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Aunt Naomi’s Story (Part 42)

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The hill to the south of the house carried the most activity of any.  It was on that side that we would sleigh ride in the winter.  We walked to the spring, crossed the creek and went up the hill a way to pick up hickory nuts for mother’s ice box cookies.  Further to the east on the south hill we had a wondrous junk pile.  All junk (not garbage) was deposited there.  We had fun playing in it. Even further south was a wonderful wild cherry tree.  We picked cherries every summer and this was used to make jelly, juice and even daddy made some wine!

The southeast area was the way we walked to school.  Once we crossed the creek to the south we had a pasture and then woods to walk through.  We had to cross a barb wire fence when we got in the woods, so Mahlon wrapped burlap bags around the barbs so we wouldn’t tear our clothes or scratch ourselves when we crossed.  It was easy to cross if you were with someone.  One person held up the top wire and while you pushed down on the second wire, you had a lot of room to crawl through.  After crossing the “Goetz” creek at the edge of the woods, we had a pasture and then another fence.  This fence was made of 6-inch wire blocks and in order to cross that, Mahlon cut an 18 by 18 inch hole so we could all squeeze through.  There was an incline after that fence and then again pasture.  This was the area where we had to watch for bulls.  When we got through the pasture, it was a short walk through the woods to reach the back yard of the Oak Grove schoolhouse lot.  The entire walk may have been two miles, but I am not sure.

Aunt Naomi’s Story (part 9)

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When I was in 8th grade I had a purple corduroy skirt and a purple and white striped sweater that I loved. Cleo gave me a pink and gray plaid skirt and a matching pink sweater for Christmas one year. It was beautiful. In high school I made myself three broomstick skirts, a few three-tiered ruffled skirts (we wore crinolines under these to make them stick out). I made a yellow dress that had three-tiered skirt, my white confirmation dress and several short and top outfits. We didn’t wear shorts too much. Daddy thought they were not proper, but we did wear them when we were older.

We used to have box suppers at Oak Grove. We would have so much fun preparing our box, hoping some cute young boy would buy our boxes. Our milk man, Irvin Lock, brought mine. Irvin was a bachelor and drove the milk route. He picked up all of the farmers’ milk in 10 gallon milk cans and drove it to Jefferson City to Central Dairy. We had a lot of fun at Oak Grove giving plays. We gave “Obadiah Ozgood, Hammock Song, Gloria in Echelsdeo and others. When we had any kind of function at Oak Grove there was always plenty of good food. We always wanted the cheese and baloney sandwiches Ann Goetz brought. We usually brought candied popcorn. There was so much good stuff.

A few other memories are that of a trailer tot, throwing salt on sparrow’s tail, locking siblings and nieces and nephews in the house, Mother’s roses called “the seven sisters”, the swing in the tree to the east of the house, “swimming” on the cistern rock, pulling wings off of horseflies and tying the fly to a small matchbox to pull the box, lightning bugs, singing at 4-H events and singing on the Johnny Music show on KWOS, etc…