.  I wasn't too sure I cared for picnics.

Mrs. Thomas had two very old boys who had been to school, a daughter John's age, and a little girl my age whom I seldom saw.  They were a nice family.  Sometimes when it was chilly and windy out playing I used to peek wistfully in their dining room window.  How cozy, tidy and warm the room looked!  But they were settled, and we weren't.

Such games as we had with those children!  I learned to count to a hundred by fives, by tens and even by ones, playing hidenseek.  I learned such games of pretend as, "Here we come—where you from, New York What's your Trade, Show us some."  And I loved little Tilda.  In her red woolen dress she was a little beauty.  She showed me the little wren sitting on her nest in the skull of a dead Indian.  The wren flew in and out through an eye socket.  She taught me how to keep house using Mason jar lids as fine china and cooking utensils.  She taught me how to make rhubarb "sweet" by dipping it in salt.

When the Thomases left the ranch, they left a void for John and me that was never to be filled.  I have always dreamed and maintained that every ranch should have two families, but have never been able to work out the details.

Uncle Bill

Uncle Bill was always buying the newest and latest in machinery.  He had the first threshing machine.  I suppose it was eight or twelve horse power.  He used our horses, and the neighbors' horses, hitched onto a platform like a horizontal wheel.  They went round and round, and after they moved to another setting John and I went out to this "bull ring" and rode round and round on our stick horses.  We enjoyed the straw stacks, sledding down them and making tunnels into them.  It was great fun until we ran into an old sow with some baby pigs.  An old sow sure is boss and lets you know it.  After that we were rather shy of straw stacks.  Uncle Bill liked going from ranch to ranch with his threshing machine.  It was a pleasant social kind of life with each good wife vying with one another over the cooking.  Bill loved to tell about the time he put gravy on his gold cake and ate cornbread with his raspberry sauce.  The wheat that was threshed, John and I jumped into from a high plank we walked onto from the haymow.  I was never a very daring person.  Sometimes I refused to jump because the wheat was too low and the fall stung my feet.  Other times it was too high and no fun just to step down into.

Uncle bill had a fine new phonograph.  I mean gramophone.  It had a morning glory horn.  At about the same time the telephone line was completed, I remember the evenings when, by pre-arrangement, he set the machine on a table with the horn to the mouthpiece and gave everybody on the line a great treat.  I wonder if everybody was as thrilled as I was the first time I wore radio head phones (which I decidedly wasn't).

But his records were very good.  There was "Tommy Tomy Adkins, You're a Splendid Hired Hand," and "Darling Nelli Gray," so sad, and "Please Mister Take Me in Your Car, I Want to See M'ma.  They say she lives in heaven is it very very far?" which was so sad we played it over and over and cried our eyes out.  Then "I'm Old But I'm Awfully Tough," a laughing song.  Everybody laughed.  Grandma, when she visited us, just couldn't keep from laughing.  She had to wipe her eyes.  I guess it was funny.  Old Uncle Josh surely did everything wrong, just like Uncle Bill putting gravy on his cake and eating it too!

But now after all these years, I keep wondering about that little boy who wanted to go to heaven.  I wonder if he is an old man sitting on a park bench feeding pigeons.

My Grandmother Mac and Her House

(Calista Jane Danner Cooley)

I met her when I was perhaps five.  Her name was Mo Mo, and the man who sat beside her in the other rocker was Po Po.  I sat on the sofa and sized the pair up.  He had on short shined-up boots with elastic at the sides, and loops to pull them on by.  He wore a suit and a necktie, and had a pointed beard, I now know was called a "Van Dyke."  He had a mustache, and a big hooked nose, quick darting brown eyes, that were amused yet critical, and curly hair.  I learned later in life that he was Scotch.

