Settling in with Grandpa and Grandma Stanley and Gene Autry

Chapter 11

Graduation from Bona School

Being with Grandpa and Grandma full time was a real shift in my lifestyle from that little farm.  I guess I considered myself a “town boy”—although you want to remember that the population of Bona, Missouri was a total of twenty-one people!  I had my own little bedroom on the ground floor just off my grandparents’ bedroom.  That was handy because if I wanted to go to the outhouse at night, I could just go out the window without bothering them.

It took some adjustment.  At first I was homesick for the rest of the family.  I had slept in the same bed with Richard all my life.  In the beginning it was kind of lonesome without his body warmth and without his kicking or poking me once in a while.  It was strange when I woke up in the mornings, too, but I soon got used to it.

It was a time of rapid development for me—both mentally and physically.  It made me feel independent or maybe I got that from Grandpa Stanley because I had heard it said that Charley Stanley was “as independent as a hog on ice.”  That eight months was also the time that I suddenly shot up to my full height of almost six feet.  My mother was to be astonished when I arrived in Vancouver after only eight months and having grown a good six inches.  I grew fast but more up than out.  I was slim and later when I joined the Navy I still only weighed 137 pounds soaking wet.

It was a delight being at Grandpa’s store all the time.  After school and on Saturdays I swept the bare wood floors for him with a mixture of sawdust and oil to pick up the dust and leave an oiled finish on the wood.  Before long I was helping wait on customers.  I could pop paper sacks open with a flourish just like Grandpa did and weigh out pinto beans, flour, etc.  I also tended the chickens that Grandpa took in trade.  They were kept in a chicken house out back until Grandpa made his weekly trip to Springfield and took the chickens, eggs, and cream to market, then picked up supplies for the store.

It was helpful to Grandpa and Grandma that soon on Saturdays I could tend the store while Grandpa went to the house for lunch and Grandma did not have to come trotting across the yard.  Sometimes she tended the store and I was allowed to go along with Grandpa either to Springfield or to Aldrich where things like chicken feed came in on the train.

Best of all, since I had been driving our old Model T Ford for nearly a year, Grandpa taught me to drive both the truck and their Chevrolet sedan.  The only trouble I had was learning to shift gears since the gears in a Model T are handled entirely with your feet and the gas lever by hand.  I caught on quickly however, and by Thanksgiving Grandpa would let me drive the car by myself for short rides.

On one occasion when Grandpa was busy on a Saturday, he actually sent me in the truck by myself to the depot in Aldrich to pick up a freight shipment for the store.  I was proud as a proverbial peacock.  When I got to Aldrich, I drove grandly up and parked in front of my Uncle Merritt Stanley’s garage ostensibly to visit while I wanted for the afternoon train, but partly to show off for my cousin Charles who was not allowed to drive yet.

I got my comeuppance on the way home however.  When the train came I loaded the truck—handling sacks of chicken feed and bran mash was easy after all those bales of hay I had bucked for Ben Long—and was doing fine until I got to the foot of the long hill leading up into Bona.  The truck engine stalled when I shifted down and I could not get it started again.  I finally had to suffer the embarrassment of hoofing it up the hill admitting that I was stalled.

Fortunately, my older cousin Leon Frieze who was a real truck driver at the time was at the store and he hiked back with me.  He finally figured out that it had something to do with the coil and got it going for me.  I decided then and there that I was going to learn everything is to know about engines.

The time with Grandpa and Grandma was not all work.  I had plenty of time to get out with my friends and many cousins.  I would go duck and quail hunting with Claude and Billy Todd.  Once I went bird hunting with my cousin James Lowell and two of our Kansas City cousins, Ennis and Buddy Fulkerson.  James and I must have shot the birds that day because Ennis and Buddy were Kansas City kids and neither of them could hit the broad side of a barn.

In those days I was ambitious to be a cowboy singer and I itched to buy a Gene Autry guitar.  There was a real beauty in the Sears & Roebuck catalogue that only cost three dollars and ninety-eight cents—and that included an instruction book and song book.  Mother sent me a little spending money once in a while and Grandpa sometimes paid me for extra work around the store.  I had a secret hiding place in my bedroom and in it saved nearly all of my money until I had five dollars, then I sat down and ordered that guitar.

