Chapter Twenty Four-Spring 1917, making friends, revisiting Valley View, WW I reality comes home.

Ed. note: As we learn more of the Noels and her creek playground, Pearl describes a bucolic Springtime with no worries. But, dark clouds of WW I are rising over America, as the U.S.A. entered the Great War and it impacts the family. RAN

   As we became better acquainted with the Noels, we began to visit back and forth.  I recall some cold, clear Sundays, for want of something to do, we kids would walk on the banks of the creek; in a sense exploring new areas of the homestead.  On one side of the creek, the farming land came near the creek, forming a sort of bottom, with fertile soil.  On the opposite side where the bank was steep, the soil was rock but fertile enough to support tall grass known as sage grass.  It was also called Blue Stem grass, but I’m not sure if that term was correct.  Scattered over the rough pasture land were a few bushes the color and texture of sage; these were sagebrush.  This growth was more abundant closer to Red River in the sand hills a couple of miles away.

     As Viola,13 years old, Lona, 11, and I, 12, wandered along the banks of the stream, we would soon discover the boys following us-their brother, David, 7, and my brother, Billy, 8.  This was a slight irritation to us, so as we drew near the clumps of tall grass we made a quick decision to hide in the grass from the boys.  It was certain protection, too, from the cold, north breeze we were facing.  We had barely gotten securely hidden when we began to hear them talking as they approached us.  We waited with bated breath to see if they would discover us. “Now, where did they go?”, one said to the other. “They were right along here”, they continued.  They were still puzzled as their conversation drifted back to us huddled there in the tall grass.  To complete our joke on them, we jumped out and shouted, “Ha! Ha! Ha! We fooled you!”  It was about time for us to turn back toward the house; we began running away from the boys. They turned to follow us, but they were in no hurry as they walked slowly along.

      Those were the days!  Those dear, irresponsible days!  We had no problems, no cares, as our elders bore all the responsibilities and the burdens in that period of our lives.  We knew only the joys of growing, playing together with loving, caring friends and families who were always there when we needed them!  P. L. Travers said it this way, “When I was a child, love to me was what the sea is to a fish; something to swim in while you are going about the important affairs of life.”

                                                   WORLD WAR I  

In early 1917 war clouds hung heavy over Europe as Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany began to over-run the smaller neighboring countries with his war machines.  The entire world felt the shock of this ruthlessness and vowed to stop it by some means or another.  When Germany renewed her submarine warfare on all merchant ships, Count Von Bernstorff, the German ambassador was dismissed, dissolving relations with Germany.  On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson declared war against Germany. Our teachers read the newspapers and caught every news item by telegram or otherwise and we older students became a part of our country’s involvement in the war.

      In the summer of 1917, Uncle Bob,  Aunt Lula, Virgie, Elbert, Herbert, and Deward came by in a covered wagon for a few days visit.  We had heard that this family was leaving Devol, Oklahoma, sometime soon.  Devol lay some twenty-five miles east of us and with our team and wagon, our only means of transportation, we didn’t get to visit Uncle Bob’s family.  Aunt Lula had a health problem that could not be corrected; and now, diagnosed as tuberculosis.  Her doctors advised the open air as the first resort; travel west to a higher, drier climate was recommended.  So, Uncle Bob sold his model T car and bought a team and wagon, equipping it so it could be a home on wheels for their family of six people.  They were not sure of their destination at that point in their lives, possibly to Pueblo, Colorado.  Our place was their first stop, where they spent the greater part of a week.  Uncle Bob, a minister of the gospel, had left his church in Devol, with some sadness, but with a compulsion to travel, with Aunt Lula, for her health’s sake.

Their visit was a memorable one.  Billy and I had idolized our cousins, Virgie and Herbert, but we hadn’t been with them much in recent years.  We realized that they were outgrowing us as Virgie was in her seventeenth year, and I was twelve.  Herbert was eleven and Billy was only eight.  Virgie was old enough to accept the responsibilities that were thrust upon her during her mother’s illness, which was a traumatic experience for them all.  

      It so happened that Mama’s brother, Noel Savage, came to see us that week, too.  He was also a preacher, and I remember that Sunday afternoon we all stood in the dining room and sang hymns from a couple of hymnbooks Papa found for us.  As I stood by, mostly watching and listening, I realized how grown-up Virgie was as she sang out with the others.