The lady seemed the bigger of the two, like the female spider is always bigger than the male, and the mamma robin is always more fluffed out than the papa robin.  Her shoes looked like carrepsable black kid gloves and were also well shined.  Her long gored skirt was black and looked heavy.  Her black belt was of shiny shirred satin.  Her black taffeta blouse had many fine tricks over her bosom and was decorated with a pin I later learned was a "broche."  There was a white frilly fall at the high neck which I came to know was a "jabot."

I made my decision.  I was afraid of the man, but I liked the lady.  She hadn't said a thing to me as yet.  Perhaps she had looked at me.  Her eyes were blue.  She looked at things and saw them, but she also saw past them.  Out of a clear sky I heard my own voice saying:  "Would you like to come for a walk with me?"  I was astonished at my forwardness.  Never had I been so bold with someone I had just met.  And to my surprise the lady answered right off:  "Why yes, I'd like to go for a walk with you."  Outside she asked, for the day was cold, "Where shall we go?"

There was only one place I had in mind.  We would go to the Slue."  The Slue was child heaven.  There were willows we could climb into and make horses of the stoutest trunks, that took us bouncing gaily over the world.  In the spring there were Hawthorne blooms to pick for Mama's birthday.  In the fall these same Hawthorne trees gave us good berries to eat when we became hungry, food as good as bread.  There were white violets that grew nowhere else on our Wyoming ranch, and fragrant lavender sweet rocket, which were also strangers to any other place on the ranch.  Stands of honeybees hummed cozily.  I was taking my Grandmother to the choicest place in the world.

It wasn't far.  Just open the yard gate, cross the road, descend a little hill and there it was.  But it had changed.  The box elder trees were leafless.  I hadn't dreamed a place could change so much.  I looked around in dismay.

"Shall we build a little log house out of twigs?" the kind lady suggested.  So we built a little log house out of twigs.  "And will a little mouse live in it?"  I asked, "And will the little mouse marry a little wren?"  "No," said my Grandmother, who used to teach school, and who had been also, before she married a second time, the widow of a man who died in the Civil War.  "No, this is an Abraham Lincoln cabin, like the kind Abraham Lincoln was born in.  Shall we go back?  It seems to be getting colder."  So we went back.  There were many unanswered questions in my mind.  Who was Abraham Lincoln?  Why was he more important than a little mouse and a little wren?

Grandma falsified her age in the bible.  My mother said so.  And everybody in the family who was interested enough to care, agreed with her.  I have that old family bible, and I can see where she scratched out the last number with her gold handled "penknife" and put in another to make her a year younger, and thus the same age as her husband, Albert.  Terrible thing to lie, right in the bible!  I've heard of swearing on a stack of bibles," but to lie in the bible, confuses everybody.  We aren't sure if Grandmother was 93, 94 or 95 when she died.  Those of us who like to brag, say she was nearer 96.  So one lie begets many lies.  I don't know for sure if Grandma received a Civil War Widow's Pension.  I recall vaguely there was some money like $12.00 which was supposed to come every month.  But that too, could be a lie.

I don't know if Grandma's first marriage was when she was fifteen, or sixteen.  Could even have been fourteen.  Once when I was around that age, I heard her say, "Shh" to our mother, and then a moment later whisper, "I don't want your girls to get the idea that is the right age to get married in."  It seems her first husband was a bachelor with a farm.  And once I heard her tell my own little girl that her parents "sold" her to the man on the neighboring farm.  They were fine good people according to my mother's memory of them.  Her husband went to war as a substitute for a man who paid him to go in his place, then died of typhoid fever.

Grandma had a baby boy, which she left, days, with her mother, while she taught school.  Grandma had a good education.  She may even have graduated from the eighth grade.  Her own mother and father could neither read nor write until she taught them, so she told.  And it was while teaching that Grandma met "Mac," as she always called him.  I suppose Grandpa's schooling was about equivalent to the third grade, which was as much as most young men managed in those days between the planting and hoeing and harvesting of the corn.  Grandpa had been mischievous and has told me of stealing safety pins from his mother, so he could pin the garter snakes he gathered into his pants pockets, later to release in school.

