The Holland Press

On February 15, 1908, my seventh birthday, it was a cold, rainy day. I felt it unfair that I had to go to school on my birthday, although usually I loved school. Mama felt my forehead to see if I had a fever; since I couldn't fake it, I went along with Ruth and Grace, acting ugly and disgruntled. Ruth pinched me (as she usually did when I was misbehaving, not "minding my manners") and I "bawled" in really great form, going by the neighbors’, the Drakes. Later, Mrs. Drake told Mama I could bawl louder than anyone she had ever heard! The school day passed eventually, and when we arrived home, the dining table was already set--for company dinner, it seemed -- white tablecloth and all! (We usually ate on oilcloth, which seemed to grow “sticky” or “oily" with use!) There was a cake in the center of the table, covered with white icing, a sauce dish for each place setting, holding canned peaches with a great mound of whipped cream, and a cherry on top!

I was completely mollified for the time, since I was getting the attention I felt I deserved. A good dinner, the cake, the singing of Happy Birthday to me, the whipped cream and peaches, sweet elbertas from the tree in our garden last summer, and after supper, the whole family taking turns playing "Authors" with me.

The birthday person never had to wash dishes or work much on their birthdays. I felt like a queen. However, that same year, when June 10 came around, school was out and we had a real party, friends came in, there was a big cake, and homemade ice cream. There were games on the lawn, croquet and running games and sitting down games like "Gossip" where one would whisper to the next, on down the line and around the circle, and we'd whoop to see what it came out as!

But of course young Geneva pointed out peevishly to her sweet mother: "Oh, yes, on Grace’s birthday, we get a real outdoor party, and real ice cream. … Don't ever have ice cream for mine." Patiently, Mama explained, there was never ice to be bought in the winter when it's my birthday. Then she'd mollify me by patting me and saying I was her little Valentine Day present, even if a day late.

Very early, before daylight every summer morning we could hear the pig wagon go by our place carrying a load of ice for Gentry ice-house from Siloam (Springs), seven miles south where they made it at the ice plant.

We often had parties called “socials" then, at our house because we had a large front yard for games. Ones we especially enjoyed were Last Couple Out; Blind Man's Bluff; In and Out the Window; Hide and Seek. The "it" was chosen this way: we would recite: (pointing to each child in turn around the circle):

Erie, Orie, Ockrey Ann,

Wirey, Briary, Tiery Tan,

Inktum, Blinktum, Split ‘em in two, Nobody stinks but Y-0-U!

Then that person had to be "it".

Another counting out game we had was

Wire Briar, Limber Lock,

‘Three Gray geese flew in a flock, One flew east, one flew west

And one flew over the cuckoo's nest; O-U-T spells OUT GOES HE (or SHE)!

Regarding the house that the seven Maxson children grew up in; I didn't mention all I could have about the parlor. I mentioned about the carpet and described some of the furniture, etc. There was another "Lounge" in the parlor which we called the sofa, on the wall that backed the staircase entrance. Over this sofa there were huge photographs or portraits of my mother's parents.

They were George Washington Huffman (very stern-looking and be-whiskered. I could imagine his eyes following me around the room when I had been naughty), and Mama's mother, Loretta Brown Babcock Huffman, who was pretty, with nice even features, but it bothered me that she had her hair pulled back so severely. I always had the urge to take a pencil or crayon and draw little curly tendrils around her face, and probably would have dared, except that I was so afraid of the grim face and evil eyes of my grandfather Huffman's picture and afraid he would invoke the wrath of God upon me even from his grave.

Across the room hung a picture, a sort of colored sketch it seems to me, of the Battle of Pea Ridge, one of the battles of the civil war that was fought in Arkansas. This held special meaning for us, because my grandfather, Russell John Maxson had fought in this battle (for the North--he was in a New York Infantry Regiment). It is unclear to me now, but I believe he was an officer in this regiment. I remember he had a livid sort of bump on his forehead which we understood was the only wound he had suffered in the war, and this was caused by a glancing bullet.

The walls of the parlor were covered in a rich textured dark red paper, a bit formal, and not changed as often as the paper in the rest of the house. The other rooms were papered in light, cheerful patterns. Every two years or so, Papa would bring home the wallpaper book full of samples from uptown, and Mama would select new paper for the rooms needing to be renewed. She always settled on the cheaper grades for the upstairs bedrooms, so she could afford to change often.

She allowed we children to select the paper for our bedrooms.

Ruth was lucky; she could choose any pretty pattern she wanted, and did it with no argument. She always chose some dainty flowery light blue lovely paper. Grace and I always had to share a bedroom, so it was a stressful time and one of us had to give in to the other, most often. Dad was a good paper hanger, and with Mama spreading the paste on the back of the paper, on a long table, it was quickly done. About sharing the bedroom! We always had to share one room, Grace and I. The arguments about the room went on so incessantly that we had to come to a business-like compromise and keep it strictly that way. We placed the bed in the exact center of one wall. Everything on one side of the bed, and room belonged to Grace, and she kept it neat as a pin. (The bed itself was rather difficult, but it usually was made up, as nicely as possible on her side, the covers pulled up nice and straight, the pillow placed just so and patted down}- while my side remained rumpled and bumpy, usually. On her side of the room belongings were picked up and put neatly away, shoes and lamps and books placed just so while on my side, clothing was dropped carelessly on the floor, books and papers sprawled where I had dropped them-- havoc in general. But I took care that Papa didn't see that I had thrown books around much.