It was a great day for me when the mail carrier delivered my new guitar in a big flat cardboard box.  Grandpa showed me how to tune it by sounding the right notes on Grandpa’s parlor organ and adjusting the strings.  I must have driven the two of them half-crazy sitting there evenings twanging away practicing chords.  Grandma finally gently asked if I could practice in the afternoon when they were both at the store!

I never did get to be much of a guitar picker but it was fun to fool around with.  Later on Grandma told my mother that she had to go into the bedroom for a good laugh one day when she overheard me telling Billy Todd, “Why, I have only been through two lessons so far and I can already play ‘Red River Valley!’”

Although he was an excellent fiddler, Grandpa was not much help to teach me because he played the fiddle entirely by ear.  He could do a lively rendition of “Marching Through Georgia”, “The Wabash Cannonball”’ and things like “Amazing Grace” but he was at a loss to show me how to read a sheet of music.

Grandpa did not mind if I experimented with his fiddle occasionally so once in a while I would fool around with it and got so I could handle simple tunes in the key of C.  Before I left for Vancouver in 1937 I could do a fair job on either the guitar or fiddle with things like “Red River Valley” and “Springtime in the Rockies.”

The Model T and the Washing Machine

Times were hard enough that in the spring of 1935 my father finally had to break down and register for a WPA job.  He was adamant that he would not take any Relief handouts but he did get a job on the road crew.  He and Bill Simmons ran the rock crusher for a while then he got a job with the contractor that was building a new bridge over the Little Sac (pronounced “sock”) River between Bona and Fair Play.  After that he helped build a smaller bridge over Maze Creek between Bona and Dadeville where there had been a shallow ford.

That spring it seemed almost like prosperity to us with some cash money coming in.  Unfortunately, it sort of went to Dad’s head and resulted in one of the rare times that I saw my mother sit down and cry.

Dad got paid one week and went off to Greenfield or maybe Springfield with one of my uncles.  He took Richard along with them.  Prohibition had been repealed not long before and I suspect that Dad had a few beers and his wages were burning a hole in his pocket.  We had not owned a car for two or three years.

Late in the afternoon I was fooling around in the yard with Rex and Mother was, as usual, in the kitchen.  We heard a car coming and a 1927 Model T Ford touring car with Dad driving and Richard whooping in the seat beside him came wheeling into the barnlot.

“It’s ours!” Richard yelled as Dad wheeled the car around in a circle.  “We got a car!”

Mother had come out onto the south back porch facing the barn and Rex and I had raced around to that side of the house.  We boys were dancing in glee but then I caught sight of my mother’s face.  She was not happy.  Her face sort of crumpled and she sank down to sit on the edge of the porch.  Then she dropped her face into her apron over work-roughened hands—freshly red from the scrub board in the galvanized wash tub—and quietly cried.

It was appalling.  One thing I do not like to see is anyone cry, especially a grown woman and especially if it happened to my mother.  I went to her and put my arm around her shaking shoulders.  “What’s the matter, Mama?  Ain’t you happy about the car?”

Even in her grief, she answered automatically, “Don’t say ain’t!”  Then she sobbed, “Oh, Connie, there are so many things that we need.  We don’t need a car!  We need some decent clothes.  I was even hoping that your father would get me one of those washing machines.”

There was a big lump in my throat.  My instinct had been to run and see the car up close and Rex was already on the way to the barn lot, but the joy had gone out of it.  I thought of all the long hours I had seen my mother bent over a scrub board and laundry tub every week, then wringing out the wet clothes by hand and hanging them on the line to dry.  I also thought about all the long hours she spent in that kitchen every day without running water and with only the wood-burning stove to cook on.

Dad did not neglect Mother—he did everything he could for her.  He had installed a sink in the kitchen counter with a drain pipe that went outside so she would not have to carry waste water and throw it out the door.  He had built cupboards for her and a little clothes closet in the corner of the one bedroom.  He had always worked his fingers to the bone for us.

