My earliest memories were after my family, Dad, Mother, and I moved from Royal Oak to the Spring Creek area in the south-central Missouri Ozarks. The first house was called the Wilcox Place. (I had not really given that any thought but now that I do think of it…places here are ‘the Allen’s place,’ or the ‘Smith house.’ Yes, even after people have passed for years, their name(s) are still attached to the places they lived… nice isn’t it?)
I remember my Dad’s hunting dogs with “running fits” which irritated and scared my Mother. Dad frequently gave them marble sized reddish pills hidden in biscuits which were supposed to rid them of the worms causing the fits. Another of my Mother’s fears were bats which she believed could become tangled in her hair. I became aware of this when she found a bat hanging in a dark corner of the living room and attempted to kill or chase it from the house with her broom. After the bat finally escaped through the front door, she gave me her version of why bats were not popular. As my Dad’s time was spent hunting, fishing, and trapping he was gone most of the day, weather permitting, and my Mother only had me for company. I learned that if you broke a mirror you would have seven years of bad luck, you shouldn’t step over a broom laying on the floor, walk under a ladder and if someone sweeps under your feet you would never be married.
My Mother probably attended most of the local square dances before she met my Dad because she had many fond memories of people she met and knew from the dances. She also had some memories of fights involving her brothers that ended the dances and her objections to the foul language they used when drunk. I am sure now that my Dad, who didn’t drink, and was not musical, did not attend or allow Mother to go to square dances.
One winter morning, my Dad had only been gone a short time when he came running back in the house yelling for my Mother to build up the fire in the kitchen stove. His clothes were wet and icing up: he had fallen off the foot log over the creek and into the water. My mother dried his clothes including his long handles by the stove while he shivered under a quilt in a chair. I do not remember if it warmed up enough that day for my Dad to try the icy foot log again, but he was normally very sure footed and I, to my memory, never fell into another frozen stream.
It was while at the Wilcox Place that I experienced my first boil or carbuncle. It occurred on my left wrist and grew into a large knot and after a time a white spot in the center. My Mother used various home remedies, like beaten Polk leaves to encourage it to come to a head so that the core could be squeezed out. It was very painful especially if accidently bumped. Finally, after several weeks a band of cloth with a pencil size hole was placed over it and my Dad pulling on both ends squeezed out a small core. The swelling gradually disappeared but the scar remained for years. I don’t remember ever having another boil but sometimes saw them on other children after I started school.
I never knew why but we moved on to a small cabin sitting very close to a road that was like a tunnel through the woods. I don’t know if we were low on all supplies but one morning, we had Corn Flakes without milk. We were deep in the wilderness without a cow and no nearby neighbors but ordinarily would have used condensed milk mixed with water for cold cereal. My Dad had a 25-20 bolt action rifle that he was very fond of and I remember his telling of shooting a hawk that had an undigested squirrel in its stomach. We soon moved again to a two-room cabin just about a hundred yards from my Grandparents, my Mother’s mother and father, John, and Vina Evans.
I have many happy memories of this location. It was after my Aunt Verna’s first marriage and during the Chivaree that a cigar found its way into my playpen and my mouth. I have had similar experiences since, during drinking periods, without the cigar.
It was here that I remember Santa coming for the first time. There was more than enough snow for his sleigh but no chimney, he used the back door and I heard some bells and a HO-HO-HO. It might have sounded like my Dad if I had not been too excited to notice, but anyway he brought nuts, candy, and a wooden duck on rollers.
When the shadows lengthened in the late afternoon my mother and I would be listening for the first signs of my dad returning from running his traplines. My mother because she had his supper on the stove keeping it warm and me with the excitement of greeting King and Queen and the surprise pawpaw, nuts or berries he picked along the way. This evening there was a different surprise for the pawpaw I thought was coming from his coat pocket was a little brown puppy.
On one of those really beautiful spring days in the Ozarks when the sun has just passed the zenith and the dinner (lunch to you) dishes have been washed and shelved my mother and her mother (grandma) go “greening”. My mother alerts my father that they are leaving the house to go down in the valley below to gather fresh wild greens and that he is to keep an eye on me and Brownie playing in the back. Feeling secure from the noise of our activity in the back he dozes off and Brownie and I go for a stroll. Time passes, mother comes home, her basket loaded with watercress, Polk greens and plants that only she can recognize and pronounce, looks in the back, sees Brownie but I am missing. My father, who fortunately awakened, shortly before her arrival, doesn’t have a clue. My mother is angry and above all frightened for the “backyard” now becomes part of the Mark Twain National Forest, sometimes known as The Irish Wilderness. After some frantic searching they alert my grandparents, my grandfather has returned from his work in the fields, and they are all combing the woods and hills around both homes. The barns and pig pens are searched for possible remains and the sun is starting to set, and they are getting no response from their yelling for me.
My father finally notices Brownie running back and forth between the house and the path to the spring and when he walks towards the path Brownie heads in the direction of the spring. He followed him about one hundred yards down the path and Brownie comes up beside me sleeping in a pile of leaves. Brownie is a hero and rescues not only me but my father; my mother is so relieved she forgets her anger.
Only a few weeks pass before Brownie disappeared and I was never to see him again. When I was a little older, I found what really happened. He had been bitten, probably from a Copperhead, his head had swollen so badly that his eyes were closed, and my father had put him away. I those days it meant that he had been shot. I had other dogs later but not for a couple of years.
It was decided that I could spend a couple of days with Grandpa and Grandma Evans. My Grandma made delicious potato soup that she served with thin brown cornbread and sitting in front of their huge fireplace with Old Fowler and Grandpa while he smoked his corncob pipe and told me stories of his past was my favorite thing. I never lasted to the end of his story and by the following evening he never remembered which one he was telling.
When I returned home, I found there was a new member in the family. She had arrived on October 2, 1928 while I was visiting my Grandparents. I had just met my sister, Wanda Maxine and she was a permanent member of the family, bawling and all. With the new baby and a nearly four-year-old mother was inundated and needed help. My dad brought a teen age boy to live with us, his name was Melvin and I never knew his last name.
Melvin was very helpful, and I became fond of him as did my mother and dad. My dad was inquiring about larger homes as with two additional members we were crowded in just two rooms. Melvin seemed happy and content living with us and helping with the household chores. Mother now had someone to accompany me on the walk to grandma’s where he would either wait for me or return to pick me up when mother decided it was time for me to come home.
Early one morning I heard my dad ask my mother, “Have you talked to Melvin this morning?” “No, isn’t he in his bed,” she replied. Melvin had left sometime during the night and never seen by us again. My mother found a few items missing, my gold baby ring, her pearl neckless, and some food items; it was enough to know he was not planning to return.
My dad had found a two story four-bedroom home in a valley west of my grandparents that was in walking distance. The new home had a name. It was called “the Bockman Place” and was in front of a large cave named Bockman Spring. The place had just been vacated and was in good condition with the exception of the iron pipes running from the spring in the cave to the house were partially removed but it was still a shorter distance to carry water than our previous place.