When I was tiny, three or four years old I suppose, I was looking at a picture book, turning the pages by wetting down my thumb liberally (in my mouth) and scooping the pages over. Papa saw that and, sitting down on the floor beside me, said, "Books are our friends, and we must never mistreat them." He demonstrated to me how to slip my finger behind the top of each page and turn it over gently. I love books to this day and treat them tenderly, and cringe whenever I see someone turning down a page to hold their places, or leaving a book overturned and spread apart, or otherwise abused. Grandfather Russell John always had many books (he read law at one time, studying for the legal profession), and we could look forward to receiving at least part of them, after he had finished with them. One I especially remember was "Teddy Roosevelt and His Rough Riders”.

oks, but she always had several magazines “Woman’s Home Companion, The Delineator, The I think was called "This Week" which was like our modern Newsweek or Time. There's where I first met Bruce Barton, Author of "The Greatest Story Ever Told", and the Greatest Book ever Written" (the New and Old Testaments), And “He Upset the World" about Saint Paul and his missionary journeys. Aunt Myrtle would sometimes let us read her True Story magazines. Mama considered those trash, so we didn't dare carry them home. The books in the bookcase in the parlor we were welcome to read, except the one titled "The Queen's Necklace” by Dumas. This one, she said, we could read when we were eighteen. I slipped it out two or three times long before I was 18 but never got interested in it. Finally, before I was married, I tried again, but it was still boring. I put it back on the shelf and have never read that story to this day.

I had been to the Public Library in Gentry, and had read Zane Grey, Also Kathleen Norris's romances. These, mama didn't approve of, she said they treated divorce far too lightly. The books our parents bought were read and re-read. I remember vividly "The five Little Peppers", Mrs. Wiggins of the Cabbage Patch; "Helen's Babies" by John Habberton, I thought, was one of the best books anyone could ever read.

We always had books and music around. Ruth and Grace both had good voices, and played the piano, and our brothers! As they grew up, they nearly drove us nuts practicing on their various musical instruments. I think they all learned to play slide trombone, and Fitch came along, having to be different, took up the saxophone.

After school, the boys would do the chores that Dad required of them, then practice on those horns until suppertime. After eating, they would practice again. They couldn't have been very far into their teens, if that old, to begin playing the musical instruments, for Russell was only fifteen years old when I married in 1918. By that time Ruth had been married a couple of years, also Grace soon after so boys were almost like a second family to our parents. After "going through it" with their daughters, now they had these fine, lively boys to raise.

“One memory I have of Paul was that, when he was in high school, he brought home his report card. Mama, upon studying it at length, asked him: "Paul, what do these "F's" mean?" "Oh," Paul replied, "those F's mean "fine", Mama!” I am sure Paul did not get many F's, having made it through college later and into a successful career in the ministry.

Observing my brothers in their growing up years, between visits, etc, I remember how handsome I thought they were becoming, in their starched white shirts, driving off in Dad's newly acquired Ford to date some girlfriend, or to some ball game. Dad had purchased the car about 1918 or so, and of course I was gone from home by then, so did not learn to drive until much later. Paul broke his arm cranking the Ford one morning before school, I do remember.

Back to when we were all younger, tho, I remember Fitch fell off the elevated sidewalk that led from the back porch to the woodshed and broke his collarbone. The woodshed was a two story affair, twelve or fifteen feet behind the house. It was a great place to play, the upstairs room of the woodshed, but it was used by the hired man for a sleeping room after we children grew older and required all the bedrooms in the upstairs of the house, but when we could get up in that upstairs room of the woodshed we had some fun times.

There were a lot of old photograph negatives in a box that one of Dad's friends, a photographer, gave to Dad when he sold his photo gallery and moved back North. We had fun with those, Grace and I, and one day we dropped several of them, making a loud crash, (they were the glass negatives, much larger than the modern negatives on film that we have today). We were startled to hear Dad's irritated voice calling: "Bust ‘em up! Bust ‘em up girls!" We were so startled that we dropped a few more before we could get out of there. Poor Dad! I don't suppose he ever really had anything that he could call his own, and keep it intact, until we grew up.

If the boys misbehaved, it was to the woodshed with Dad. My only hard spanking came one day when I was coming back to the house from the woods where we had a playhouse. Dad was in the barn door, and called me to him, saying, "Didn't you hear your Ma call you an hour ago? I said no, but he laid a harness strap across my legs, anyhow, perhaps thinking I was not telling the truth. When he took Fitch or Paul to the woodshed, with them already crying, "I'll be good", I knew he was the meanest man in the world, and I would have enjoyed killing him (I thought then!). I don’t remember that he ever struck Russell, Carl or Grace, but the rest of us got "it" when "it" was coming to us.