At the age of 39, Dad’s hands were already rough and beginning to be gnarled from hard labor and shucking corn.  He took great pride in an honest day’s work and got great satisfaction from what he accomplished whether there was money in it or not.  He was just an honest old country boy that did not have much in the way of business sense—especially after he had a couple of beers.

I wanted desperately to comfort my mother but I was at a loss what to say or do.  I just patted her shoulder clumsily and, I think, said something like “Don’t cry, Mama—please.  Things will get better, you’ll see!”

She looked up at me gratefully, smiled through her tears and squeezed my hand.  “I know, Con’rd,” she said softly.  “He means well—really he does, and his heart is pure gold.  He takes good care of us.  I should not be selfish.”

She dried her eyes with her apron then quickly got up and went into the house while I trotted down to the barnlot to inspect the Model T.  In a very few days both Richard and I had learned to drive that old car.

I do not know what conversation transpired between my mother and father but she accepted the car.  I do know that after a couple more months of working on the bridge job, Dad came back from Springfield on day with a brand new Maytag gasoline-powered washing machine in the back seat for Mother.  She used it until we left the Ozarks and her hands were not so red and chapped after that, nor did she complain of backaches.  It would be a real museum antique today, but it was pure luxury for my mother.

Hunting Possums and Ghosts

One of our pastimes in the fall in the Ozark hills—and sometimes a profitable one—was to go possum hunting.  After the first frosts of the year the persimmons got ripe and the possums would be out at night fattening up for their winter hibernation.  Their fur would be at its thickest and glossiest.  The itinerant fur dealers that came through periodically would pay maybe a dollar and a half for a good possum hide.

I recall very clearly one possum hunt that Richard and I went on probably the fall of 1935.  It was a cold, crisp, clear night.  A less than half moon was just rising.  We were carrying a flashlight and the little twenty-two Remington.  Pup, of course, was right at our heels.  We took off cross country through Bertha Beck’s farm and over toward Maze Creek to the west where Richard said he knew about a good stand of persimmon trees.

As I may have mentioned before, possums love ripe persimmons.  The persimmon trees do not grow very tall or very large so the idea was to find a fat old possum munching away in a persimmon tree where he would be easy prey.  A good possum dog, like old Hoover would have been, would range out ahead of you and would sit down and bark when he found a possum in a tree.

Pup went ranging out ahead of us all right, but squirrel hunter though he was, he was not a possum dog.  After a while we heard him barking up ahead to tell us he had something treed.  We headed that way and found him barking at a brush pile.  We could not smell any skunk odor so we shook the brush pile for him and, sure enough, out popped a rabbit and ol’ Pup took off after it.  Richard was disgusted and scathingly said, “See, lamebrain.  I told you that Pup is nothing but a biscuit hound.  All he knows how to do is eat, crap, and run rabbits!”

There was not much use in my arguing the point so we went on to the persimmon grove, moving silently through the starlit night.  Before very long Richard put out his hand and whispered, “There!  There’s one right up there in that tree!”

Sure enough, about ten feet off the ground there was the silhouette of a fat possum perched on a branch.  Richard shined the flashlight on him and his beady little eyes glowed in the dark like amber coals.  I was carrying the rifle.  “Okay,” I said, “I’ll shoot him.”

“No, nipple-noggin,” Richard snorted, “don’t do that.  A bullet hole will ruin the hide!  We got to climb up there and shake him out of the tree.  When he hits the ground, he’ll just curl up and play dead.  Goi on—climb up there and shake him down.”

The memory of that ill-fated star skunk was all too fresh and I drew back.  “Horeseapples!  YOU climb up there and shake the s.o.b. down!  I ain’t gonna do your dirty work like I did with that dang skunk that time!”

My brother snorted derisively and growled, “You fraidy-cat!  That old possum ain’t gonna hurt you ‘less you let him bite you!  All right—hold the light and I’ll go up there and get him.  If he don’t play dead when he hits the ground, grab him by the tail before he gets away.”

