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Show TIIK STOKY THUS FAR: Amos Croy, who hart served In the civil Wir ns a sergeant, wns on of the covered wan on pioneers from Ohio, who settled on homo-stead homo-stead land near M;irvsville, Missouri. There ho met and won Susan Sewell, a daughter of another settler, who lived twelve miles away. Their early years were spent In building the farm from tho ground up, one-room log home, sod barn, new orchard, well and outbuildings. Ho nils were never considered by tho original settlers, but new arrivals Insisted, In-sisted, so community roads and a school was added to the community. Some i still went to town by way oT the trails. I It was shorter to cut through over the (arms than g by the road. I CHATTER II j j With a baby coming, a one-room ! home would not do, so Uncle Jim and Uncle Dexter, and probably an-! an-! other uncle, came In and a bedroom was attached. And there I was born , and there the room still stands. It was a shock, a few years ago, when ; I went back and found the room was being used as a henhouse. ' I find myself hesitating to mention men-tion the year, because it all seems so fearfully long ago. It wasn't. You'd bo surprised to see how spry I am. It was really the year Brooklyn Bridge was built. There! ; And here are some other things i that came in that year: the old Wal-j Wal-j dorf-Astoria was opened, the last I spike was driven in the Northern I Pacific and Joseph Pulitzer bought ! the New York World. And this was the year Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi" appeared. The new room was a good hospital. hos-pital. Aunt 'Mandy Sewell drove up and stayed a week and the event went off all right. It was not long until my mother was up and doing the washing and baking and cooking and things were back to normal. I am sometimes asked where I got my first name, and if it was because be-cause my parents loved the blind poet. It wasn't quite that romantic. I was named for the township in Ohio where my father came from. I was not given a middle name. A child's first memory is, I believe, be-lieve, usually about people. My first memory is about my mother and a wholly unimportant one. We were walking in the orchard and I picked up an apple and put it in the pocket of my dress. The apple became caught was tight in the pocket a tragedy to me and my mother worked the apple out. I expect psychiatrists psy-chiatrists could explain something or other by that. But I can't My next memory is of a hole In the living-room floor. The floor tilted tilt-ed a little and my father had bored an auger hole so that when my mother scrubbed, the water would drain off. I would try to look through the hole and would wonder what was on the other side. And I always have wondered what was on the other side. And now a confused memory, one quite a bit more involved. It was that something dreadful was happening. happen-ing. And indeed it was. My father came riding one of the plow horses in from the field at a gallop and leaped off, opened the gate, and let them go in the barn lot with the harness har-ness on. Then he came running to the house and we all got into the cyclone cave and sat wrapped in quilts. Now and then Pa would lift ,up the doors and look out. When we finally came out, the barn had been blown away and one of the horses killed. So destructive are the cyclones cy-clones of this section, and so sharply sharp-ly defined are they, that this one had swept through the orchard my father and mother had set out, and had mowed half of it down and left the other standing. And there it was, all my early days, the half-down half-down half-up orchard, the scarred and twisted trees. My mother used to talk about "her" orchard. When she wanted to rest she would take her chair with, the leather bottom Pa had woven and go' out and sit under one of the trees. The Sewells made another run and the barn was rebuilt. I remember (another trifling flash) sitting on a joist and watching Uncle Sewell mortise' a hole. I developed a deep affection for that barn, for barns do things to you. I do not remember my first day at Knabb School, except the disgrace dis-grace I got into. But I can still see the schoolhouse. That, however, is easy for it is still much as it was then. I've often read of "the little red schoolhouse," but I never saw one. In our section, all country schoolhouses were white, and for that matter, they still are. There it was a coal house in the yard, an iron pump, a cyclone cave, and, at the back of the lot, two small structures with half-moons in the sides. Two or three horses would be tied to hitching-posts for the scholars who lived too far away, or were too small to walk. When it was time for school to take up, the teacher came to the door and rang a hand-bell and that was the end of it. The only difference in the school-house school-house between my day and now is that someone, with advanced ideas on education and eyestrain, decided that all light should come from the south, so the north windows were closed up. The children seem a bit blinky-eyed. Horses still chomp at the hitch rack the family car mustn't be tied up. The coal house still stands, but n new kind of stove has come in. It is full of coils and has all sorts of fancy devices, hut I suspect the big boys don't get to go out so often for a scuttle of coal. And Instead of having every scat taken up, there are now only half a dozen tots, tots too small to be toted oil to town by the school board bus. But back to the disgrace. The boys seemed like giants, and I was afraid of them. When recess time came, the big girls must have seen my uneasiness, for they took me to their backhouse to relieve myself. When I returned, the boys were waiting, and taunted me until I felt I was disgraced for life. I think it was the first time I realized the world is made up of two sexes and never shall they meet ... at least In certain places. When school dismissed of an afternoon, after-noon, the scholars would come out and some would start one direction and some another. Then I would start north and pretty soon I would come to the top of a hill and there would be the Croy farm. That was the way all farms were spoken of. The Newt Kennedy farm, the Scott farm, the Willhoyte farm; they had personalities just as people have. Sometimes a family would move away, but their place was still called the Duncan farm, or the Trullinger form. It took a long time to call a place by the He was on his way to feed the hogs. name of the new people. If the man was a tenant, the situation was about hopeless. Life was hard during the week. But what a wonderful day Sunday was! We got up the same time as usual. But there was a different tempo. Pa got up more leisurely, and started the fire in the