Chapter Ten: Pearl is in the middle of 1912, her seventh year. She fondly recalls Oklahoma rural life of homesteaders and playmates.

This somewhat longer narrative invites the reader to live as this seven year old girl without her mother in early, underdeveloped rural southwestern Oklahoma. Beginning with a sad reality, this narrative is rich in interactions between children and with aunts of Pearl. Aunt Lou Thornton, wife of Uncle Jim Thornton, seems to be a solid “parent figure” for Pearl in this difficult time. The large gatherings for meals and helping one another is quite enriching. Enjoy discovering some new elements shaping the young Pearl and things belonging to this 1912 era. RAN

 Pearl’s narrative begins:

The summer of 1912 was quite eventful.  Papa, upon learning that Mother could never be released from the State Hospital in Austin, took a new lease on life, determined to leave the old life behind.  He also began courting.  I didn’t know about that until later, but I could see that Papa seemed much freer and happier than he had been since we lost Mother.  He left, to Laura, the task of explaining to me that Mother would not be coming back to us.  So one day she said to me that Papa had received a letter or report from the hospital that after two years of treatment and observation her condition was incurable, she would never be any better.  I recall that it fell upon my heart as a heavy blow; that final word that we would not have Mother with us again.  I don’t recall any discussion about the news between Papa and me; nor with Grandma either, Papa just kept it quiet.  I probably cried at night, sometimes, but at my age with so many people around I soon passed the news off as a matter of course.

  On a Sunday afternoon when Verna Ware was at the Will and Maggie Ware home, Papa got all dressed up and he and Verna drove to a singing session at South Greer School.  Verna was dressed very pretty too, and carried a parasol, as the buggy was of the topless variety.  Will and the others teased them as they left, warning Papa to look out for the parasol, he might get “stuck in the eye” by one of the ribs!

  Papa was a good singer and played the harmonica.  Will played the fiddle, but I don’t recall an incident of their “teaming up” for a musical session.  They did play the instruments separately, Will, the “breakdowns” and Papa, the current popular ballads such as “Red Wing”.  I remember that song was heard frequently that summer and I mark the song as my first tune to learn to sing.  Oh, I do recall the song, “Jesus, Lover of my Soul”, was sung at Jewell’s funeral, and it gave me a depressed feeling every time I heard it sung in church.

   Maggie Ware may have attended revival services with Papa at South Greer that summer.  Will, her husband, may have gone too; I only remember the day of the baptismal service, a warm Sunday afternoon, when Maggie was baptized.  Laura stayed at home with us children, so I didn’t attend, but remember her long, wet hair as she returned with the others following the service which was performed in a farm pond near by.

   There was a crowd of people at Will Ware’s home frequently that summer of 1912.  I recall meeting Jim Ware, and wife Fannie with their three children at the Ware home.  I remember that it was early morning, so they had probably spent the night there.  Fannie was a beautiful woman with large blue eyes and blonde hair.  She was most amiable and jolly and she greeted us, Papa and me, with an introduction of her youngest son Kenneth (Ken for short), saying, “This is Ken, he’s kin to everyone!”  I don’t recall meeting them again, but a couple of years later I named a blue-eyed, yellow haired china doll “Fannie”.  She looked just like Fannie Ware to me.

    Once when there were several persons for lunch (dinner to us) at Will Ware’s, many of whom were children. I believe Lavina Gillis, Maggie’s young sister, was visiting, and Golden, Uncle Jim’s daughter who lived nearby, was also present.  At any rate, when the platter of fried chicken was passed around the table that day, I looked for a wing, and the wings were all taken.  Some of the other children had chosen wings, too, to my dismay!  I was so accustomed to being served a wing, I felt that I was cheated!  So I just got up from the table and left the house and started down the hot, sandy path on my way home!  Golden and Lavina followed me and taking me by the hands they tried to persuade me to go back to the dinner table.  They even promised to give me a wing, a piece of chicken they had each chosen.  I reluctantly agreed to go back with them, but I was so embarrassed and ashamed of myself, that I settled for a drumstick that time.

   One evening Papa and Uncle Jim went fishing, taking Vernon with them.  They had no luck fishing, but brought home some bull frogs instead.  Vernon, along with Golden and Lovell were excited about having frog legs for supper, but I kept quiet, just listening.  Aunt Lou, who always took every opportunity to have a good laugh, told us children that the frog legs would move while being cooked in the pan!  I’m sure the surprised look on my face was comical, and I assured her that I would not be eating any frog legs!  I didn’t at that time nor any other time through the years.  I probably cooked them for my sons a few times, but that is one delicacy I shunned.

