BPW - 1996 WOMEN IN HISTORY

We are sorry for the delay.... I'd like to thank you for coming out this evening...... give us some of their memories, fun and happy thoughts and comparisons and really grateful to them. I'd like to introduce them from left to right, Adair Barrett, Mildred Porter, I think everybody knows me, Evelyn Garvey and Nellie Bennett. You two are sisters in case you couldn't tell it. And we have something for them from our president, Becky Hammond, who by the way was Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year.

Mildred has volunteered to start so she can get finished

If I can get it over with, I can enjoy the rest of the speeches.

Mildred, if you will

When they asked me first if I would be here tonight, I thought what in the world do I have to say that these gals haven't already read or heard about or knew about. Then I decided, well maybe I could tell a few things that and compare those days to now. So the first thing I thought of was laundry day and my mother on laundry day. Now today we can go to the machine and press a button and the water comes in the machine at the right temperature and you put in a little bit of soap, then you put in your clothes and after they are washed, the little buzzer rings and you can take them out. In the meantime you can go about your business and do whatever you want too. You take the clothes out of the washer, put them in the dryer and how simple. Well my mother's wash day started, at least when I was very small, even before wash day because I can vaugely remember her right at first making her own soap. Now I can't give you the recipe, but I do remember that in the big iron kettle, now whether this kettle was at my home or my grandmothers, I don't even remember that for sure. But it was a big kettle out in the yard, and of course you could build fire underneath it. They used, as I remember it, what we call cracklings that were left over from rendering the lard when you butchered your pigs. There were the cracklings and then there was lye, you add lye, I don't know the proportions and they may have added wood ashes. Anything else, maybe you ladies made some, did you ever?

I never made lye.

Anyway, after this heated enough, they let the fire down and as I remember, in the bottom of the big iron kettle, would be sort of a jelly like or something like that and on top would be about this much soap. Mother would cut it in bars and she would be all ready then with her soap for her laundry. We didn't use this on our faces and hands, but she used it in the laundry. Then when Monday came along, because Monday was usually wash day, you didn't just press a button and let the water fill up the machine. You put the copper boiler on the cook stove. Ours was a coal stove and probably beside it you put a big zinc tub to hold water too. Now if you were lucky, you didn't have to go back out to the back yard or the pump in the yard and turn the handle that pumped that water... they got in the buckets and then you carried both buckets in and filled your wash boiler. My mother was lucky enough, she had cold water in the house because we had a cistern all right, but the cistern was above the house and there was enough pressure that it could put water in the house, so all mother had to do was fill her buckets, carry it to the stove and pour it in the tubs and the boilers until it was full. Then she would take her bar of soap and slice it into the boiler, so that by the time the water was hot, the soap would be melted. Then ofcourse she had again to take her bucket, carry the water from the boiler to her machine, fill the machine and when the machine was full then you put in your clothes. Of course you had these sorted, you washed the white clothes first, after they were washed, you put them in the rinse tub, but then you put in the second tub in the same water and after it was done, the third tub etc. so that you washed all your clothes, clear down to the last pair of overalls in the same water. It wasn't too hard to get the water out, I mean the clothes out of the machine into the first rinse tub because you had this wringer. First the kind of wringer that you had to turn and it would pull the clothes through and put them in the rinse tub. Later on the machines were developed enough that the wringer would work from the machine. This was just fine, if you didn't do like my mother says I did once when I was her little helper. Too little helper, I let my arm go through along with the pillow case and she had to quickly release it. I don't remember this, so it couldn't have hurt very much. I expect it bothered her a little bit. In any case that was not really hard to do. But when you went to take the clothes from the first tub into the second rinse tub, you wrung them out by hand and then out of the second rinse tub into the basket, you wrung those out by hand. Then you took them out to the clothes line, hung them up and there they dried. Now when they were dry, you could bring them in and fold them. Of course the socks and things like that, but you didn't have permanent press in those days and you didn't have knit shirts that your husband wore, they were cotton shirts. They always had to be ironed, so did the dresses and as I said weren't the permanent press material that you could plug in an electric iron and just press a little bit and that was it. You had a number of iron with a removable handle, you put on the kitchen range again which was a coal stove and one by one, you would put the handle on the iron, carry it to the ironing board, iron as long as that iron was hot, then you would have to take it back to the stove and get another one. This was the way you got your ironing done. As I remember it, ladies nearly always had part of the ironing in the basket waiting to be done, because it took a day or so to get the ironing done.

