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| 1927 Hupmobile |
This next house was forever known as "the itch house" in family lore.
At the time we moved
into the yellow house (I forget who owned the property) Dad had somehow
acquired a big old Hupmobile sedan. It
was black and square as a barn. Matter
of fact, that old Hup looked like a hearse.
With money short to non-existent, we did not have the Hupmobile very
long. As I recall, Dad sold it to my
Uncle Merritt Stanley who by then was running a garage and filling station in
Aldrich, Missouri, seven miles to the east of Bona. My Uncle Merritt cut the back of the body off
and made a pickup truck out of that big old car.
One thing I
remember about living in that yellow farmhouse was that it sure was a long way to
walk to school. Bona School was on a
hill a full mile north of Bona so us kids had about a two-mile walk each
way. That is not far in a car, but it
was a long way on shank’s mare. We did not
really mind, however, as walking to school was a way of life.
That walk really
worked a hardship on little Rex because his legs were so short. He did not have much trouble keeping up
because Richard and I normally left in time that we could just mosey along, but
coming home after playing hard at recess, Rex’s legs would sometimes give out
and he got leg aches. Sometimes he would
just sit down in the ditch and cry, they hurt so bad. I am afraid that we often gave him a hard
time about keeping up, but I could remember getting leg aches when I was little
so I would hoist him onto my back and give him a piggy-back ride home.
My mother, Eva,
sure had a terrible experience while we lived in that big yellow house. We kids caught the itch—no doubt at school because
the Lord knows Mother kept us clean enough at home—and Dad caught it from
us. It sure was aggravating to be
itching all the time and you were not supposed to scratch, but it was my mother
I felt sorry for. She slaved for several
days carrying water from the well for the washtub she heated on the kitchen
stove to scrub us and all our clothes.
She must have used a short ton of pine tar soap and I believe she doused
us with calamine lotion.
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| Polkberry |
We felt like
lepers because we could not go to school with the itch, but eventually Mother
got us all cured and we stayed home a couple of more days to make sure it was
gone and no one would catch it from us.
We were happy as turkey gobblers in a polkberry patch when we finally
got to go to Grandma’s at Bona one evening, then went back to school.
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| 1927 Hupmobile |
That first trip to
Bona after the itch did not work out too well—in fact that was one of the last
times I saw my mother cry. We drove up
in the old Hupmobile and Mother went to the door to make sure that is was
alright with Grandma and Grandpa if we came in.
Unfortunately, she came back to the car weeping and we turned around and
went home. It was not Grandpa and
Grandma Stanley’s fault, however. My
Uncle Merritt and Aunt Golden from Aldrich were there visiting. When my mother asked—and before Grandma could
answer—my aunt exclaimed, “Well! I sure don’t want to catch the itch!”
My mother just
turned away and came back to the car. I guess
I never quite forgave my Aunt Golden that she had made my mother feel bad and
cry after she had worked so hard to cure us all.
I’m not sure that my father ever heard “He
Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” but whenever I hear it I think of him carrying
his brother when he couldn’t make it make it on his own. The Frieze kids were like that. As an only child, they were my template for
how siblings were. I have since learned
that is not always the case. My father
loved his family desperately as you will see.
I believe that anyone of them would have literally carried the other…well,
not my little Aunt Sandra, but anyone of her brothers would have gladly carried
her. In the end, isn’t that the reason
we are here? To carry one another when
we can?
And
at the heart of it all was my grandmother.
She raised four children during the Great Depression and, with a husband
who had "sand in his shoes," she had to learn to travel light; to figure out what
was worth carrying. She travels with me in
my heart and head and I believe I miss her most of all.
