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Growing up Okie
Part Four

My mom taught at a German school. I don't remember the name but most all of the students were Germans. It was right after World War I and most people were not having a lot to do with Germans. They were very good people. Very prosperous and very industrious. I remember mom had to go over to a member of the school board to get her paycheck one time and they had lots of cats around. I member mom saying something about us not having a cat. When we got home there was a cat in the back of the car in a sack. Someone had given us a cat.

Daddy taught at a school a couple of miles south, called Baker. I can remember going to school with him. I must have gone with mother one year and with him the next because I can remember being at each school. I remember the last day of school for the year. We had a big picnic and some kind of a program, anyway the last day of school was big stuff.

Then they got up in the world, they taught in a two-room school in Avery. They taught together. We rented a house in town. It was the little town that my stepfather's family lived in, though soon after we me moved there they moved to Texas. We lived there for several years.

I also remember walking to school. We almost always had a cow. We also had more milk than we could use, so we sold it. I can remember walking about two blocks every day with a half gallon jar full of milk for one of our customers.

This school had two rooms and again they paddled kids. I remember my dad said to one of these boys. "if you do that again, I'm going to paddle you". The boy looked at my dad and said, "you might as well get started".

By that time I was in the fifth grade, and that is when I slowed down. I was young and about this time I started sewing. That was just because I wanted to. That became a hobby of mine all my life. I still like to sew. I made pantywaists. We wore a little top that looked a little like a jumper, it was cut more like an undershirt. It went about to our waist and had buttons on it, we didn't have elastic to hold our underpants up. You made bloomers that pinned on to that. I made my own pantywaists. When I was nine I made a dress,,,I wonder what it looked like? It was black and white checked.

We lived there several years. I remember several Christmas there. I remember my mother getting a big Christmas tree and she loved the Christmas tree. During that time was when I had chickenpox and Theresa had whopping cough. I never did take it.

The house we lived in had sidewalks made out of boards. Just like in the western towns. It was a nice house. It had a nice fence. And that is when my mother left me and Theresa there, I must have been about nine or ten. She and Daddy were going to Tulsa to see about another job. They were going to be gone until way into the night. I stayed there and I cooked dinner for Theresa and me. I don't know what we had, but we got along fine. I was babysitting her. I don't know why she minded me, but I guess she did.

They got that school and it was a step up. They felt like they were really doing better. We moved over to this place close to Tulsa. But our mailing address was Supullpa. The school they taught in was called Pretty Water. A few years ago I was watching 'The Price is Right' and Bob Barker asked a contestant where she was from and she replied "Pretty Water, Oklahoma". So there must be a town, now. I'm curious, because it was only a school, then.

We were out quite a ways from town, that was the year I was in the eighth grade. I was ten years old that year. I turned eleven in April and finished the eighth grade. I had to take the county test. In Oklahoma at that time, you couldn't go on to high school until you passed the county examination. And I passed it.

Updated by bill bowlan on 09/10/2001