Well, then there was Sunday, and of course it wasn't always a day of rest for my mother, she always saw to it when she could that the buggy was, that the horse was hooked up to the buggy amd she took us kids in the buggy, the three miles or so down to Coventry to Sunday School.

The men didn't find it all that easy either as far as that is concerned, when the men got ready to do the haying they couldn't just step on the swather and or the starter or press the button whichever they do to start it and in one process the hay is mowed and cut. Then they couldn't step in the bailer and have the hay bailed and another machine that acted like a forklift and lifted the hay to carry it where it was suppose to be stored. The men had to catch the horses, harness them up, hook them up to the mowing machine, mow the hay, you can tell that I was raised on a ranch, mow the hay then after that was done, the hay had dried a little, they had to hook it up, another to the hay rake and before you got through, then of course you had to, we had an overshot stacker so you had to have the bull rakes that you brought the hay into the stacker and someone on the stack to see that the hay was arranged right so that the stack built right and was solid enough that it didn't catch all the rain all winter long. So the men didn't find it all that easy.

Threshing was even harder because it took a much bigger crew and while the men were out doing their hard work, of course the women were in the house, the hot house cooking on that coal stove. She didn't go to the deep freeze and get her meat and let it thaw or get the chicken out or whatever. If there was chicken the thing that you were serving today, she, my mother was always lucky because my father would kill the chickens, but that left us to pick the chickens, take out the inards, get them ready, cook them for the meals. So that the comparison of something that my mother went through.

My father too, as I said didn't find it all easy.

As far as school was concerned, when it got time for us to go to school, we didn't climb on a supposedly warm school bus and ride to school. We had to catch the horse, saddle it, since there were well three when I started to school but my brother started, another brother started a couple of years later. There were three of us for two horses or four of us for two horses. My two brothers older than I always got to ride in front, I had to climb up on the back, the back of the saddle. That wasn't too bad. I was always happy to be out there riding the horse, it always seemed to me like the boys got to do all of the fun things, that I had to be in the house, peeling potatoes or washing dishes. But anyway, I was always happy to be on the horse even if I did have to ride back of the saddle. There were little leather straps I could hang on to if we decided to gallop a little.

In the winter time though getting on the saddle was a little more of a struggle because, of course sometime the days were pretty cold and girls didn't wear trousers those days. But that is Jeans, trousers, we had to have our long handles on of course and socks, heavy socks over that your long slick dress, coat, maybe a sweater underneath this, your stocking cap and then over your feet, you had buckle overshoes. Well try to get on a horse with all that, but we managed it.

It was a one room school we went to at Coventry about two and half, three miles. Now you may wonder why I'm a little hesitant to say whether we lived two and half or three miles from Coventry. That was east of Coventry or maybe three and half or four miles to Norwood. I can't tell you for sure because the roads were so different then. What I mean is, the road followed the fence line and you had a narrow, we call it a lane today that were just dirt roads, they were not gravelled. You went a quarter of a mile from our house, you went a quarter of mile this way, half mile this way, a half mile this way, a mile this way and that is the way you got to town. I don't know, it must have been in the oh maybe 1920s I suppose when they finally decided that they needed to convince the farmers to let them have a rite-of-way. I don't know how they convinced them, they may just have coerced them to selling a rite-of-way because very often it was right in the middle of their best field, but it did straighten out the road a lot.

But what I started to stay was getting to school and we got to School at Coventry, this three and half miles or so, it was just fine when the teacher had gotten there and had had good luck starting the fire.