  Laura was such a lovable person, always laughing with us kids, spoiling us all, I’m sure.  At Maggie’s again for the noon meal there were a lot of people around.  I seemed always to be on hand because Grandma was away so much of the time.  She may have gone to visit her daughter, my Aunt Bee, in Fannin County, Texas, that summer where Grandma’s brother, Jesse Ware was very ill.  He died at some point in that time frame, maybe that summer. 

She didn’t take Brother. By then, he was three, going on four, not requiring as much care as before.  So he, to my knowledge, just added one more to the several small children, which made for a large crew when we all came together.  Due to the kindheartedness and love Aunt Lou, Maggie and Laura showed us, Brother and I just blended in with the rest. 

Anyway, we were all eating again at noon.  The long dining table seated eight or ten persons at once, was not sufficient to seat us at the same time.  Some had to wait until “second table”, an expression commonly in use then.  Laura was visiting, along with Maggie so some of us kids waited with the women.  After the first table of diners finished and left the table, Maggie began to wash plates for us to use.  But what did Laura do?  Instead of washing a plate, she proceeded to turn one upside down and begin putting food on the bottom.  We looked at her in astonishment and then discovered that this plate was not a regular dinner plate, but a decorative plate, with a rim on the bottom that extended up sufficiently to accommodate a serving of food.  We all had a good laugh, with Laura leading in the fun.

    There was another activity in the Ware household that impressed me for some reason, and that was wash day.  I suppose that Grandma, and my mother before her, and aunts had heated the water for laundering in some type of container such as a dish pan or a wash boiler which they placed on top of the kitchen stove.  But Will and Maggie built the fire for heating wash water around a huge, black, iron pot.  Trees close by afforded plenty of wood for fuel, so this was a convenient and economical method to heat water for washing.  I still smell the fire or smoke to this day, which I learned later was from the burning pasteboard boxes used as kindling for the fire.  Many years later when we burned the household trash in a 50 gallon metal drum, we disposed of old fruit jar cases that had deteriorated in the dampness down cellar and were no longer fit to store our canned fruit.  This same odor was wafted on the breeze, bringing back memories of laundry day at the home of Will and Maggie Ware.

  Wise mother as Aunt Lou was, she required of her children to rest and sleep; a nap in the long summer afternoons.  I, alone, while Papa worked in the field and Grandma and Brother away vacationing, was lonely on those afternoons.  I would wander across to Aunt Lou’s house only to find that the kids couldn’t come out to play, and her admonishing me to go back home and rest.  But I could never sleep in the daytime, so I would go home and wait until I saw or heard them outside playing, then I would go and play with them.  I felt very neglected by them – it seemed that they were kept in purposely to keep us apart – now, I understand the discipline of a considerate mother!  They would promise to come to my house, and occasionally they did.  One afternoon I was expecting them and watching through the window I saw Vernon and Golden leave their house.  Because they were always asleep, I decided to be “asleep” when they knocked on the door, which I kept closed when alone.  A few quilts were stacked on a trunk under the window, so I curled up on the improvised cot, and pretended to be asleep while watching with one eye on the path between our two homes.  I waited until they knocked on my door, then quickly opened it to them!  I’m sure I didn’t look very sleepy, I was not a good pretender!

 I wasn’t always free to play with my cousins as I would go with Papa to the cotton patch down by the river.  The road led past Uncle Jim’s house, down a hill, a short distance below, to our field.  I was barefoot, but Papa and I would leave the house before the sun was high, and I still recall the cool “squishy” sand between my toes, and how careful I was to keep off the grass burrs that might have scattered off into the sandy path.  An interesting phenomenon awaited us once in the early morning sun, when madam spider had decided to build a home across our path, reaching from one tall clump of weeds and grass over to another.  It was beautiful in its perfect symmetric design: dew sparkled as it caught the sun’s rays, forming sparkling diamonds.  A few flies and other insects were trapped in the web, but the spider was nowhere to be seen.  I stood in awe at the spectacle until Papa calmly swept the web away with his hand and we went on our way to the cotton patch.

