The Holland Press

Aunt Susa came to visit her parents (Grandfather and Grandmother Maxson) that summer, and asked mama and papa if she might take me back home with her; to help with their children. I'd been staying a lot with Aunt Myrtle, to help with her children, and Aunt Susa had observed my expertise with children! My parents decided if I wanted to go, and Aunt Susa would pay for my train tickets both ways, and keep me in school, they would allow me to go.

Of course I was eager to do anything that was a new experience and was exciting. But we decided since Mrs. Spinks needed me, and I'd promised to help her out until school started again. The Pattersons (Aunt Susa and Uncle Birnie) went back to Nebraska promising to send me the money to come there just before school started. So I helped Mr. Spinks and his mother the rest of the summer. Soon he had asked me to call him "Bud" as his friends did. He loved to tease me. I did not go up to help on Sabbath Days. Mama had told them that was our Sabbath, and he agreed, and respected our beliefs. Yet once I remember, it rained all day Sabbath Day and when Sunday morning came, the sun was out bright and early. I went up to stay with Mrs. Spinks, and you have never seen a prettier, brighter day.

Bud laughed at me, and said: "Don't you see what day God shines on?" I was at a loss for words, a bit shy believe it or not, but I thought afterward I should have answered, "Yes, God gave us the rain, knowing our church didn't leak and we could worship Him anyway! Now, while the sun shines we can get ahead with our crops!" Boy, did I ever have the snappy comebacks, (if I could just have thought of them in time!)

Bud and his mother were patient with my awkwardness. She often sat in a chair in the doorway, in the sunlight. It seemed to fall upon her as a mantle of gold, falling away into the shadows as it etched a picture of her lovely frail figure, her gentle hands. She instructed me to boil the vegetables in a goodly amount of water, so that there would be enough "pot liquor" for her to drink. She was conscious of health and nutrition and taught me many things about true “southern” cooking that Mama did not know. She also made me aware of many Southern “expressions” that summer, as my folks were "displaced Yankees", (Bud said!). He had met and talked with my grandfather Maxson, had consulted him about some legal question about his property. Bud said it was all right to be a Yankee if the Mayor (Grandfather) was a sample, for he said grandfather was a ‘real gentleman.'

Bud also told me his mother and father were separated and his father lived and raised cattle down in the Mississippi River bottoms below Memphis, where Bud grew up. Bud said that he had one sister, Hattie, married to a railroad road bed contractor who lived in Texarkana, Arkansas.

While I was there cooking for the Spinks family, the sister Hattie took advantage of the new Parcel Post service by getting up early enough in the morning in Texarkana to kill and dress out a chicken, take it to the post office in time to get it sent to Gentry that morning. It came out in the 10:30 delivery, all fresh in butcher paper, in a box wrapped in brown paper, arriving there in time to be prepared by me, under Mrs. Spinks’ direction, in time for dinner at noontime.

Eventually September First came, and I told them goodbye and thanked them for paying me for working for them (it had been so much pleasure to me!), and I left, never even saying I was planning to go to an Aunt in Nebraska. I suppose I was just thoughtless, for I liked Mrs. Spinks very much. She told Mama later, she could not believe I would have gone without saying goodbye to her. I was really sorry, for she died that winter, and I never got to see her again.

I spent most of the school year at Aunt Susa's, going to school and helping her with the housework and the children. They bought a farm the first of March several miles from North Loop (Nebraska) and I went back to Uncle Ed’s to finish the school year. Later I went back to them (Uncle Birnie and Aunt Susa) and worked all summer for them. Believe it or not, I was paid $2.50 per week for that work.

In August Grandfather Russell John Maxson died, and I was heartbroken for I could not even go to his funeral. I had adored my Grandfather. Uncle George (father's brother) who lived in Exland, Wisconsin, had gone to the funeral and had suffered some sort of nervous breakdown, and my Dad had to accompany him back home. Uncle George and his wife, Ida, left their farm in Dad's care and went to Washington, D.C. to Dr. Dan Main for medical care.