But if you got there and the school house was all full of smoke because the fire didn't go that morning, it was a little bit cold when you had to open all the doors and windows and let the smoke out.

Boys were boys then as they are now. Maybe you would like your little son to close his ears, I don't know for sure because I can remember, I don't remember it, but I remember being told that when I was a first grader, of course I liked school, so they wouldn't dare tell me this. They didn't tell the second graders either because I'm sure they thought we would probably tell the teacher and I expect that we would have, I don't know. They decided that it would be fun to change names, they traded names. So Al Williams, for instance told the teacher his name was Loy Mock, Loy Mock told the teacher his name was some other name, Gord Williams or something. How she ever got them straightened out, I suppose because we little ones called them by their right names and maybe when Mama came to school, they found out.

So the small school did have advantages. It was when you had a one room school, there were the advantages. I was the only student in my class when I was a first grader and I loved to read. I was interested in learning to do my numbers too so that when the teacher was busy with somebody else, I didn't have to be slowed down, I could go as fast as I wanted to because there was always a seventh or eighth grader who could hear me read or hear me do my math or whatever. And I could go just as fast as I wanted too so I was able to make the first two grades in one year. You can't do that in the school today, they are all held back, the same speed.

When we got ready to go to high school, we didn't have a bus the first years either. We lived four miles as I said about that from Norwood and the people from, the children from Coventry, I mean from Redvale, by that time the schools had consolidated and the bus did take the school down that way, but when we back, take the children down that way, but they didn't have the bus to take us to high school at Norwood

The Redvale high school students drove and they had room for one so my parents let me ride with them while my brothers rode horseback. That was fine until it snowed and the wind blew and blew the roads shut. Because the equipment for cleaning up the roads then was not quite as efficient as it is now and believe me when the snow blew the roads shut, they stayed shut for several days.

My brothers and I, being closer to school decided we didn't like that idea of having to miss that much school, so instead of having my brothers ride the horse, they thought it would be good if I rode the horse, and I was happy with that because I was always happy when I was on a horse and I could take the lariet, pull my brother on the skies behind me and he could hang on to the rope, pull his other brother behind him and that is the way we went to school several different days. Are high school students that interested to get there today, I wonder.

One other thing that might be a little interesting, I don't know, when I started to college, at the time that I started, you I think maybe that I was the last group who could still get a teaching, elementary teaching certificate with just two years of college. Since I had started to school in the years of the depression, I was working my way through school. It was a good idea, it seemed like, to take that two years and get an elementary teaching certificate so that is what I did. Which was fine, I got through the two years fine, then it came time to get a job. Now, in those days there was a county superintendent, not just the superintendent of each of the schools, but there was a county superintendent who helped the rural, small rural schools, rural teachers however they needed us and the county superintendent had a vacancy in one of the schools near Montrose, it was Coal Creek or Peagreen or one of the small schools out of Montrose and she was going to take me for an interview. We got to the school board member and he was out in the field, but he had asked his wife to do the interviewing. That would have been fine except that she didn't know anymore about interviewing than I knew about taking an interview.

I was extremely shy, so she and I sat and looked at each other. That was about it. Mrs. Donagan tried to help us out, bless her heart, but it wasn't long before she took me back to the bus and I went back to Gunnison without a job. I doubt that I would ever have been hired if she hadn't finally decided to just send me the contract and I signed the contract and sent it back. That is the way I got my first job.

I don't remember too much about the early years of teaching, I do remember that after two or three weeks, the students decided it would be fun to give the teacher a surprise party. So here they came at recess, the last recess of the day with watermelons, and centelope and whatever they could find like this and cookies. They put it on my desk. This of course called for a party and we had a party the rest of the afternoon. That was fine, but that was, in fact, so fine that it was nice to try it again the next Friday. I soon got the idea that this was going to have to be stopped, I don't quite know how we did, maybe the fruit, the stuff all froze in the garden and there wasn't anymore to have parties with, I don't remember.