kitchen stove. Pa would pump a bucket of water for Ma, start the kitchen stove going, then start for the barn lot. As I lay in bed, or dressed, I could follow his progress by the sounds. First there would be the creaking of the barn door and a whinny of welcome from the horses, then a stallkicking, so eager were they to be fed. The sound of Pa scooping up the corn, then the shutting of the barn door; this meant he was on the way to feed the hogs. ' There would be a dreadful uproar as the hogs saw him coming. The nearer he got, the worse the noise; the sound of the hogs fighting among themselves. Abruptly the uproar would die away and peace and contentment would descend upon the hog lot: the hogs were feeding. He would go to the steer yard and there would be the sound of corncobs snapping as the steers followed fol-lowed him. Then the sound of corn being poured into the troughs and the soft thud of the cattle as they bumped sides crowding up to tha troughs. Now and then a steer would give a grunt; that meant one steer had chugged another with his head. With the horses and steers fed. Pa would unhook the windmill. There would be a sharp clang as the gears meshed, then a whirring as the wind laid hold of the blades. Then I could hear him coming to the house; no time for lazing now, and I would spring into my pants. Pa didn't think much of anybody who couldn't get dressed by the time the stock was fed. My mother would be up, putting corncobs and coal into the kitchen range. By that time Pa would be at the kitchen door. No one in our house ever said good morning. But Pa would say: "Susan, we've got a dead pig." Mother would say, "One of the strong ones?" "No. Old Blackie's titman." Then a feeling of relief. We'd take our buckets and start for the cow lot, Pa and Ma walking I ahead, and me bringing up the rear, for I hated to work. We'd get our stools down from the cracks In the fence and It wouldn't bo long before there would be the sound of milk pinging. Pa's would be coming com-ing very fast, Ma's next, and corny ing pretty slow would be mine. After a time the milking would be over and l'a would lake the two heavy buckets, and I'd take the next heaviest, heavi-est, and Ma the lightest, and we'd start for the house and breakfast, me a bit ahead now. Sunday morning was bathing time and, after breakfast, Pa would bring in the washtub and put it on the kitchen floor and fill it from the reservoir. res-ervoir. Then Pa would retire to grease the "hack," and I would read and Ma would take her bath. Pa would coma in and wash his hands in the pan on thejback porch, empty Uic tub and fill it again, and Ma would go into the other room to write to relatives, while I'd still be reading and dreading Die bath call. We'd hear Pa splashing around, and nftorwhile he'd come with his suspenders hanging down and walking on his toes so as not to spot the lloor, and call, "Homer!" I'd give a groan and carry out his water and (ill the tub again, and be in and out in no time at all. Pa would get down the big harvester har-vester calendar and study the dates with circles around them. Then he'd say, "Well, by next Sunday we ought to have a new calf." It wouldn't be long till time to start to church, and pretty soon Pa and I would be standing beside the hack, and Ma would come out with her Bible and her response leaflets. Ma would sit in front with Pa and I'd sit in the back. They'd talk more now than any other time; once in while Pa would turn and give ma good advice. We'd look to see if the neighbors had started to church. If they were hitching up, Pa'd wave at them, or shake his buggy whip. Some o) the neighbors didn't go to church at all. Ma always dropped her volcfl when she spoke to them, and Pa would say, "They'll pay for it sometime." some-time." The men sat on one side and th women on the other; the little boyj sat with their mothers and the big boys sat In the back, whispering and making faces out of the knots in the seats. Now and then some ol the big boys would carve their initials, ini-tials, but it was pretty well understood under-stood they were going to hell. Sometimes Some-times I'd feel sorry for them; then I'd think the fools deserved it. The preacher would drone along, now and then giving the Bible a whack. Now and then a mud-dauber would follow him; but the eyes ol the men or the women wouldn't; not of the girls. Sometimes two mud-daubers mud-daubers would get into a fight; then the preacher would have to give two whacks. Suddenly a mule at ths hitch rack would set up an excruciating, excru-ciating, ear-breaking hee-haw, ending end-ing with the grunts and chokes and groans with which a mule alwayi closes his song. It'd make the boy snort. No amount of whacks would do any good. A little girl would lean over and whisper into her mother's moth-er's ear, and the mother would gel up, leading the little girl by the hand, and the two would tiptoe out. As the mother passed the windows win-dows outside, she would stoop. Then we'd hear the little girl pipe, "Mamma, "Mam-ma, hurry!" In a few minutes the mother and the little girl would come back from behind the church and softly tiptoe to their seats. The week before, we would have invited somebody to Sunday dinner and now the people would stand on the front porch and ask if we were sure it was convenient. Ma had been getting ready all week; but the question ques-tion always had to be asked. Then I would get to ride home with the company. It was a lot more fun than riding with Pa and Ma and having to sit in the back seat. No lecture now. It was always understood that the company was to drive slowly, so Ma could get the dinner started and Pa could have his team out of the way so he could help the company unhitch. I'd help, too; no hanging back now, and we'd lead the horses to the tank by the windmill while Pa and the company talked crops. Pa would say, "What do you figure your oats'll run?" When the women heard us, they'd all come to the door and say they'd about decided we weren't hungry, then we'd say we thought we'd eat a bite to keep on the good side of the cook. We'd go into the dining room and there'd be the table! No red checkered check-ered cloth today but a wonderful fine white cloth with faint flowers woven in it. Lying on a chair, which was partly behind and partly beside Ma, was our peacock fan. The fan was about as long as the table was wide, and had a leather loop to hang it up by when it wasn't in use. As Ma waved the fan over the table during dinner, the feathers would catch the light and shimmer and shine entrancingly. During weekdays we had a fan made out of paper, not one-millionth part as grand as our peacock fan. Company Com-pany and a white tablecloth and our peacock feather fan that was Sunday dinner! (TO JBE CONTINUED) |