At the phrase “grab him by the tail” I remembered that skunk again and was suddenly ready to go up and shake the tree but Dick had already swung himself onto the lower branch.  When he was opposite the possum he shook the little tree and kicked at the animal with his foot.  Pretty soon the possum lost his grip and fell to the ground where he promptlyl curled up into a ball.  Richard dropped nimbly out of the tree.  “Well, knothead, grab him by the tail and kill him!”

I got the possum by his rat-like hairless tail and picked it up.  It was quite heavy and remained curled up in a ball.  I was used to killing rabbits by holding them by the back legs and whacking them on the neck with the side of my hand but I could not get the possum’s head straightened out and it was evident that it was stronger than any rabbit.

“It won’t straighten out.  How the heck am I supposed to kill it?”

Richard grinned.  “You was sure behind the door when they passed out brains!  Everybody knows the only way to kill a possum is to pull on his tail!”

“Shoot—I’m holding him by the tail.  No way is that going to kill him.”

Richard’s white teeth flashed in the dim starlight.  He was enjoying giving me a lesson.  “Here, flea brain—give him to me.  I’ll show you how to kill a possum pulling his tail.”

He took the curled up animal by the tail in one hand and reached for the twenty-two with the other.  Then he pounded the possum on the frozen ground until he got the head loose from the forepaws and got its chin on the ground.  Placing the little rifle barrel across the back of the possum’s neck, he stood on the rifle barrel with a foot on each side and pulled upward on the tail.  There was a crack when the neck broke and the animal went limp.  “See,” he said triumphantly, “nuthin’ to it!”

We walked on through the dark countryside under familiar stars without finding any more possums until we were nearing Maze Creek.  Pausing on the bank of the stream, Richard pointed to a rocky promontory at the top of a low bluff on the far side of the creek.  “Did you know that there bluff over there is haunted?”

“Horsehocky, you know dang well there ain’t no such thing as ghosts!”

“That’s what you think, bird brain,” he said maliciously.  “That there bluff, at least the big old boulder up there, is haunted.  Ask anyone.  Years ago, old man Morgan owned this whole little valley here along Maze Creek.  That’s why they call it North Morgan township—named it after him.

“Thing is, Morgan didn’t want to lose his land so, when he died, he left instructions that he was to be buried up there right behind that big old boulder overlooking the creek.  They did that and now, every time there is a full moon in October, old man Morgan’s ghost comes up out of that shallow grave and stands there on that boulder looking out over the valley.”

I did not really believe in ghosts but I could feel the hair prickle on the nape of my neck as I nervously looked at the newly-risen half-moon in the east.  “Bullshit!”

“No, no bull,” Richard said solemnly, “I can prove it.  You know that ‘simple-minded’ white haired old fellow over at Cane Hill?”

“Sure.  He just babbles and doesn’t make any sense when you talk to him, but he was born that way.”

“That’s what you think,” Richard said.  “He was as sane and normal as anybody until he was about twenty years old.  Had coal black hair.  Well, him and a bunch of other young fellows were talking about old man Morgan’s ghost one night in October when there was a full moon.

“His name is Cal Coombs.  He didn’t believe in ghosts like you say you don’t and he said there was nothing to it.  The rest of them made hi bet that he couldn’t go up there and spend the rest of the night on that boulder.  Cal bet them and they took him up there just about this time of the night.  They let him have a kerosene lantern and a double-barrel shotgun.

“After Cal was settled down up there on the boulder, the rest of them went over to the old Blankenship place that is deserted now and waited with a jug of moonshine.  Along about midnight—which is when Morgan’s ghost is supposed to come out and stand up there moaning—they heard that shotgun go off.

“They took off right away and ran up there.  They found poor Cal laying on the ground smashed and the shotgun had both barrels discharged.  Cal was senseless so they carried him back to the Blankenship house.  Next morning his black hair was snow white and nuthin’ he said made any sense.  When they asked him what happened, he just babbled at them like he still does to this day.”

The familiar night suddenly seemed ominous.  I was not going to fall for one of Richard’s tall tales, however.  “Horseapples.  I don’t believe a word of it!  Ain’t no such thing as ghosts!  You ever seen old man Morgan’s grave?”

“We—ell—no,” Richard admitted, “but it’s up there.”