I went to, I didn't teach those years at Maple Grove, went to school

in the summer time to make up my Junior year of college, but then that seemed like that was just going to take forever before I could get through so I decided I had better see if I couldn't get a job at home, so I did, at Shenendoah and I could stay home and not have any cost there, I could ride the bus down to Shenendoah so there wasn't any transportation cost. I taught then the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth there. In the fifth grade, I had this cute little kid, he was red headed and his hair was sort of uneven, freckled faced, so freckled faced that his whole face was just almost a freckle, big owl eyes, he was a cute kid and whenever he wanted to concentrate, his hand, his finger was going like this in his hair, so by the end of the day he had little hair sticking out. He was a cute kid as I said and I can remember trying to teach long division to his class, fifth grade class. Here he sat with his hair hand going like this. When I'd finish explaining just how you did this, I always said, are there any questions? Well, of course there were questions, the first time and I expected that so I went over it again, very carefully, so everyone would know what to do, but Olin didn't. He wanted me to explain again.

So this time, he sat there with his finger going like this and he was just looking at me and concentrating. Oh he was listening and I thought, oh boy, he's really got it this time, I know he has it. So I asked, are there any questions and here he said, Miss Jacobs what makes the light shine on your glasses that way? So maybe it's time for me to quit and let you ask questions and maybe the light won't be shining on my glasses.

Who is next?

Nellie Bennett

My name is Nellie Rice Bennett and my thoughts were to tell you how my folks happen to come into this country. My dad's name was Frank George Rice and he was born in Haley, Idaho, March 9, 1890 and died at Nucla, Colorado April 4, 1965. He married Dessie Adel Sage on April 29, 1914 in Nucla, Colorado. Dessie Adel Sage was born May 28, 1891 in Julesburg, Colorado. Dessie came to Pinion, Colorado to the colonies with her parents when she was five years old. To this family was born four girls, Nellie, Viola, June and Evelyn and we were all born here in Nucla, Colorado. I was born June 28, 1916 at Nucla, or out here on Second Park at my Grandma Sage's place and I married Asa Lee Bennett on November 21, 1934. He was also born in Nucla, Colorado on December 18, 1913 and died August 6, 1978 in Nucla. To this union was born two boys and four girls, Leland, Vonsel, Betty, Bonnie, Elaine and Hazel.

I went to school in Second Park, first year of school, I guess I just slept. Eight years that I went to eighth grade in that and this lady was Clara Rodgers and she didn't particulary care she had so many other kids to take care of in school, so I just laid my head down on the desk and went to sleep. So I didn't learn too much that first year. So the next year, my sister, Viola started to school, she was only five years old, so we went to school, all through school together. She graduated out of high school, but I didn't because I decided to get married.

Anyway I have six children, eighteen grandchildren, thirty-four great-grandchildren, four step-great-grandchildren, two great great grandchildren and three step great great grandchildren and I have lived here all my life.

Asa Lee Bennett was born in Nucla, December 18, 1913, died August 6, 1978. He was born to William Lee Bennett and Noma Wood. They were married February 27, 1913. William Lee Bennett's father was Abraham Lincoln Bennett of Norwood, Colorado and his mother's name was Ada Belle Elkons. Noma Wood..... Clarence where Joseph Wood and Rachel Lee who came to the west end of Colorado in about 1889. Asa had two brothers and one sister. Asa lived and worked here all his life. He was a cowboy and worked in the uranium mines and as a child, he worked hard, even worked on the Colorado Coop Ditch all his life. He started working on the ditch as a child, driving a team or horses. He later drove all the pieces of machinery for the ditch company.

Evelyn Garvey

I'm the youngest of the Rice girls. I was born August 12, 1924 in Nucla at Second Park. My grandparents was Martin and Flora (crap-saddle) Sage. They came to Pinion in 1896 to help build the ditch, Tabequach Park, later named Nucla, Colorado. My grandfather was a blacksmith and after a few years at Pinion they moved to Coventry, Colorado where my mother went to school. The originally came from Julesburg, Colorado in a covered wagon. They had Ivy, Leo, Dessie, and Nellie with them, leaving twin daughters at Julesburg already married. Winnie was born at Pinion and was the first baby born at Pinion. Later the Sage family bought eighty acres on Second Park from Metcalf.

