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Growing up Okie
Part Three

We lived in a little house, really a shack, I guess, though I didn't think so at the time, across from my grandmother. That was the year I started to school. I was five years old and already almost knew how to read. And I remember the day I went. I was wearing a dress made out of scraps, but I thought it was pretty. The top part was pink and red checked and the bottom part was white.

It was a one-room school and the teacher's name was Mr. Hopper. There were grown kids there. My Aunt BC went and she was probably seventeen years old by then or maybe eighteen. And there was some other girls her age and some boys. We went to school barefoot, no one expected to have shoes. And it was called Pleasant Valley, the same school that my mother had gone to. Had all eight grades and I went there and that was the summer that Theresa (my sister) was born.

I remember the night that she was born. She was born at home like everybody else was. But they always sent the kids away when the new baby was born. So my Uncle John Pass came by on a horse and I rode home with him on that horse and spent the night with them at their house.

That was my Uncle John that had Alice, Delora and Conie, named after my mother, and a little boy they called son. His name was John, but nobody every called him anything but 'son'.

Then after my daddy was finished at this time and he was teaching. He became a teacher in a different way. In those days all a teacher had to do was to pass the teacher's exam. You went down to the courthouse on a certain day and took an examination. If you passed it with a good grade, you became a schoolteacher. And they had two or three different grades; A, B, C or 1,2,3, but the higher score you had on this test that made you more desirable as a teacher.

He taught a school several miles away and I don't even remember the name of it. The first summer he taught there was the summer that Theresa was born.

I even remember the car we had, he had bought this old, it must have been a Ford, it was a roadster and this was in 1921 so it was a pretty old car. It was painted red. The schools that he taught was in Sandy Land and I remember him telling about getting stuck in the sand, in the road, and having to get someone help push him out. Then we moved over there.

Along in the winter there was a smallpox epidemic. We all got smallpox vaccinations. It must have been very strong because even 'til this day, when I take a smallpox vaccination, it will not take, because the one I had is still effective. When after the time we were immune, mother took Theresa and went over to her sister's who had smallpox. Once you went in you could not go out. You were there until they lifted the quarantine. Mother went over there and took care of Aunt Cordy. Her husband had been sick for some reason. Mother took Theresa with her, there was nobody else to keep the baby, and Daddy and I stayed home. That was bad enough, but my mother had to comb her hair and get the scabs out, Aunt Cordy was disfigured and from that time she had pockmarks all over her face. She had been a lovely lady before. She was still a lovely lady; she just didn't look as good as before.

Then I can't remember much for awhile, but I do remember the books we read. I remember Daddy subscribing to a publication called the 'Literary Digest'. He read that a lot and he quoted it a lot.

After that we moved to Avery, close to the Presely's. We lived in a little house out east. My mother attempted to learn how to drive. She never did become a good driver, but I remember one time she run off into the ditch when she was attempting to turn into the gate. She said that she was only going fifteen miles an hour. She was looking at the ammeter. I don't think cars even had speedometers then. I do remember the first car I saw that had a taillight. I remember seeing the car and thinking that was the funniest thing that I had ever seen.

We lived there for awhile and the main thing that I remember about that was my mother baking gingerbread cookies…and I remember her sending me out for a switch. I don't know what I had done. Probably what I had done a lot of times; I had run off. I would go off down to the neighbors because I had no one to play with, I had to find some company. We lived out in the country there.

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Updated by bill bowlan on 09/10/2001