Dr. Main had married dads sister, Edith, and was a well known physician in that area. Uncle George recovered but while they were gone, and Dad was caring for their farm in Wisconsin, there was communication back and forth between them to leave Wisconsin and go to California for George's health, and Dad decided, since it was such a fine farm, he would like to buy it from them. Mama agreed to sell our farm in Arkansas, and she did sell the cows, and was preparing to sell the chickens and farm tools and other things they couldn't move, but would not agree to sell the house until they could see how things worked out up there. Arrangements were made for me to go by train to Wisconsin, rather than to return to Arkansas. I was to remain with Papa in Wisconsin on the new farm until Mama and the other children arrived there.

I WAS excited and apprehensive about traveling on the train alone, all the way from North Loop, Nebraska to Exland, Wisconsin. Aunt Grace, (Uncle Edwin's wife) and Aunt Susa bombarded me with a volley of instructions and warnings. Aunt Susa told me to always sit on my handbag if I felt drowsy on the train, and never accept anything to eat while I was traveling, especially from a man, for many a man had offered a young girl whom he saw traveling alone a poisoned peach or apple, and had drugged her and taken her off the train and she was never to be seen again.

My trip included an all night "layover" at a place called Ladysmith, Wisconsin. Aunt Grace had lived in Ladysmith. She instructed me to "go directly, as soon as I got off the train, to Baker House Hotel. Not to one of the other hotels, for there will be people from all the else there attempting to get you to go to their hotels! Now, the Baker House is the only safe hotel there for young women traveling alone. Be sure and lock your door as soon as you are in your room, and pull the bureau in front of it, and never, never open it to anyone, etc. " I did arrive safely at Baker House (wonder of all wonders). Reaching my room without incident, I locked the door and lay down upon the bed for a nap. I was so tired, I went sound asleep and it was almost dark when I awakened. I had slept so soundly I was confused, and thought it was just about daylight and that I had missed the five o'clock train. I hurried, panic stricken, downstairs and could find no one about the place. I heard some banging about in the kitchen, so I went there. A cook looked around and asked "What do you need? I was almost in tears. "You let me oversleep," I cried, "now I've missed my train. I left word at the desk to be awakened at four o'clock,” She laughed. "Honey, it's not morning, she said, it's almost dark and it's the same day you got here!"

She suggested I walk around a bit outside, before it got really dark, or sit on the porch for a while. Then there would be other people around, and she would have supper on the table and I could eat with all the others. I did feel rather stupid, but soon relaxed and began to enjoy the trip. I could even look around at other people traveling and people in hotels, and not fear them!

I made the remainder of the trip in fine style, and was overjoyed to see Papa on the train platform at Exland, waiting to meet me. He had three girls from the home where he had been staying. They were Cora, my same age, Dora, younger, and Esther, about six years of age. They had an older brother, R. B. (Etter), whom I fell in love with, but he didn't fall for me, so that was that. I met another boy there named Lars Olsen. Lars did like me, he said. He said we would be married as soon as we finished high school!

Dad and I settled nicely in at Uncle George's house on the farm Dad planned to buy. We were looking forward to the arrival of the rest of the family, making plans for school, and church, and for the farm, where this crop would be planted, where that would be done. And one day we received a telegram from mama in Arkansas saying Ruth was critically ill with typhoid, not expected to live, and requesting us to come home at once. Of course we made haste to return.

On the train coming back to Arkansas, Dad suddenly said to me, "Sister, Ruth will be all right now." I said, “Papa, how do you know?" "I just know," Papa said, "I talked to God, and she has passed the crisis now. She will be well soon.” Later mama said that the crisis had come just about that time. When we arrived home, Ruth was better. Later her hair fell out, almost all of it, and that caused her great consternation, for she had grown to be a beautiful young woman and was, of course, rather vain about her beautiful black hair. But it grew in soon afterward, and soon afterward, too, she was married to the dashing Mr. Spinks, the Southern gentleman farmer who was our neighbor.

After that Dad and Mama abandoned plans for the farm in Northern Wisconsin and we all got on with our lives in the Arkansas sunshine.