I must have been feeling unusually brave.  “Okay,” I said and started toward the creek swinging the carcass of the possum, “let’s go up there and have a looksee while we are here.”

He held back.  I think that his tale had sent gooseflesh up his own spine.  “Be better if we came back in the daylight,” he said.

“Now who’s chicken,” I jeered.  “Got the flashlight, ain’t you—and the moon ain’t half full.  You skeered?”

He could not let me face him down so of course he scrambled u the low bluff to the large boulder at the top.  There was a level clearing beyond it.  I stood looking around in the dim moonlight.  “Where’s the grave, huh?”

Richard played the yellow beam of the flashlight over the brown grass, leaves, and weeds.  “There—over there by the bushes.  There’s a sunk in place.  That’s gotta be it.”

We walked over and knelt down.  There was undeniably a shallow depression about six feet long and two feet wide.  There was no grave marker or stone of any kind.  The hair on the back of my neck was prickling again.  I was determined not to show any fear but my voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, “How deep you reckon they buried him?”

Before Richard could answer, we both froze and went wide-eyed in apprehension when there was a sudden rustling in the bushes bordering the small clearing.  Someone or something was coming!

I had a sudden urge to urinate or defecate or maybe do both at once.  I still had the possum by the tail in one hand and the little rifle in the other, but I could not even lift it.  Richard swung the flashlight beam around at the bushes.  To our immense relief, Pup popped out of the underbrush.  He trotted over to us, tongue hanging out, and plopped down, his rabbit chase finally over.

By mutual and unspoken agreement, we decided then and there to come back sometime in the daylight to explore old man Morgan’s grave, if that was what we had found.  With Pup trailing meekly at our heels, we made our way down the bluff and back across the creek.

Once back on more familiar territory, our bravado began to return.  Richard had another ghost story for me. “Y’know,” he said as we trudged through the darkness toward home, “there are a lot of things you can’t explain if you don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Like what?”

“Well,” he said, “you know that screened west back porch on Uncle Coy’s house?  You walk on it and those old floorboards squeak like the devil.  Also that old screen door screeches whenever it’s opened.

“Not long ago Uncle Coy was gone to Greenfield one evening.  Aunt Morma, Eldon, James Lowell, and the girls were there by themselves.  After supper they were sitting around in the kitchen by the lamp waiting for Uncle Coy to come home.  It got to be well after dark.  Now he always goes in by the east kitchen door from the open cement porch like we all do over there but all of them suddenly heard that west screen door screech open, then closed and footsteps came across the porch to the kitchen door.  The doorknob turned, then slowly turned back and there was not another sound.”

Now not only were the hairs on the back of my neck prickling but there was also goose bumps on my arms as Richard went on, “They all waited a minute then Aunt Norma called out, ‘Coy, is that you?’  There was still not a sound.  Finally, Eldon, being the oldest, got Uncle Coy’s shotgun, then went over and opened the kitchen door.  There was no one on the porch and none of them had heard anyone leaving after the doorknob turned and turned back.  Now, it is impossible to cross that old porch without those old floorboards squeaking and you can’t open that screen door without it making a racket.  I know, because James and I tried it.  Now, you tell me who or what came on that porch and turned that doorknob!”

The frosty, dark night suddenly seemed cold.  Somewhere in the far darkness a dog howled and a vagrant breeze caressed the nape of my neck like a clammy hand.  I shivered, pulled up the collar of my sheepskin coat and looked at the familiar stars that were brilliant overhead for reassurance.  I could see the Big Dipper, Orion’s Belt, Casseopia’s Chair, and the Seven Sisters were in their places to the east.  I found myself wishing that the yellow lamp light of home was closer than more than a mile away.  Pup must have sensed my mood because he whined and crowded close to my heels.’ I was just trying to think of some smart-aleck comeback when everything sort of came unglued.  We had been hiking through dry weeds across an old farm and past an unkempt burial ground that was enclosed by a high wire fence supported by big corner posts made of field stones piled into a circle of woven wire.  We came around one of those corner posts and suddenly from the graveyard, something white reached out in front of us in the dim moonlight.  It was truly a specter.

