It was during the last two weeks of our summer vacation. Most of us ‘younguns’ had already ran out of things to do several weeks before. Boredom was settling in.

This particular day Frankie’s folks were out in the country some forty miles from home buying apples’n’pears to be preserved for the winter. She was left alone to fend for herself the entire day. Big mistake. Read the rest of this entry »

After Frankie became cute enough to take to Chinatown, we became almost inseparable friends. On Saturday nights we went to the early movie, window shopping, then grabbed that 15 cent tenderloin before going home. Certainly our childhood was a place far flung from today’s “mad world.”

After school during the week, we often went to our local drugstore soda fountain. Drugstore soda fountains arrived about the same time as prohibition. Frankie and I arrived during prohibition. Read the rest of this entry »

When Frankie and I were no bigger’n a long drink of water, parents would usually shake off the winter whenever the warm south winds blew new life into our area. During those days outside laundry could be seen, billowing and flapping on backyard clothes lines. Winter clothing was pushed to the back of our closets and us kids looked forward to that first dandelion blossom. Many parents consented to let their children go barefoot the day one of them found a bloom. Back then our climate was much different from what it is nowadays. Read the rest of this entry »

(A few months ago I started writing about my hitch in the military, but soon discovered I should have done this before my memory went. Oh well, so much for that).

Maria Cardona was my little Spanish pal and there wasn’t many days that we didn’t see one another. I always looked upon her family as an extension of my own. This particular week during the 1930 school vacation, I saw neither hide nor hair of her for several days. I suddenly remembered the last time we talked, she wasn’t feeling well and was on medication at the time.

As I recall she had some sort of liver problem and was taking a well-known over-the-counter preparation. Back in the 20’s and 30’s medicine for any ailment was far more potent than the same brand medicine is today. Take for instance that liver pill Maria was taking. It was so effective the liver lived on long after its owner died. In many cases the mortician had to beat the liver to death with a stick in order to bury it with the rest of the body.

July 20th, 1930. When I knocked on Maria’s back door, she yelled, “I’ll be out dreckly – I’m looking for granny’s specks.” Her grandmother was always misplacing her eyeglasses for reasons unknown. Only the week before the poor soul was in the hospital due to a fall on the steps. Maria and I braved the odds and sneaked in for a visit during feeding time. One of these days when I’m not sleeping, I’m gonna research on antidote for hospital food.

Maria finally exited her back door wearing those white shorts that always staggered my imagination. During our wonder years only small girls wore shorts. Women hadn’t yet made a spectacle of themselves and the men folk would rather have died than been seen wearing such. Since then time has darkened the eyes of many.

After some debating we rode our bikes out past ole Miss Milford’s place to a large barn owned by the Bailey’s. Back then barns were preferred smooching sites, but after WWII urban sprawl took out its share of these secluded shelters.

By early afternoon Maria and I started looking for something to get into and pass the time of day. “Let’s do our parents a favor and debug our gardens,” she suggested. “Good idea,” I said, “Let’s do it.” We went to the storage shed and got our supply of sprays, dusts and whatever looked harmful to bugs and went to work.

Neither the speckled ladybug nor the mantis were known by many to be beneficial to gardens and were not yet sold commercially. It so happened that a traveling salesman had recently persuaded Mr. Cardona to buy several hundred bugs to be released in his garden. He bought them knowing he had in his lifetime killed oodles and oodles of those same insects.

Without telling anyone, Maria’s father scattered half of his purchase in his garden and then convinced my folks to accept the other half. Maria doused poison powder while I pumped the sprayer, killing every living ‘thang’ in both gardens.

Earlier that day the Cardonas went in town shopping. Maria and I declined accompanying them because we knew we would have to stay within spitting distance of her parents.

By the time we finished debugging both gardens, the shoppers arrived back home. It didn’t take but a moment for the pungent pesticides to penetrate Mr. Cardona’s nostrils. It took even less time for him to discover where it came from. Not only were the insects dead but many plants were wilted from an over-dose of the spray.

By nightfall our parents met to decide punishment for two innocent crop dusters. Maria panicked and thought her life was over. Certainly we would have gotten a good thrashing, but our parents were afraid they might kill us.

All this was back during the days when everything was serene and we seldom locked our doors. It would be a problem to explain to most you readers just what it meant to have only a screen door between you and the great outdoors. Not only that but the only outside lights we had was the moon and those bugs that carry lanterns (lightning bugs).

After you reach 60, all that’s left is to grab hold of whatever is worth remembering. Now that I’m beyond 60, the best of what’s left within my reach is reminiscing in the wake of my wonder years. During those wonder years I fought my way through grade school, wrestling with the three Rs all the way. As for “math,” certainly it was invented back during my fourth grade for the sole purpose of inflicting misery on all us angelic little imps.