      I had a happy time with Aunt Lula.  She was always a fun person, and although I was sometimes the brunt of a joke of hers that embarrassed me, I still loved her.  This time was different from the times when I was a little girl.  Aunt Lula was crocheting as she sat around while Mama was busy.  Virgie would help Mama and I would talk with Aunt Lula.  All of my schoolmates were crocheting from the least girl to the oldest.  I asked Papa to get me a crochet hook and crochet thread, but he termed such fancy work as nonsense; remarking that the girls who sat around crocheting world never amount to “a hill of beans”.   I explained to Aunt Lula what had happened, and she determined to “talk to Pete about that”.  One day when Papa and Uncle Bob started to the store up on the hill, Aunt Lula said, “Pete, I want you to get Pearl a crochet hook and some thread from the store.  It will cost only a few cents and I want to teach her to crochet.”  Papa brought them back, to my surprise, and sure enough, Aunt Lula taught me to crochet in just a few lessons.

      Papa had planted sweet potatoes that spring.  He bought long, slender potatoes, bedded them down early so that about the time frost was past, potato slips began to come through the earth and grow. Papa threw up high ridges with his plow, leveled them off with a hoe, and all of our family worked together to plant and water the sweet potato slips on top of the ridges.  About the time Uncle Bob’s family came, the slips were beautiful, luxurious vines, but no sign of potatoes.  Papa told Uncle Bob that they were sold to him under the pretext that they were vine-less potatoes.  Uncle Bob answered that they looked as though they would be tomato-less vines!

      Billy and I were rather small, but Papa put us to hoeing cotton that summer.  I was twelve and Billy was eight.  As I have related, Billy was plowing with a three-horse plow when he was seven, so the hoe was no responsibility compared to the plow.  In retrospect, I hardly see how Papa had the patience to endure the way Billy and I wasted our time in the cotton patch.  There were only a few weeds in the cotton, so I’m sure he expected us to cover more ground than we did.  Of course, we saw every bird that flew over, every rabbit that jumped up and ran away, and every car that passed along the country road.  The most fascinating pastime was viewing cloud pictures as the large feathery clouds floated overhead.   They took all shapes and forms imaginable.  There were lakes surrounded by a thicket of trees, sometimes we could see a canoe on the lake.  We saw faces in the clouds and watched as the vapor changed and moved quickly to another shape; maybe to a cow or a horse or even a pig!  It was such fun!

In August of 1917, we made a trip back to Randlett.  Just a few days before we left, our little dog, “Cricket” died, which threw a pall over our family, affecting the otherwise joyous anticipation of seeing our relatives and friends.  Just taking a trip was an eventful occasion in our lives, however.   We left home early one morning, facing the early morning sun as we jolted along in our farm wagon, traveling east-southeast to our destination.  Mama had packed a picnic lunch, so we stopped along the way to eat, to stretch our legs, and to allow the team to rest.  We arrived about four o’clock that afternoon at the home where we formerly lived, now occupied by cousin Roy Thornton and family.  Our friends, the Floyd Anglins, who had lived just down the road from us, had moved one and one-half miles south.  After visiting for a short while with the relatives, whose children were small, I persuaded Mama and Papa to allow me to go on to the Anglins where I would spend the night.   That was a joyous reunion with friends, everybody talking at once, relating new experiences and catching up on the time we had been apart.  We had all grown and developed, so really we are now new friends, having come out of the old!

      The next morning the folks picked me up at the Anglins and after enjoying a short visit with them, we traveled to Aunt Dove’s and Uncle Elias’ home.  Papa and Mama and the boys stayed a couple of days over the weekend, as I recall, and left me to come home with some of the relatives, a week or so later. Left at Aunt Dove’s, I spent most of the time with her around the house, helping when I could, as all of her children were boys.  They were Cecil, 15, Bob, 13, Edgar, 10, and George, four years of age.  On a Sunday night, there was to be a singing at the Coursey’s home.  They were people who had moved into the Valley View community after we had moved away.  They were a friendly family with a couple of beautiful girls near my age.  Aunt Dove decided it would be nice for me to go to the family’s home for the hymn sing, so Cecil, Bob and I went in their one-horse buggy.  The three of us sat in the single-seat together and drove through the summer sunset for about three miles to the Coursey home.  A roomful of people, young and older, gathered there and soon the singing began.  A pump organ provided the music, played by a skilled musician. 

