singing

Beatrice was always singing and dancing around the kitchen. She liked to imitate Betty Hutton. I was eight_years old and I was walking through the kitchen when all of a sudden a big ole foot landed on top of my head. She was as surprised as I was.

Mother would have a song or poem for every occasion, idea, or word spoken. She was amazing. She taught us to sing. Cleo and I spent many, many, many hours at the sink washing and drying dishes. Cleo liked classical music. There was a program on the radio with that kind of music. I would get so mad at her for having to listen to it. She was always singing. If she sang a song I liked, I would sing with her. If I didn’t like it or if I was mad at her, I would sing off-key just to aggravate her. I discovered that I could make my singing off-key sound pretty, and I tried harder to make it sound good. That was how we began singing in harmony. Cleo sang soprano. I sang alto and when Naomi got older, she sang alto and I sang tenor. We sounded pretty good together. The Johnnie Boys were a country music group that played for our 4-H dances. They also had a radio show every morning on KWOS. We sang with them at one of our 4-H dances, and they invited us to sing with them on the radio. Mother and Daddy took us to Jeff City to the KWOS studios. It was fun.