After high school I helped eradicate the visionaries in Germany and Japan by enlisting in WWII. Seems the most we accomplished however, was to preserve a place back home for the unborn. Newborns here and outsiders born offshore later became the nuts that now occupy our State and Federal buildings.

After the war, most of the U.S. veterans (yardbirds-n-all), were eligible to attend a college or trade school of their choice under the G.I. Bill of Rights. As I look back, I often wish I had signed up for a school that specialized in ceramic pottery. This would have given me inside information and some foresight on what I now occupy a portion of my time with – STUDYING CRACKPOTS. Read the rest of this entry »

Freddy Rickrack and I were inseparable school buddies who were always leaping before looking, and getting ourselves in a web of trouble.

This one particular day Freddy had just returned from his doctor clutching an unpaid bill and a sack of nerve pills. Freddy took pills all the time. Feeling much better than he did the day before, we headed out into the country riding our new red bikes. Suddenly, in front of us loomed a homemade sign hanging haphazardly on a narrow wooden gate: “Help wanted, .25 per hour.” Read the rest of this entry »

As far as I know, they never did domesticate the dryland fish. To get them you still have to trespass on private property. Leastways that’s where a lot of avid hunters claim they find their luck. Back in the twenties, a certain young lady thought the secret to success was “yellow clothing.” Frankie always wore her yellow hat whenever we hunted those elusive morsels. We braved the wailing in Harpers’ Woods because that land wasn’t posted. Truly a forest primeval, with more plants-n-animals than a person could shake a stick at. Frankie was sure the color “yellow” affected those tidbits the same way a red light affected nightcrawlers.

According to her, the hat, through its’ shape and color, actually stunned those ‘thangs’ and they couldn’t slither back into the ground. They wouldn’t run off because they were in shock. All that was left for us to do was lift them into our baskets. Strange as it may seem, we always came home with enough food to share with neighbors.

Back before I was born, the morel mushroom was hunted as it is today. However, in rural areas of certain locales, the morel was referred to as “dryland fish.” Frankie and I always used that term just to confuse other hunters. Besides, our parents still used it.

Why were they called dryland fish? – search me. I do know most people soaked them overnight in brine before they were cooked. A lot of salt was consumed back in those days.

This particular weekend which I’m fixin’ to tell you about, was the time we decided to hunt (whatever they were), prior to our slam-bang ball game.

We had only been out 20 minutes or so when a bad storm blew in from the west and we became disoriented. We knew we were lost after passing the same spot two or three times.

During one of our rounds we came upon a shallow depression on the ground, layered with old brown leaves. Frankie screamed, “It’s a bear wallow!” I knew it wasn’t, because there hadn’t been any bears in Harpers’ Woods since Charlie Hatfield got converted in a drain culvert hiding from ole Slewfoot. That was a great many years before. Charlie was somehow related to the feuding Hatfields of West Virginia.

The wind and lightning became so fierce we started looking for shelter. Seeing a large hollow tree nearby, we risked extinction and huddled inside an opening at the bottom. During such a storm, menfolk shied away from old dead trees, calling them “widow makers.”

The sun came out and we got home shortly before game time. All our friends were there and a few unknowns. Back then boys and girls played together, not like they do nowadays with separate clubs. The gender of the person being yelled at didn’t make a lota of difference. No boy hesitated to yell at the prettiest girl on the team when she made a blunder. After all, she was a ball player, not just a girl.

The longer we played, the louder the yelling. There was no certain number of innings. Before the game was over we all had the same color of clothing – grass green. We’d play a while, then fight a while. The girls’ pretty hair-dos looked like rat nests.

The following Monday Miss Winans asked Frankie who gave her the black eye. Frankie smirked and replied, “Nobody gave it to me. I had to fight for it.” The teacher didn’t take kindly to that remark and told Frankie she’d rue the day.

As you approached the crest of the hill, you couldn’t help but notice the old Ledbetter house standing alone, tilted a bit and facing south. It was a weathered old wooden structure with a long front porch running its full length, but with no foundation. Instead, the house sat on concrete blocks which left ample room underneath for dogs or anything else that roamed. If it had been located near a swamp, I guess you could have called it a “high-water” house. Norman and Sally Ledbetter once lived there. Read the rest of this entry »

During WWII, I guess those back home didn’t give a hoot. I can’t believe they did that. They toppled my old schoolhouse. Lincoln school had a whole block to itself. Now some urban developer has obliterated history and replaced it with a mortuary. Good grief and Holy Jerusalem! A house for the dead, where once trampled noisy little kids??? Certainly a far cry.

Lincoln school was a place where thousands of Marseilles youngsters got their first glimpse of an education and where they spent the next few years looking towards their graduation.