My father came from Idaho Springs, Colorado about 1909, I don't know if it was 1909 or a little later and bought the other eighty acres that Metcalf owned on Second Park. Ivy married Metcalf and moved to Florida. My parents, Frank and Dessie Rice met on Second Park at the ranches and married April 29, 1914. As Nellie said, Just Nellie, Viola, June and I were born all out there. She wasn't born in the house that the rest of us was because it wasn't built. They were living in a tent at that time so she was born at her grandmother's house.

We all went to Second Park school until the eighth grade. That is everyone except me and I went to the fourth grade there then they closed the school and I also rode horseback to Nucla to school. My fondest memory of the Second Park school house is the Easter picnic and the dances that all of us got together and did everything. I barely remember that my mother played the pump organ at the school house and my grandfather played the fiddle.

I also have a post card that... they were asked to come to Coventry to play for a dance too. The post card was to Miss Dessie Sage. I think that Mildred probably remembers the dances up there too. The food and the fun was good. Then Nucla built a dance hall, one of the first buildings in Nucla, it was at the top of the hill where the court house and city hall are now. It was used for all the gatherings in the community, we had silent movies, funerals, graduations, weddings and most everything that went on was held at the town hall up here. Every one came in wagons with the whole families with quilts. We had hot bricks and stuff in the wagon to keep your feet warm and what not. Kids had lots of fun jumping up and down in the wagon, some of us fell out and got run over and a few things. Anyway the dancing lasted all night. At midnight we had supper served, of course no one went home until the sun came up and it was light enough to get in your wagon and head for home. Of course the horses knew the way home, whether the rest of us was able to make it or not. We had wonderful times at the town hall and that was probably the worst thing that Nucla didn't do, was build back the Town Hall because it was a great family place. People didn't have to have TV or anything like that then. Our entertainment was all made at home or we all went up there, like I said and danced had so much fun.

Anyway, you got home in time to do the chores and breakfast. Children danced, mothers, fathers, grandfathers and all the neighbors danced with you. We all learned to dance probably when we were just able to walk.

The men drank their booze outside and the ladies stayed inside with the children. Usually a fight came along, sometime before sunup when they all got liquored up. Women and children had to stay inside, but could look out the window, but we were never allowed to go out there.

Later, cars came to Nucla and it was easier to go and come for groceries, meetings and dances and what not.

They had a sawmill here in Nucla, a creamery, a flour mill, a bank and a dentist, drug store and Mercantile and two doctors. The day I was born, August 12, 1924, there was two boys also born in the area. Dr. Nordum was my doctor and Dr. Keeting was at Charlie Rices delivering Walter Guire. Mr. Wib Cooper was delivering his own boy, Ned Cooper at Ute. We all grew up at Nucla and went to school together.

I remember the amature hours that we had at the Town Hall, I don't know whether we had dances with it or not, but seems like we had a dance then we would take time out and have an amature hour or something. The one I really remember, two or three of them, was Imagene Fagan, she had this reading about an old car and what not, oh she could give that so good.

Here, we had a class reunion, I think, about ten years ago and Imagene come and I talked her in to getting up and saying this. She said she hadn't said it for years, but she did a good job of it.

The other thing that I remember was Pat Daniels, he sang the Blue Tail Fly which was so interesting and such a good singer. Flora Ray's sister, she had a... done The Barnacle Bill the Sailor. She had a Sailor suit on one side, a dress on the other side. She stood this way when she was the sailor, this way when she was the lady and she really performed that very well.