           I enjoyed being there; however, I knew few of the young people but some were there that had attended Valley View School with me.  Young and old alike joined in the singing which lasted a couple of hours.  I recall that we paused for refreshments of lemonade and cake about halfway through the singing.  The crowd finally began to dissolve, and Bob, Cecil and I left for home.  The night was clear, lighted by a beautiful moon.  The two boys clowned around some, bantering each other, maybe arguing a bit over who should drive.  I seem to recall that Cecil drove all the way, however.  Along the last half of the journey, they began to sing.  They had beautiful voices, harmonizing consistently!  At first they remembered lines of some hymns.  Then they finished with  “Darling Nellie Gray” and “Red Wing”.  They probably never knew how I enjoyed that evening out, with my two teenage boy-cousins!  I was far too bashful to let them know!

Ed. note: The link is to a YouTube recording of “Darling Nellie Gray”. Interesting choice of songs in 1917 for an evening ballad in Oklahoma.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsUdIsJ9TLU

 I was always glad when Grandma Thornton came to our house for a while.  It was less than four years before that she had been a substitute mother for Billy and me, so it was easy for me to talk with her.  I probably learned from her that summer more of her life as a wife and mother than at any other time.  We talked about the time her daughters were growing up and about Grandpa’s service as a minister.  We talked of the other homes of my aunts, uncles and cousins.  We had known Uncle Jim’s children, of course when we were much younger, but now, Vernon was 13, Golden 11, and Lovell, nine.  Grandma had been to see them at Pottsboro, Texas.  She related to me the way my girl cousins, younger than I, could cook and sew.  I received that information with mixed emotions, envy on the one hand, because I wasn’t able to perform as they could, and on the other hand, experiencing a sense of relief that I didn’t have to do those chores.  I would much rather read a book than cook or sew, but I learned to do both when I was married young and had to perform the duties!

  Along about this period in Arthur’s life, he and Grandma had an interesting time together.  In our pasture, over on the east side there was a sand pit.  That is, the sand was useful for mixing concrete, so Papa sold several loads of it to builders.  They passed our house coming down from the road to get the sand in the pasture.  With Billy and I away at school all day and mama busy, Arthur, age 3, could find mischief to get into; not serious, but something that Grandma would try to correct.  He would argue with Grandma and go on doing it.  She hit upon the idea of the sand-diggers, as she called them, and told Arthur if he didn’t stop what he was doing she would give him to the sand-diggers.  He paid attention for a while, but one day when she threatened him, he reminded her that the sand-digger wasn’t coming by anymore.  They had gotten all the sand they needed.  So then she went to the telephone, saying she would call the sand-digger to come and get him.  Of course, she held the hook down, but pretended to talk to the man.  That worked for a while until Arthur discovered that she was holding the hook down, therefore wasn’t talking to anyone!  So the fun was over!  Perhaps, Arthur became a good boy after a while! (He was never a bad boy, only a little mischievous).

Uncle Charley, Grandmas’s youngest, came by that fall to visit us with the news that he was on his way to join the Navy.  He was 29 years old, married, with three children: Arthell, going on five, Vineta, going on three, and I.V., a small baby girl.  Of course, we all dreaded to see him go, but he was convinced that he was needed to help to defend his country, so he was determined to go.  He tried to join the Army Air Corps, which was not so efficient in World War I as it was in later years, but he was not accepted as he lacked the necessary education.  He told us, laughingly, that the Army wouldn’t take him because he was flat-footed; that may have been a joke.  We thought Uncle Charley could do anything he wanted to do, he was so adept and efficient and equipped with a positive attitude that set him apart from his peers.  But, he said goodbye to his “mammy” as he called Grandma, and all of our family, and left for the East Coast.  I recall that he came to see us once, dressed in his Navy blues, wearing his “gob” cap; we were so proud of him, so glad to see him again!

Editor’s note: In the next chapter, Pearl will recall much news of war and one of her older 8th grade classmates dating soldiers. There is a ‘pole cat’ smell interrupting class at Rita School, and Grandma Thornton moves to stay. Keep tuned in for all the action. RAN