There is no telling who broke first but suddenly we were running as if our very lives depended on our feet in those clodhopper shoes as we bolted toward where we could see the lamplight in the kitchen at home.  We never slowed until we came to the county road in front of the house where we slid down into the ditch to catch our breath before we went inside.  I believe I got there ahead of Richard but he was close behind.  Ol’ Pup was not with us—he was already ensconced under the kitchen porch, his pink tongue hanging out on his forepaws.

I went over by that old graveyard during daylight not long after that, and it turned out our graveyard “ghost” was a very faded flag at the grave of a Union soldier killed during the Civil War and buried beside the fence.  Apparently a slight breeze had flipped the flag out toward us and it had appeared white in the dim light of the half-moon.  It was a bit disappointing—I would have much rather gone on thinking that maybe we had seen a genuine ghost rise up out of the grave.

This Little Piggy Did Not Go to Market

Ol’ Pup was my buddy, but he is not the only animal I remember from those days.  I recall that one time one of our sows had a big litter of piglets and there was one little runt that was not going to survive—the sow had more piglets than she had teats and the little guy was not going to make it.

Dad told me that I could have the runt, but I would have to raise it myself.  I jumped at the chance because pigs were a “money crop.”  Our brooder house did not have any chicks in it at the time so I made a box for my little pig in there.  I fed him from a bottle for a while, then when he could drink by himself, I started giving him clabbered milk because I had good luck raising Pup on that.

It all went well for a while.  I would hand feed that little pig twice a day and he started to grow.  I figured that when we got to a couple of hundred pounds I could take him to market and sell him for, what to me, would be a lot of money.  When that little pig was only eight inches long and weighed maybe two and a half pounds, my mother was amused when I was the one that rushed to the mailbox the day “Capper’s Weekly” [a weekly farm publication] that came and the first thing I turned to was the produce prices so I could check what hogs were bringing.

As it happened more than once in my lifetime, I counted my chickens before they were hatched.  After about four weeks of my tender loving care and that clabbered milk diet, that little pig got diarrhea and I found him stiff as a board one morning.  So much for my becoming a pork tycoon.

Richard and I had an even more memorable animal at one time.  Someone—I think maybe our cousin Harold Frieze—gave us a billy goat kid.  I guess he might have been a runt or an orphan as he ws just a little guy when we got hi, tottering around on spindly legs.  We bottle fed him and, inevitably, we named him “Billy.”

Billy was a lot more successful than the little pig.  He grew in a hurry, eating almost anything he ran across, and almost before we knew it he was a rambunctious full sized goat and growing horns.  He was the most agile creature I had ever seen.  When he got his growth he could go over any fence as if it were not there.  When we went to Bona, Billy would follow us down the road.

Dad finally decreed that we had to build a pen that would keep that billy goat in.  Richard and I went to work.  We cut long persimmon poles and build a pen about six feet high using two courses of chicken wire fencing.  It did not work.  Billy could not jump it because the pen was too small for him to get a running start, but he sure could climb over it.  He was one danged nuisance.  When he started to grow horns—and I guess get horny, too—he like to butt anything in sight.  Mother would be out in the back yard hanging out the wash and ol’ Billy would get her from behind, ker-thump!

That goat did provide some moments of amusement.  He developed a taste for tobacco.  Dave would often give the goat the butt of a cigarette, still lit.  Billy would gobble it up and blow smoke out his nostrils at it went down. [Okay, that’s rather horrifying.] 

Billy was a nice goat as goats go, but he really did not have any redeeming features other than eating cigarette butts.  He stunk just like a goat and, after having hi butt her one too many times, Mother laid down the law—“that goat has got to go!”  Our cousin Harold (who may have given us the kid to start with) was running a farm for Fred Hulston at the big white house south of us and had some goats so we have Billy to him.

A Boy and His Dog Pup

The puppy was a sort of scroungy, scruffy little runt—mostly black on his back with a white belly and some brownish yellow around his ruff and his eyes.  Someone had told me that clabbered milk was good for pups and we had plenty of that.  I raised that little runt on clabbered milk and table scraps.  It must have been good for him because he grew at a prodigious rate.  By the time he was six months old that runt had turned into a big-bonded, medium sized, deep-chested dog.