I know nothing about their courtship.  They just "got married."  He had been her pupil, and, so my father said, was thus handicapped all his married life, for Grandmother was then forever his intellectual superior.  My father usually was patient and understanding of people, but in his later years Grandmother's intellectual superiority exasperated him.  He said to me:  "Your Grandmother taught school.  And she has never gotten over it."  He too, had taught school, with perhaps better qualifications than hers, and he too, so it seemed to me at times, "had never gotten over it."

 

What kind of woman was my grandmother?  How can one know?  I perhaps knew her as well as any grandchild.  She must have been a great worker.  There were the chickens to take care of at her place in Missouri.  They were over on the other hill, across the bridge.  I recall going over there only once.  John may have had a job helping her, but in coldest winter I doubt if he kept to it.  There was canning.  Ah, how delicious the summer kitchen smelled with her peach and pear preserving.  And never since in my life have I tasted the equal of hers.  She made cider and canned it too.  She made her own special Concord grape juice.  She wrapped pears and apples to store in the cold room.  She made chow-chow.  How well I remember sitting oh so quietly behind her rocker once as she gossiped with neighbor ladies while they all shelled beans.  I had never seen a vegetable before as beautiful as the long red pepper.  Although I had been cautioned to leave it alone, I was sure one little taste would not be missed.  I screamed and told Grandma I was poisoned.

What a time Grandma had with me that winter.  John and I stayed with her and went to school!  It was a big house to keep, three stories, but she kept it immaculate so far as I can remember.  For a long time we ate in style off a white table cloth in the big long dining room.  Sometimes Grandma had "sick headaches" and held to her nostrils her smelling salts.  These she kept in a pretty little bottle with a ground glass stopper on the high dining room fireplace mantle.  I was curious.  The "salts" looked like cubed sugar.  How delicious the cubes must taste in their own perfumed syrup.  Why did Grandma just smell of them?  Surely tasting them or eating them would provide a faster cure.  I would see.  So standing on tiptoe like Alice in the Wonderland, I was able to just softly remove the bottle from its resting place.  I removed the cork and took a good strong sniff at first.  Then sat down on the floor, and after regaining my breath, moaned, "Oh, Grandma, come quick, I'm dying."  This gained me the name of "Mettlesome Mattie."

What a grand house it was.  Does a house-proud woman ever know where she leaves off and her house begins?  What grand dreams had persuaded my grandparents to buy this ten-acre place with its three-storied house after their six living children were all married and gone?  Delusions of grandeur?  Or how about the mortgage?  Had the place been a bargain and was it now a bargain no longer?  Was it somebody's white elephant?  Was it my grandparents' white elephant?

The word "mortgage" was new to me.  My parents never discussed money matters in our hearing.  But this new word had one awful sound between my grandparents when Grandpa was on one of his return visits from Wyoming and Montana.  Grandma's voice was big and round.  She had taken elocution.  Grandma always wound up saying, "The Lord will provide."  Outside listening, I knew who the Lord was:  he was "My-son-Will."  Always in any pinch she called on My-son-Will.  And her bachelor son, Uncle Bill, up on his Montana ranch, always came across.

I think the battle was over Grandma's chickens.  He said the feed bill was too high.  And Grandpa's shipping of Montana's wild horses to Missouri, only to ship Missouri mules up to Montana seemed to be no longer the Bonanza it had been at first.  So these two business heads fought it out and got rid of their hang-ups.  I was glad Grandpa wasn't home much.  He was very popular with his other relatives, and no doubt that made him happier.

In front of Grandma's house was the long iron fence.  There was a porch where in summer she set out her plants in treasured heirlooms, until in later years, good women warned her against so doing, as they were "antiques."