Sixth grade at Lincoln was on the top floor and taught by a teacher with a legend. She was like no other and her reputation preceded her from students before us. This young schoolmarm had no illusions of becoming a surrogate mother. She preferred being Marshall Earp and Judge Roy Bean all rolled into one. Some unruly students were sent to the cloakroom - a dark and dismal place infested with wet coats, caps and four-buckle galoshes. At times these boots were covered with melting snow. There was no window in that dungeon and the place always smelled like a wet weasel. Certainly not a good place to steal a kiss from the opposite gender.

Our tutors’ handling of disciplinary problems was a sight to behold. One day before we knew what was happening, she wrestled a 92 pound ruffian to the floor and whaled the daylights out of him. I can’t remember whether Billy Bob was conquered or not, but it sure put a halter on the rest of the wild ones.

Sixth grade was the last year our class had a valentine box. That February I received the only card I still remember. It was from one of the prettiest girls in school - Lavona Ellena.

That upper room was the sight of my early public appearances, stumbling through oral book reports. They were my introduction to ridiculous knee-shaking, wet palms, chattering speech and my first clue that I was not a candidate for public speaking.

After our teacher won the wrestling match with Billy Bob, we had a lot more respect for her authority. Most everyone tried to stay on her good side by showering her with gifts of food, trinkets or whatever. Timid little Daisey even offered to share her sack lunch.

With little money to buy much of anything, Charlie and I decided to raid Mr. Thorton’s apple orchard to obtain our offering.

We climbed the rusty steel fence and dropped anchor under a tree loaded with shiny red apples. We were busy filling our bags with windfalls and those from low-hanging limbs. We stopped our scavenging in time to see Mr. Thorton striding towards us with a face like an ape and two Doberman Pinschers cantering alongside!

Charlie took off in a run, vaulted the four foot fence like an Olympic champion and disappeared in the thicket below. Apples flew in every direction in an unusual pattern. During my vault, I became so amused by the midair scenery, I hit the ground with a “thud.” A spasm of pain invaded my body as I lay sprawled in a patch of nettle weed. Charlie got clean away - didn’t get any apples, though. Come to think of it, neither did I.

We both had a swell story to tell the kids at school come Monday morning. So did Mr. Thorton when he talked to our parents.

A person my age should be rewarded for taking care of the problems of others. Instead he gets saddled with all sorts of physical aliments, aches and pains and a variety of petty complaints. As I recall, when I was growing up it was always proper to inquire after an older person’s health. So far, no one has ever been curious of my welfare.

In the 1920’s away from electrical strung wires, the biggest challenge was leaving a warm comfy bed to visit a drafty privy on a cold wintry night. Why? – mull it over. Even the catalogue pages were partially frozen together and we usually wore our shoes without socks to and from that family sanctum.

Changes? You ‘betcha’ and plenty of them. Before 1929 paper currency was physically larger than it is today – twenty five percent larger. With the coming of smaller bills, came smaller billfolds. Smaller billfolds placed in the same size hip pocket, made it more tempting for the pick-pocket and easier to be jostled out and lost. So, smaller hip pockets appeared. The end result was that a greater number of wallets could be made from the same size slab of cowhide. I was nine years old when those smaller bills first rolled off the printing press.

Back during the generations before my time, women and girls didn’t wear underpants, they wore “bloomers.” Nowadays they don’t need bloomers because they usually wear male clothing which hide whatever it was that bloomers hid. I have no comment right now as to why some missies wear short shorts and “two-ribbon” swim suits that almost isn’t there.

When those before us went to town, they rode in a horse-drawn buggy, a surry, a buckboard or a wagon. If it happened to be on a Sunday, those bloomer girls were most likely dressed in a hoop skirt, a corset and button shoes. Or, a dress with a bustle plus the button shoes. Whichever, there was always a parasol nearby. In their wardrobe you probably could have found a petticoat.

The names of common items have also undergone transition. The sense of smell has always been a strong memory provoker. In the spring of 1999, I was treated to one of my favorite dishes – good ole pond-raised catfish. The aroma took me back to days of yore. Sammy and I would go fishing most every Saturday during school vacation. By noon we each had a string of bream almost too heavy to carry. Curious? Bream is really an early name for a variety of sunfish such as bluegill, crappie, etc., etc. Sometime during the generation gap (the lost generation), words and names got changed. Today’s sportsmen just dig fancy names for some reason.

Seen a big front or back porch lately? People just don’t sit out on porches anymore. They build a high fence around their backyard and relax on a thing called a “patio.” The men folk while away the evening hours sippin’ on a cool one and smoking big cigars. They want privacy instead of talking to their neighbor. Neither he nor his wife knows the neighbor well enough to even borrow a cup of sugar. Borrow? – a lost tradition, gone the way of the five cent hamburger, not dogs and soda pops.

People just don’t strike up conversations as they did in days gone by, especially with people my age. “Senile” is the word they use so they won’t have a pay attention to what we have to say, should we dare butt in with a comment of our own.