   Leaving in the early morning for a day’s work, carrying our lunch in a syrup bucket with a tight lid, to prevent ants creeping into it, we picked up our hoes, mine with a short handle, ready to cut the weeds from the rows of cotton.  Our lunch consisted of Vienna sausage and crackers, sometimes, with cheese, but generally slices of fried salt pork, biscuits, and fried potatoes.  The potatoes were cold and “chokey” by noon.  I remember Papa taking his knife from his pocket and using it to open the tight lid of the bucket.  I could carry the dinner bucket, but our water jug was much too heavy for me.  It was a white stone jug with a brown top, with a tow-sack wrapped about it, sewn with heavy twine.  After filling with water, the outer covering was soaked with water too, and a cork tightly fitted into the neck of the jug from which jutted a round handle by which a man’s finger could carry it.  Papa usually tied a heavy twine or a piece of small rope onto it for a more convenient handle on the jug, however.

  The sand was not cool now, so it was necessary that I walk near the cotton stalks in the opposite row which shaded the ground from the burning sun.  We would work until nearly sundown and by then, the sand had cooled some.  Also, another way of keeping out of the sand was to walk on flat weeds along the path, some of which were as large as small throw rugs.  This was purslane, but we called it “pursley” which was a species of milkweed, providing a cool refuge to our bare feet!

    An incident which frightened all the family, and especially me, occurred that summer of 1912.  Our family, along with Uncle Jim’s family, Will Ware’s family, Laura and George all went to the river for a picnic.  The major attraction was splashing in the few holes of water still found on the dry sand bar.  To be nearer the water, we all loaded in the wagon and drove across the sand.  After our fun of swimming and playing in the water, we all loaded in the wagon again to be off, on our way home.  The grown-ups had told us all to sit down on the quilts in the bed of the wagon, but I hadn’t quite found a place; moreover, I was standing at the very back of the wagon, with no end-gate in place.  I’m sure the men all thought they had us all seated, when the team suddenly started to move out, which caught me off balance and I fell flat on my back on the firm sand bar!  The team and wagon was stopped quickly, Papa ran to me, along with several others.  The breath was forced from by body, so it was a few seconds before my breathing was normal again.  No damage was done, I received a severe scolding and our summer picnic ended on a solemn note, to be sure.

    The small house where we had lived for more than a year was on Uncle Jim’s place, so when cotton harvest began to loom in the distance, Uncle Jim realized he would need our house to settle some family to pick his cotton.  Papa then proceeded to build us a new little house down on our land.  With all the men, and probably neighbors, too, pitched in their help, we soon had a two room house with a small porch off the living room – bedroom approximately sixteen by fourteen feet, and a small kitchen – dining area about ten by eight feet.  The large room provided enough space for our two beds, the stand table and our three trunks, and the kitchen was large enough for our small stove, the “pie” safe and our table and chairs.  Possibly, Papa built shelves in a corner for storage space.

      There were not many pictures on the walls of our new home, but one outstanding one was an enlarged photograph of Grandmother Watts in its massive frame.  It hung in a prominent place on the north wall of our larger room, and the window on the west let in the afternoon sun which enhanced the beauty of the picture as it fell upon the beautiful, but strong face of a woman with a severe coiffure of black hair, parted in the center and drawn back to the nape of the neck.  The blue-gray steady eyes looked directly at the viewer above the blue and black blouse with windowpane checks.  A close fitting wide black collar with a narrow bow was tied in front.  The photograph had been enlarged in the year 1910, or earlier, but the original picture was taken in 1892.  Obviously, the colors were painted in when the enlargement was made.  I can see the large picture yet in my memory as that low western sun fell in bold relief on the blue blouse with the black window pane checks.

       A family with two girls and a small boy moved into our little one room home.  They were there to gather cotton for Uncle Jim, and on Sunday afternoons we would visit them sometimes.  An amazing and interesting practice of this thrifty family was that they bought “Post Toasties” by the carton.  This large carton containing several boxes of the cereal was large enough for two or three six and seven year olds to get into and sit down!  What fun to visit their children and enjoy playing this unusual game!