Just inside was the "Reception Room."  Grandma knew all the grand names.  To the left was the "Drawing Room" which I never did get around to drawing in.  And back of it was the "Library."  Grandma's secretary sat in that, along with several piles of magazines.  To the right of the Reception Room was the Sitting Room or Parlor, and back of it was the back sitting room, which Grandma used as her bedroom.  Between her bedroom and the library, under the stairs to the third floor, were her closet, a tiny hall, and the bathroom.

My trunk sat in the bathroom.  There was a lone light bulb hanging down.  That was it.  I used to go in there at times, to lift the trunk lid and look at my doll in the top compartment.  I longed to take her out, but she leaked sawdust, and got thinner every time I touched her.  Besides, she was stark naked.

John thought it would be grand to take a bath in the bathroom.  And finally, Grandma gave her consent.  He brought the washtub up from the kitchen, then pumped water from the pump on the first floor back porch.  After heating it in the boiler on the cookstove he carried at least two buckets of the warm water up and around to the bath.  Then he shut the door in my face and took his bath.  He said it was grand.  Then he made me take a bath.  I said it was cold.  Then together, we lugged the tub outside and dumped it off the front porch.

On the third floor was the sewing room and three bedrooms.  I took the one with the best view.  There was a castle on the hill where the poorest girl in school lived, as her father was a drunkard.  Princesses lived in castles, but Ella looked like anything but a princess.  She looked like my doll—or my doll looked like Ella, and I've cared for the name Ella never ever since.

But when springtime came and Grandma let me move back up, I had the most beautiful room in the world, with pink peach trees blooming and singing down the valley.

But before spring, we had winter.  First we moved out of the dining room and ate in the winter kitchen.  The summer kitchen under the hill was now called "the cellar."  Grandma put up heavy curtains to shut off the clammy "butler's pantry."  The "fancy pantry" which housed her best china and the fine silver set she loaned the Negro neighbor lady whenever Mrs. Broron entertained the Circle, was seldom opened.  We pulled our kitchen table closer to the stove every day.  I was sleeping with Grandma now.  John had a cot in the same room.  John and Grandma between them had a time lugging the heavy sewing machine down, but Grandma needed it as I was outgrowing all the pretty dresses my mother had made me.  How well I remember Grandma's wail of surprise and despair over the change in me.  I felt so ashamed of myself.

What a winter!  Who lugged all the coal up those steep stairs from below?  Who lugged the coal up the hill from the coal house below the sacred "slaves' quarters?"  Not the slaves.  I doubt that those people my grandmother's tongue lingered over, had ever been in that particular two-room cottage.  Then came Christmas.  John, who was full of imagination, wanted Christmas in the Drawing Room.  He had his way, though neither Grandmother, nor I, were enthusiastic.  He had promised to do all the work and brought up wood for the fireplace.  He planned to pop corn.  He tried popping it too soon, and the fireplace seemed sluggish.  That particular party was a fizzle.

Grandma prayed a lot.  That I know.  Every night she read her bible.  We asked her to read it to us and she read about John the Baptist.  It wasn't very interesting.  I couldn't make any sense out of it.  We played card games, with Grandma shuffling the cards each time in her apron.  That meant we had to take a lot of time straightening the cards out.  But I'm sure to Grandmother that was a relief as it helped to kill time.  Finally when bedtime came and we tucked ourselves in, Grandma turned at last to her great love and solace, the Psalms.

Then one day, I don't know how it came about, we were living in another house in an entirely different part of town.  We had colds, and Grandma made us taffy with pepper in it.  We had begged for candy and this was what we got.  It may have cured our colds.  It also cured our craving for candy.  It was not the kind our "mother used to make."

Spring was on its way, though winter was not far behind.  We begged to play with the large family of children across the street.  I don't to this day know what was wrong with that family of towheads.  They were healthy, sturdy, happy children, who had made all their own toys, and had made up their own games, but I guess they were considered just plain white trash.  How was I, a little ranch girl glad to play with anybody, to know who was who?  Finally Grandma consented, and we went over.  We had a hilarious good time.  John was wrestling with one of the girls, and I was astraddle the one rope swing with a little boy pushing me, when Grandpa appeared on the scene.  His eyes were red and aflame like a mad-man.  He carried his usual black snake which I think he always used in the sales ring.  He ordered us home and said he would whip us within an inch of our lives.

