When I started first grade at Cuthand School, I took my reader home every night, and with Annie’s help, read several lessons ahead. I’d always longed to read, but by now had another incentive, although a secret one. The inside toilet walls at the school were covered with hundreds of words and sentences, all tantalizing out of my illiterate reach. Continue reading
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Excerpt from Kathleen’s 1940’s Memoir
Though I was raised during the depression, with parents who farmed and probably never had more than a few dollars in their possession at one time, I never did without. My mother, Lizzie’s canned goods were stacked up high against the bedrooms walls. She sewed everything our family wore except overalls and pants. My father, Roscoe repaired Continue reading
Sylvia Faun ( A 1930s Memoir)
I adored Miss Billie, my beautiful first grade teacher and hungered for her approval. I strived for perfect work, admiring every thread she wore, her floral scent, her ladylike jewelryI, and her kind, modest manner. Heaven could have granted me no greater wish than to grow up and be just like Miss Billie. And above all this, Miss Billie was fair and Continue reading
Ruth Elaine and the Exploding Baby (Part I of II 1930s Memoir)
I was praying for salvation as the class suffered along with Luther Simpson through a page of Jane and Fluff the Kitten. The second-graders pretended to work on their sums across the aisle. in our shared classroom in 1935 in East Texas. Little Ruth Elaine Lawson, a girl I’d had always found dull, dropped her head to her desk and snuffled Continue reading
Working Things Out With Chris
original art by Kathleen Holdaway Swain
Chris was the meanest kid around. He threw rocks, kicked his dog, stole lunch money out of desks, broke in line for lunch, and was sassy to the teacher. He had a giant pile of sand in his yard and dared anyone come near it. All the kids avoided him.
This was a problem for me and my brother Billy when Mother visited Miss Alice, Chris’s next door neighbor. We sure didn’t want him to spot us so we always played in the far side of her shady yard. One day, we were making villages of stick houses with mossy fields and sandy tracks for roads when, out of nowhere, POW!! A rock popped me on the head, knocking me goofy. When I quit seeing stars, I heard Chris laughing, “Ha! Made you look!”
Look nothing!! He nearly made me dead!! We jumped up and chased him, but he left us in his dust, fuming! We had to come up with a plan to get that creep. We puzzled and plotted the rest of the day. He was the biggest, fastest, meanest bully around, so we’d have to outsmart him. We decided to spy on him the next time Mother went to visit Miss Alice.
We got our big chance the next day. He glared when we went in her gate, just waiting to torture us. The ladies decided to drink their tea in the backyard. Even Chris knew he couldn’t us get at us with adults around, so he skulked back to his own yard and kicked at his dog to cheer himself up. We lay on our stomachs and crawled into the bushes to spy on him as he stomped over to where his mother was working in her flower bed.
Chris was even mean to his mother. He sassed her when she told him to help, stepped on her flowers, sprayed the cat with water, and kicked over the flower pots. Suddenly, he went crazy jumping and screaming. When she finally caught up with him, she said, “Chris, it’s nothing but a little bitty frog!!! He can’t hurt you!! Just stay still and I’ll get him. I don’t know why you’re so scared of a little bitty frog.”
That big bully was bawling like a baby. “Get him off! Get him off! Get him off!!! I hate frogs!” We had our plan!
We headed to the pond and collected a few frogs as soon as we got home. The next morning at school I slipped in to the class room and got to work hiding frogs. I put a couple in Chris’s desk, a couple in his pencil box, and slipped a really nice one in the pocket of the jacket hanging on the back of his desk. I barely finished before the first bell rang. Chris strolled in after the last bell. All I had to do now was wait. I did wish Billy could be here for the fun.
The frogs stayed quiet as we all settled down. I kept waiting for the fun to start. After a while, I got involved in a story the teacher was reading and forgot about the frogs. That’s when it happened. “Ribbitt! Ribbitt! Ribbitt!” We all started giggling.
“Who did that?” Miz McZumley was not amused.
“Ribbitt!! Ribbitt!!” Kids guffawed! The class was out of control.
Miz McZumley whacked her ruler down on her desk. “That does it! Storytime is over! Get out your pencils and workbooks.”
You can imagine what happened next. Two fine frogs jumped out of Chris’s desk. He screamed and ran in place. The whole class was hysterical as they chased frogs. The teacher was furious at Chris for bringing frogs to class. He blubbered a pathetic defense “I didn’t!! I didn’t! I hate frogs!” Two more frogs jumped out of his desk, looking for their buddies.
“Then where did all these frogs come from?” She wasn’t convinced. Chris got paddled and was sentenced to pick up trash at recess. I couldn’t wait for him to put on his jacket!!! My bully problems were over. There were going to be a lot of frogs in Chris’s future.
Things Mothers Do
aI miss all the things my mother used to do for me. Even though she had to get up to a freezing house at five-thirty in winter to do it, she always had a hot breakfast on the table when we got up, usually hot biscuits, eggs, fresh milk, home-made jam or preserves, and either grits or oatmeal. Like most kids, I didn’t want it, but she insisted. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!” After the whirlwind of getting the older kids on the bus, she’d wash, iron, clean, sew, tend the garden, and when she finished her own pleasant tasks, do whatever extra things Daddy had to help her pass the time, all between taking care of however many of the children might be babies or toddlers. Continue reading
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