   The small porch on the northeast corner of the house that Papa built proved to be a haven for houseflies as the nook provided a shade from the sun plus a protection from the wind.  So Papa contrived a device to catch the flies gathering there.  Despite all they could do with a screen door, flies still crawled into the house from the porch.  This fly trap that Papa constructed was made of screen wire formed into a cylindrical shape, some 10 – 12 inches across the length of a roll of the wire.  Inside this cylinder he fitted a conical shape of this wire, securely at the base to one end of the cylinder.  The smaller end of the cone, with a small opening pointed to the opposite end of the cylinder which was covered neatly and securely with a piece of the screen wire.  The completed trap was then placed in a strategic spot on the porch, with a sprinkling of sugar or maybe molasses to bait the unwary flies.  By entering the wide open end of the cone, and traveling the length to the small opening, they were trapped into an area from which there was no escape.  Papa then retrieved the cylinder of wire filled with swarming flies, held it over a blaze to destroy the flies.  It was a successful method of catching flies, but one morning Papa went out to inspect his trap and, “lo and behold” there was a vinegaroon, about six inches in length in the area with the flies!  This small varmint, a species of the scorpion, was thought to be extremely venomous so we had quite an excitement around our house at that unfortunate catch!  They acquired their name from the odor that they emit when disturbed, a scent akin to that of vinegar.  Papa left the vinegaroon in the trap for awhile for members of the families of Uncle Jim Thornton and Will Ware to view.  Some had seen the scorpion before, some of the younger set had not seen one up close, until then.

  The summer and fall wore on and at last it was school time again.  Golden started to school that fall, so the three of us. Vernon, Golden and I trudged to school about one and one-half miles by the road.  One morning we stopped by the McPherson home on our way to school to see if the kids wanted to walk with us.  The McPhersons, Buck and Maisie, had two boys and one girl, Elsie, a few years my senior.  Maisie was a cousin of Papa, Uncle Jim and Will Ware and Laura Pearce.  She was the eldest daughter of Grandma’s brother, Uncle Bud and Aunt Ellie whom we have met earlier in this writing.  Maisie was ill much of the time while we lived by them, which required Elsie’s missing many days of school to help Maisie about the house.  The McPherson boys had already gone to school, about one-half mile from their home by the road, about a quarter of a mile across the cow pasture.  Vernon proceeded to lead us across the pasture.  Golden and I encountered some trouble at the pasture fence as we held the strands of barbed wire apart while we each climbed through.  Vernon went on ahead yelling to us to hurry.  That day is as vivid as any in my entire memory!  Golden and I started across that pasture, running to catch up to Vernon, but the cows grazing peacefully there began to appear larger and larger to me!  Vernon yelled all the more for us to come on and Golden ran – she would follow her brother anywhere – but I ran back the other way and somehow made it through the barbed wire fence.  I went to the McPherson home, deciding to stay with them and catch Vernon and Golden on the way home.  I asked them not to tell Papa because I was sure he would punish me, but I got the lesson assignments from Vernon, and went on home with them.  I didn’t tell Papa, which proved an unwise decision, because after a few days, Aunt Lou told him, and did I catch it!  He whipped me with a horse whip, called a “black snake” but I suppose he hit me only three or four times, it scared me more than it hurt me, as I don’t remember any welts from the whipping.  If I had gone home and told him that I was afraid of the cows, and couldn’t cross the pasture, he would have scolded me, but he would have understood.  So the punishment was really for deceiving him, which, to Papa, constituted a lie!

   

Grandma was away for the beginning of that school year; probably at Aunt Bee’s, as Grandma’s brother, Uncle Jesse lived there and as I have assumed, he passed away during the year of 1912.  They never bothered me with the sad news, but I suppose we children all knew about it; however, as we were not directly concerned, the event caused no permanent memory.  I’m not sure where Brother was, whether Grandma took him with her or perhaps Maggie and Laura cared for him for a few weeks.  Aunt Lou had the care of me.  I lived at home with Papa in our little house on the river, but I would go be Aunt Lou’s on my way to school each morning in time for her to comb my long, heavy, dark brown hair, and to see that my neck and ears were clean.  She joked about combing my hair.  She said I never cried when she combed it as I did when Grandma did it, because I was afraid to cry!  But that was not the reason at all!  Aunt Lou was used to combing her little girls hair and so she knew just how to hold the strands of hair while she pulled the comb through them.  Grandma, on the other hand, was unused to taking care of children plus the fact that she had to hurry through the process of getting me ready for school on time.  Aunt Lou, with her sense of humor, always found a way to make fun of unpleasant experiences!

We end this narrative in the Fall to Winter of 1912. A major move comes in the next chapter with an important new person joining Pearl’s little family. Stay tuned! RAN