We didn't know we were bad children.  Then there was Grandma, sturdy on her two legs.  She said, "Don't you dare touch one of Lora's children."

Was Grandma beautiful?  Well, she tried to be.  She faithfully brushed strong Chinese tea into her graying hair every night to keep from looking older.

She had false teeth which clicked when she ate, but so did Grandpa.

It has only been in the last few years that I began to realize what a shock it must have been to our Enoch Arden—or whoever he was, to return to his home and find nobody living in it.  How humiliating to have to find out where his family was from the neighbors.

But my mother never knew, until Grandma had been gone a long time, and I happened to tell about that winter.  She was shocked.  And the more she thought about it the worse she felt.  "Why was I never told before?" she asked sadly.

Religion

We had that pretty white church and the pretty redstone parsonage beside it at Slack.  The community was off to a good start.  We had a Presbyterian minister who preached pre-destination.  We had lots of pretty ladies, including my mother.  The choir was a sight for sore eyes.  I remember the styles.  The high net collars boned to point up the ears, the pointed satin belts, the gored, short trained shirts and the hairdos pompadoured over rats.  I remember Mrs. La Point's hats with birds all tangled up in velvet bows and dotted veiling.  Mr. Powers was the neighborhood gallant.  He said to my mother with elaborate courtesy and dramatic pauses:  "Mrs. Kerns,---Will you tell me---Why---All the good looking women---come---from Iowa?"  Then likely as not he would go over to Mrs. Wallace and repeat the same question, but ending it with ---Missouri.  These were the two states represented chiefly in our community, although Grandmother Burks had been raised a lady in Mississippi.  Why did church attendance and all those functions, such as Christmas and Children's Day finally play out?  Well, to know the country is to know the answer.  Every ranch was isolated behind its hills, and hills were high.  Then you made hay while the sun shone or else.  And in winter you fed your cattle come Sunday same as any other day of the week.  In spring there was too much mud.  In fall was round up and shipping.

But it was good while it lasted.  There were church suppers, and boxes were auctioned off.  There were bazaars which everyone seemed to enjoy, especially the fishing pond, where you wouldn't know what you would pull over the white curtain.

John and I had learned "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep" at our mother's knee, and I remained faithful to this prayer until I was seventeen.  It was because of superstition, I know.  I was afraid if I forgot to say it I would wake up dead.  It was easy to say after I hopped into bed, so might as well.  John had made his prayer too elaborate, blessing all his "lations," each and every one by name instead of in one big lump—worse than counting sheep.  I don't know when he gave that up.  But our father was uneasy about his children growing up ignoramuses, and every Sunday he'd look at us, sniff a little, then threaten, "Tomorrow I'm going to teach you to say the Lords Prayer."  It sounded dreadful and we hoped tomorrow would never come.  But the day came.  Mamma sat rocking Bert.  Dad said:  "John and Jo, come on into the bedroom, I'm going to teach you to say the Lords Prayer.  No Kate, you can't come.  You're too young.  You wouldn't understand.  Now get down on your knees beside the bed.  John, quit sniffing.  I'm not going to spank you.  Take your hands away from your pants.  I'm going to teach you the Lord's Prayer.  Jo quit sitting on your heels.  That's cheating.  Get over on your knees:  Don't spread your skirts out so I can't see you sitting on your heels.  Now let's say the Lords Prayer:  "Are Father whort in heaven.—Hollerd bee thy name.  Repeat after me."