Then we had our own bands, Ted Daniels, Bert Delpline, Jack and Marge Kissinger, Glen Case and I'm sure there was others that probably played but I can't remember. But anyway, there no lack of entertainment at Nucla at that time, lots of talent. As I have wrote here which I have already said, I think the biggest mistake was when they didn't build the old town hall back when it burned. One night we had a dance, and it was really hot stove there we don't know whether that stove exploded and caused the fire, but we think that someone set the fire to the town hall because they didn't want us dancing and raising hell in Nucla anymore.

I went to school in the old after we come from second park, there was an old wooden building up where the high school is now. I think I was in the fourth grade when I come up here. We went in that wooden building to grade school there. Then one time where Dr. Bichon lives that use to be the livery stable for the sawmill and they kept their horses and stuff in there, but some reason or other they needed some more school building so they remodeled this livery barn into a school house and we went to school in that which later remodeled over into a nicer home. I think by the Maupins, but I'm not sure if that is who did. I remember Rosy Garber and some of the Maupins living there after that.

Then we went to school in the bottom of the elementary school, the high school and the grade school both and during the, whenever they had WPA and what not, they built the gymnasium onto the grade school. They also built this rock building up at the high school for the high school. Just when the years when that was I don't know for sure, like Nellie says 1935, 36 cause I know Ace worked with the WPA and at that time we had men joining the CCC camps and what not to make work in this area for people when they built roads and all kinds of different things.

When we had sports, we had to go out to the Biglins field out across the big ditch, there where the Sutherlands have their shop now for track, football and all that because we didn't have a atheletic field here. We had a rodeo grounds out in Spraglin Park. Bent Blackburn a bunch of the cowboys all get together, Coopers, Brices and all of them built this big rodeo grounds out there and oh what fun we had. Every body come off the mountain on fourth of July or about that time and we had the big rodeo, then the big dance afterwards at the town hall. That is where I met my husband when I was fourteen years old was at the rodeo and the dance. Of course I chased him for six years before I caught him. Then we were married January 20, 1945, fifty-one years ago. We lived at Rock Creek for two years, then bought the Joe Weimer place in June 1947 where we lived for 49 years and recently moved to second park, this January.

We had five children, John, Jim, Loraine, Stanley and Tommy Joe. We spent our life ranching, cowboying, jeeping and having fun. You couldn't make a living on the ranch alone, so Tom worked as a heavy equipment operator in many, many places and in the mines, part time. Later he worked full time for Montrose County, for seventeen years before retiring back to the farm.

I kept busy raising the family, farming, cowboying, sold McNess products, Stanley products and Cameo paints to help out. That is my life, I guess.

Adair Peterson Barrett

I was born in 1931 in Barren, Nebraska at my grandmas house. When I was two, we moved to another town called Ogalala. I can't remember very much. It seems like the things I remember well have to do with food because my dad had a shoe shop and my mom would stay home in the normings, then take him a hot lunch. She would make her own bread and put butter on it and then hot roast. I got to carry his lunch, you know and I would pinch those little pieces of bread with the hot butter on and by the time daddy got it, it looked like a mouse had been in it. I can't remember a whole lot, that is why I was so glad when I found out Jenine was coming because she remembered a lot better than I, so I am going to call on her every once in a while.

I have to get to New Mexico first, I'm still in Nebraska. But my dad was a shoe repairman and the back of his shop had a door that had a lock on it. We had a little hole drilled in it and every once in a while, because just outside that door was a stage of a movie theater. They wouldn't let us go except on Saturday afternoons, we could go for a dime or fifteen cents, something like that and saw the... and the Green Hornet and all these episodes that would be continued next week and so when we couldn't go, we were in there reaming that little hole so that we could look through there. You can imagine what the screen looked like when you are on the front row. We sure did have fun with that. They had talent shows too, it would be in the theater. We would open the door very quietly and just set on the wings there and get to see all the acts.

