Is it Worth a Paddling?

When my sister, Dessie, four years older, started trying to “look pretty”, she wanted to curl her hair. We, of course, had no curlers so we had to make some. I say ‘we’ because when she did something, I immediately thought I should do it also.

Prince Albert tobacco cans were available, as we had brothers who rolled their own cigarettes. We cut half inch wide strips from those cans with scissors and made them about three inches long. Yes, those were my mother’s only pair of scissors, and we probably ruined them. We then wrapped those strips in several layers of fabric.

Dessie used me as her guinea pig and rolled my wet hair that afternoon. Naturally my hair wasn’t dry by bedtime. My parents said there was no way I was going to leave those things in to sleep on them.

Dessie took my hair down and we went to bed with me crying as loud as I could. My Dad said that if I didn’t stop that hollering he was going to come in there and paddle me. Dessie was upset that she had to take the curlers out so she told me that if I would keep on hollering as loud as I could, she would change sides of the bed with me and take it for me. My Dad knew which side of the bed I slept on and he wasn’t going to light a lamp to see differently. True to her word, she took the paddling!

Freezin' to Death

Winters always seemed to be colder when I was a child. In part, I’m sure,  because we had no good way of keeping warm. The wood-burning fire places kept us warm as long as we stood directly in front of them, and even then we needed to keep turning around to keep the other side warm.

There was also the problem of being able to dress warm when we went outside. My family had very few warm clothing, especially the children. We were kept inside on the really cold days.

 One cold winter, when I was maybe five or six years old, my brother, Reuben, came over to tell us his oldest daughter, Jewel, had slipped and fallen on the ice on her way to school. She had apparently broken her leg.

The next morning it was still very, very, cold, but my parents decided we should pay my brother’s family a visit and see for ourselves how Jewel was doing.

My Dad hitched up the team to our wagon. We bundled up as best we could and loaded in the wagon. Mom wrapped my sister and me up with an extra layer of quilts. We proceeded to travel the four or five miles from our house to theirs.

We reached our destination without incident, but when I started to get out of the wagon, I couldn’t feel my feet. Dad said they were frozen. Once we got inside Mom got a pan of warm water for me to soak my feet in until they thawed.

Jewel did okay with her broken leg. She learned to use crutches just fine. The only problem she had was going from being a skinny little girl to being a little too chubby.

Butterflies on Zennias

I have a very happy memory of a time when I was probably four or five years old. One very warm, summer day my parents decided we should go visit my sister, who had been married for a few months.  My Dad harnessed up the horses, hooked them to the wagon, and my parents, sister, and I took our usual places. My parents on the one board seat in front, with my sister and I sitting on the floor in the back. I’m not sure just how far away my sister Mary and husband Bert lived, but it couldn’t have been over a few miles. I always enjoyed riding in the wagon, seeing new sights, and feeling the soft breeze on my face.

When we reached their home, I was amazed to see her front yard covered with beautiful flowers. She planted Zinnias, or as was commonly called, “Old Maids” all over her yard. I spent my visit in that flower garden chasing butterflies!

The next spring my sister brought over a handful of flower seed, told me to plant them, and see if I could get them to grow. At first I couldn’t think of a place to plant them. We had a bare yard where noting grew because the chickens would immediately pluck up any green plant that was brave enough to peek up out of the ground. My mother came up with the idea of my planting my seed in the chicken pen, as the chickens were running free in the yard. I spent many hours digging holes and planting those seed.

Imagine how thrilled I was when I eventually had a beautiful flower garden with butterflies coming to visit me, just as my sister had the year before. I was a happy child.

Ewww gross!!

Another ‘as told to me’ story: 

It was a custom for the mothers to make a “pallet” on the floor for their small children or babies to play while the moms sat near-by preparing their fresh garden vegetables for cooking.

On this particular day my sister-in-law and my mother had placed a quilt on the floor for my niece and myself. They put us down to play while they sat close by snapping green beans. They noticed my niece pulling at something. Could it be a piece of white elastic tape? Not likely as our baby clothes had no elastic. They stopped snapping beans to give closer inspection to what Jewel was pulling. Imagine their surprise when they pulled it out and found it to be a tape worm from me! (Sorry, I don’t know the length.)

FYI: Rid your pets of fleas. Fleas are the easiest way for humans to contract tapeworms. They are the perfect host for worm parasites and are the easiest and most common way for humans to contract a tapeworm. A flea will eat the tapeworm embryo and then pass them off to your pet when they clean themselves off from fleas by licking and ingesting the flea. If your pets don't have fleas and you don't eat any raw meat, contracting a parasitical worm is just about impossible. Use an over-the-counter flea remedy for pets. Talk to your veterinarian for their suggestion or if the treatment you have been using does not fully remove all the fleas.