At this point I began to take interest, and thought, "No, I'll never holler at God like the coyotes do cause the world might bust through and where's a fellar goin' and what's he gonna do when the world busts through?"  Papa said:  "Here I forgot, hold your hands this way."  John said, "Ping!"  Dad said, "John this is no shooting match.  Quit aiming at that fly."  Now repeat after me.  "Thy kingdom come thy will be done."  I thought:  "An ace will take a king, and Mamma's bread will be done so then we can eat some with butter and sugar on it."  "Onerth as tis in Heaven."  I thought:  "Earth is dirt.  I hope I don't drop mine butter side down."  "Give us this day our daily bread."  (Mamma bakes twice a week).  "And for give us our sp sp sp against us.  And lead us not into temptation."  (Like old Dock led me right into the creek and got my shoes wet).  "But deliver us from evil."  (Millie Mattox delivers the mail now).  "For thine is the kingdom, and the par and the glory forever, Amen."  (There must be some cards I forgot.  And we say amen so God will know we aren't a coyote).

I don't mean to be irreverent.  I merely wish to point up that Kate was not the only one too young to understand.

Some one had sent us Aunt Polly's Bible Stories for Children which we all liked in a way, although I preferred Cinderella.  And we had a book where a dear youth was standing on a pile of cordwood with his feet tied together and his hands tied behind his back.  Sort of sneaking up behind him was his father holding a huge butcher knife.  It was around that time Kate was about to become a problem child.  She never answered when called and she was always hiding out.  We were not allowed to take books out of the bookcase without permission, but this particular book was often missing.  After futile calling, Mamma would say:  "Jo go find Kate, you always know where to find her."  And I'd go straight behind the house out to the currant bushes and there I'd find Kate on her knees pouring over this picture as the tears rolled down her cheeks.

She became a naughty child, pulling out all the dresser drawers and throwing out the contents, going through the hope chest (which our mother had made for baby clothes), and everywhere I guess, in the cubby hole and press.  I found her in the log room with the big trunk top teetering half open, and Kate herself was teetering over the trunk's sharp edge.  If the trunk lid had fallen shut, Kate could have been cut in two.  I said:  "Kate, what is it you keep looking for?"  She looked at me with big horrified eyes and said:  "I'm looking for the little brother Papa chopped up with the butcher knife."

Education

     John grew up and went to school.  He rode the two miles on Old Peanuts.  It was a round-about way, and half-way there he could be seen again, rounding the Dinwiddee hill, his sturdy legs slapping up and down on Peanut's sides so as not to be late.  He learned all kinds of things, good and bad.  He earned good grades but said:  "Readin's Rotten."

One evening he did not show up.  He did not round the Dinwiddee hill.  The folks phoned around.  No one knew a thing about the boy.  At long last, after supper, and Dad was about to strike out horseback, the dog barked excitedly and here came John.  He explained he had paid the old bachelor up the creek from the schoolhouse a call, and had been fed bear meat.  He had wanted to see the man about becoming a trapper.  They were going into business together, and the old bachelor had given him lots of presents.  John took a collection of well-smoked pipes out of his lunch pail.  He also had some in his pockets.  Before nightfall, about the time we all went out and sat on the cave to howl back at the coyotes, John invited us three pre-schoolers out to smoke the peace pipe with him.  He puffed on a pipe then passed it around and we all sucked on it a while.  Then he took up another pipe and we repeated the ritual, on through quite a string of old pipes.  On the last pipe, John suddenly clutched his stomach and leaned over.  I took only a pretend drag, and passed the piece to Kate who looked slightly green.  Bert lay clutching the earth to keep from falling off and gasped, "Me hick."  I ran to the house and said, "Mamma, Papa, Bert's dead, Kate's dying and something is wrong with John.  And I—."

Well, the next morning John went out to the cave to gather up his loot for later use, but the pipes were not there.  He called his dog and gave him a thrashing and said, "Now you tell me where you buried those peace pipes!"  They were never recovered, although we did, in a way.  We blamed the dog.  And why does it take a person so long to learn the facts of life?

Now, I know dogs hate old pipes and would not touch the things even to bury them.  No—I greatly fear those pipes were used as kindling to start the fire for breakfast.