The Holland Press

We always had good neighbors. The Jones family had been there a long time and owned the place just south of ours. On the other side of the road were acres and acres of woods, just trees mostly, oaks, and some maple, and we spent many happy hours there in the "woods" picking violets, climbing trees, taking walks, making secret hideaways where we could talk the happy talk of childhood. The place on the road toward the cemetery changed hands several times. The first people I remember there was an older couple, a Mr. and Mrs. Coon. When I was about six, Mr. Coon came by our house on the way to town and asked Mama if one of the Little girls would go down now and stay with his wife until he got back. He said she wasn't feeling well, and was in bed, but he'd feel better if she were not alone. So mama sent me. I didn't mind, they had lots of pretty things to look at, and she usually had candy or some treat to give me. Running down the road to their house, I opened the door and went in, as I had been told to do. She called me into the back bedroom and told me she was glad I had come, but since she didn't feel well, she asked me to just stay in the front room. She said I could look at the picture books, or play the organ if I wanted. That was something I enjoyed! Pretending to play, I had fun for a while; then I got restless and went to the big bay window to look up the road to see if Mr. Coon was coming. I wanted to go home. As I looked out, I was utterly horrified, terror-stricken to see a big black bear, standing there in the front yard. I closed my eyes, swallowed; No, it just couldn't be! Not a bear, the thing I feared most in all the world! I looked again. It was a bear! I walked so fast I was almost running into her bedroom, She looked at me and said, “Are you sick?" I shook my head, unable to speak. She said, "Go home if you want to. I'll be all right.”

I ran from the front door, across the opposite corner of the yard from where I had seen the bear, up the dusty road my feet flew, breathless, panic stricken, knowing the bear was close behind me.

Into the house in a flash, to Mama. When I told her what I had seen she didn't laugh at me. She said, “Honey, no, it couldn't have been a bear.” ‘Taking my hand, she walked back down the road with me.

She walked with me far enough to see the neighbor's yard clearly. Of course we saw no bear then, but the Coons' huge black cow, grazing peacefully in the yard. The cow raised her head and stared placidly at us. I squeezed Mama's hand tightly as we walked back to our house and thought about how much I loved her.

I think I have adequately described our home downstairs on the first floor. Upstairs there were four bedrooms; Mama's and Papa's was on the southwest corner of the house, coolest in the summer and warmer than the others in winter because of the stovepipe (from the downstairs stove) going up through it, left unenclosed to heat the room in winter. At the top of the room, near the ceiling, the flue chimney was built, resting on "two by fours" so that there were shelves underneath it for linen and such.

On cold winter nights we girls undressed in Mama's warm room and ran to our cold beds: there we had quilts and big checked blankets piled so high on the bed we could hardly turn over; but we did soon get warm and COZY and slept well, I don't remember that I ever did any sleepwalking as I grew up, but Paul did, much to Mama's anxiety, as her youngest brother Fitch had been kicked by his horse as he was walking in his Sleep. Paul never did get into any serious trouble walking in his Sleep as I remember; he did go down the stairway and out into the yard one night.

Every Friday night of the year, almost, was bath night. Unless of course we had been to the creek for swimming and picnic supper. Water from the deep well had to be pumped up by hand (until we had got the windmill) then carried into the kitchen to fill an oval tub (called a clothes boiler) which was set on the front burners of the cook stove.

The reservoir also was kept full, and that was plenty hot! A tin washtub was brought in, placed on the floor near the stove, cold and hot water added until it was the right temperature, and in we'd go, one or two at a time, depending on the size we were at the time! I think the boys were scrubbed off first and sent to bed; then with clean water, we'd start over again. "Ruth, you can wash Geneva," Mama would say, "I know Grace can take care of herself!" Our hair was kept quite short, too, so it could be well soaped and a dipper or two of fresh water poured over it for the rinse. At least my hair was short. Grace, the pet, had long brown curls which I often wanted to take the scissors and cut off, but I knew people would kill me if I did; besides I loved Grace, she was always my best friend.

I loved Ruth, too, of course, but she was such a proper young lady, she scarcely admitted I was her Sister. She hated me tagging along whenever she went anywhere, especially when she first started “walking out" with the BOYS. Both of my sisters were beautiful and popular, and when I got to be a teenager, sometimes their "beaus" would bring me a "feller" but it was always a one-time arrangement! None ever came back! Now I digress! I was telling about Bath Night. Mother sometimes made lye soap for use in doing the laundry, but that was too harsh for bathing. We did have Ivory soap then, and Pears, Sayman's and an oval bar I think was called Fairy.