Then there was a bakery right next door that made marvelous twisted rolls with yellow frosting. The town that we lived in had a square and on Saturday nights, the farmers came to town. I didn't like staying in town, but I did like the food, because daddy had something called Dutch lunch, that you could make all these sandwiches and put anything on that you wanted too, like little Dagwoods, I guess and then we could get a bottle of pop, because Coca-Cola was out in little bottles for a nickle we got a pop. Oh that was so nice. Dad and Mom worked together in the shoe shop. Mother said Daddy was so bashful that when they first started, any customer come in, he'd run to the back room and Mother would have to wait on the customer and then when they would leave, he would come out and do the work

There is a big streak of bashfulness down through my family. You wouldn't know that I was bashful, but I was once and I can remember the very first day I got to be a libraian at the high school, I was so happy. I just wanted to be a libraian so badly and they had a teachers table and a cheese box painted white, you know the kind like Velveeta comes in now, but it was a wooden box painted white. Mrs. Murphy had all these signs up saying don't do this, don't chew your gum, don't. I said, oh my I think I'll take down those signs. I'll tell you by the time I was retiring I was ready to put those signs right back up. I did enjoy my days in the schools

Lets see, getting me back to, everybody else was smart and had cards and here I'm on the cuff. Pretty soon they will be pulling me out of cane over here.

Gordon did wonderful things, he had a great life. His Mom had him hoeing weeds, his brothers worked outside in the fields, but Gordon had to stay inside. There were like only three of a family of seven that lived and Gordon was... as Mary Neff said, the least one. He didn't get to go very far, but boy you talk about how I figured out how to get food, he would figure out how he could get outside to play baseball. Wayne Porter lived a couple of doors away for a while and Bill Bray lived where Penney lives now and Gordon said, whenever he could get a chance, they were out there tossing the ball until Gordon---. And he would have to go back in,

When I got called the other day, I said why did Cris do that, why do they want me. Gordon and I started talking about what we did and oh it was so much fun, it was just like playing ball. I'd bounce one on him and he'd bounce one back and we just had a good time, but he had to work a lot harder than I did. I mean a town family had to, I mean a country family had to work harder.

In the school when I was in Nebraska, I went through to the third grade. I can remember hectrograph. Does any teacher remember that? It is a little pen, of kind of __________ like substance and you took your paper, like if you wanted trace a picture, you took this purple pencil and you went over and over and over over over until it was really purple, then you would turn it upside down, then you would wet it and it would get really wet, then you would pull it up and hope that it was dark enough and you would do that for each child in your class. I would be teacher's helper and I would be over there and you would have to turn them back upside down because they would curl as you pulled them off. They did Maypoles with May baskets and they didn't do that so much when I got here. They carried to a great extent there. With the kissing, you know you put the basket on the door step, then they would chase you. Oh that was fun.

When I went to school, well I was fifth.... years old and had to go and get that small pox shot. I had to go down in the basement in the lunch room and they were showing a projector, jump, jump, jump, jiggle, jiggle and it was Betty Boop. So we sat and watched this until we were jabbed with our needle. But when I left there at the end of the third grade. There was one time I thought I could cuss. My mom had just taken a bath and was standing fixing her hair and she was just in her peticoate and panties, you know and I thought I can say a cuss word, I was just outside the door and you know what, I didn't get by with it. My mom came right out of that house and after me and thats when they washed peoples mouths out with soap.

Well when we got to, I moved to at the end of the third grade to Tucumcarie, New Mexico and that is where I met Genine. I had to go by her house to go to school. This was in the fourth grade. I went over to sharpen my pencil, and something happened to my leg. It would no work, it just hurt so bad and so the teacher asked if anybody knew this person and Genine raised her hand. She helped me home, me dragging my leg. School let out, I think it was for lunch or something, anyway Genine got me so far and then her mom, her step-mom came out she went on in her house and then I got on down to the corner and then some lady came out, I remember the Euclaliptus tree or what kind of tree that had those twisted bean things. I was standing there, Caltalpa, well a lady came out and helped get me home. That only happened to me two other times in my life, where that, I don't know, had a bone in my leg that wouldn't work. But that is when I met Genine.

We were in Girl Scouts together and I remember that was something that we did during the---