Aunt Grace (Uncle Edwin's wife) once told Aunt Sylvia, "Eunice is a crank about bathing. She makes that whole family bathe EVERY WEEK!" Of course we always washed hands, face and feet every night before going to bed. Every morning, when we came down for breakfast Papa always made us, with both hands, splash cold water on our faces, “to wake us up," he said. Once Purl came to the wash stand and I was busy washing my face; she put one finger into the cold water, then rubbed that one finger on her cheek. I thought Dad might see her, and make her wash properly, but he didn't.

In describing the upstairs of our home, I will go on since it seems only got as far as Mama’s and Papa's bedroom! Standing at the top of the stairway, directly to the right (northwest): was the bedroom first used by the hired hands, then by Grandmother Huffman, then it became Ruth's bedroom. By then she had decided it was too much hassle to room with Grace and I because of our constant hassle about keeping the bedroom clean and neat.

As I said before, Grace was the neat one, and I, the one who threw things about and dropped things all over the place. But when there was company, or someone came to stay for awhile with us, Ruth would move her bed back into our room (the rooms were rather large and ample). Sometimes she would allow me to crawl into bed with her and she would snuggle up to my back and tell me stories about all the nice things she would buy me when she was through school and had a job. We were the dreamers! To the right (at the top of the stairs) was also the door to Grace's and my room.

Directly in front of one standing at the top of the stairs was a small alcove where the laundry hamper stood; then Mama's and Papa's room, next to theirs on that side, the “boy's room", and opposite the doorway into the boys' room was the stairway that went up into the attic. (We called it a "garret") A huge desk always stood in one corner of the boys' bedroom, with a tall stool. The desk was the roll-type, so prized as an antique now, with little compartments and cubbyholes galore. One drawer was always kept locked. We could never, in all our searchings, find a key for that desk drawer, so I don't, to this day, know what was kept there. In the boys’ bedroom there were two double beds and various tables and other boys' treasures. We never paid much attention to their belongings, having many more treasures to explore in the attic.

Only part of the attic was floored, so we had to step carefully on the rafters when we went farther out under the eaves to explore boxes and trunks. There was a five shelf bookcase, painted blue, there in the attic, filled with an assortment of books just waiting to be read and loved again. Then there were old-fashioned dresses and hats to be tried on, strange looking shoes with pointed toes and spool heels, which laced up far past the ankle, and a trunk filled with petticoats already yellow with age upon which rows and rows of tiny handworked lace edgings were sewn. Mama once told me these had belonged to Grandmother Huffman.

Right in the center of the attic stood the ladder that let us up through the trap door that could be lifted off and set aside; (this was only done when Papa was overseeing the procedure, for he had two little bolts securing each side of the trap door that fitted in tightly, and besides he had put the fear of God into us if we ever dared to do this when he wasn't with us).

When we stepped off the top rung of the ladder, (Papa was always up there before us), we stood on top of the world!! The roof was fairly steep, except for a 12 foot square platform in the very center, so we had to immediately sit quietly, close around the enclosure to the trap door, while Dad talked to us, pointing out the stars, the big dipper, the little dipper, Orion and the bears. Once, while we were up here he quoted these verses:

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork; day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. ‘Their line is gone throughout all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath He set a tabernacle for the sun." (Psa.19)

When I was 14 years old, the house on the corner toward town was sold to a young city man from Memphis, Tennessee (no less!), who said he and his mother were moving to the Ozarks (mountains) for his mother's health. She was a tiny, sweet little lady with a heart condition. Mama came back and said to us, after her first call on Mrs. Spinks to make her welcome to the neighborhood, Mr. Spinks is a delightful young man, a genuine gentleman farmer, and his mother, a dear little person, so fragile you think you'd like to pick her up and carry her.“ Indeed she was precious, as I found out when Mr. Spinks came down to see if one of the Maxson young ladies would be interested in coming up to help with the housework, cleaning up the breakfast dishes and helping cook dinner, as his mother was not able and he would be busy putting the crops in.

Mother decided to send me (probably because I wasn't much help at home anyway!) Ruth fell directly in love with Mr. Spinks, saying as he left, "He's mine. I'm going to marry that man." As indeed she did, but it wasn't that easy! Mr. Spinks dressed in his fine southern manner each Sunday morning and went up to the Baptist Church in town, and before too long, he had two or three of the town's young and attractive women walking out with him on Sunday afternoons. Ruth was a bit depressed and extremely jealous.

When I would come back from a Sunday afternoon visit with my school friend Maud Baker (she had roller skates and a sidewalk!), and I would gleefully report to Ruth I had seen Mr. Spinks walking out with Lizzie McClintock (or whoever). Ruth would turn pale, look away and say, I don't care. He's mine, if I never get him."