One evening my father asked me what I was going to name the dog.  Up until then we had simply been calling him “the pup”, but my father said that a dog should have a proper name.  I thought about it for a long time but could not come up with anything that seemed appropriate so, by default, the dog’s name remained simply “Pup.”

I never did manage to train Pup to bring in the cows by himself like some dogs will do.  Pup was more what you would call a “biscuit hound.”  He would hang around outside the kitchen door at mealtime (neither cats nor dogs were ever allowed into the house) hoping someone would throw him a biscuit—which I usually did.  He was my constant companion, though, and turned out to be one of the best squirrel dogs I ever saw.

When I went squirrel hunting with that slim little Remington twenty-two, Pup always went along.  He seemed to know just what to do.  He never barked and simply padded along silently at my side or behind me through the thick woods until we spotted a squirrel in a tree.  Of course, as silently as we moved, the squirrel always saw us and would promptly move around to the other side of the trunk or limb.

I did not have to signal or direct Pup in any way.  He would see the squirrel as soon as I did—probably before.  When I halted and froze in position, Pup would silently circle around the tree until he could see the squirrel again, then he would go “Whuff!”  just once.  The squirrel would circle away from Pup and I would have a clean shot at it.  Ol’ Pup and I put a lot of meant on the table that way.

Pup did have one real failing—he really loved to chase the cottontail rabbits.  We might be crossing a pasture to go squirrel hunting and, if a rabbit got up, Pup was off and away.  I do not recall that he ever caught one but he would be gone for several minutes, then finally show up and throw himself at my feet, panting and looking very pleased with himself.

Chasing rabbits almost got Pup killed one time—y me.  I had the rifle and, although they were not as a young squirrel, would not hesitate to kill a rabbit to take home.  Well, we jumped this cottontail in a wide pasture and Pup took off after him.  The rabbit circled and was running crosswise to me so I had a clear shot.  I pulled down on the rabbit just when Pup was close on his tail.

I did not lead the rabbit enough and he shot out of the sight over the hill before I could reload, but old Pup let out a pained yelp and skidded to an abrupt halt.  He pawed at his nose then came trotting back and sat down looking reproachfully at me.  His muzzle was bleeding.  Turned out the bullet had just grazed the end of his nose.  He did not chase anymore rabbits that day.  I think he was trying to figure out if it was my fault or if that rabbit had kicked him in the snoot.  He must have decided that it was me because in a day or two he was back chasing rabbits.

Spit and Whittle Clubs were common in the south and Midwest.

The loafers at Grandpa’s store used to kid me about Pup just being a “biscuit hound” and not much good as a cattle dog or to chase a fox.  Pup was with me one hot summer afternoon when I went by there and there were three or four of them loafing in the shade on the store porch.  One of the loafers was white-haired old Buck Blair who lived in a shack just down the road and would mosey up there in the afternoons to get a bucket of water from the well at the churchyard.

Someone started ribbing me about Pup as usual and old Buck decided to put them down.  “Why, fellows,” he said, “that there is one of the smartest dogs I ever did see.”

They did not stop whittling and Cook Neil never missed a lick at his chewing tobacco but they all looked at Buck to see what was coming next.  I sort of wondered myself.

“Well, sir,” Buck went on, “I took Conrad fishing the other day and that there dog went along.  We went down to Maze Creek and when we got there, just to see what that pup would do, I threw a quarter into a deep hole in the creek.  That there dog went down and dived in right after it.”

Buck paused and struck a match to light his old pipe.  The whittlers stopping making shavings for a minute and everyone waited for Buck to go on.  I did, too, because I knew I had not been fishing with Buck Blair and I also knew he probably hardly ever had a quarter in the pocket of his patched overalls to go throwing into a creek.

“Well,” he said solemnly, “that pup dived deep and he was down there so long that I was beginning to wonder if he had gone and drown hisself.”

Another pause (Buck had the timing of a great comedian) then, with a twinkle in his faded old blue eyes, he said, “Nossir—after a couple of minutes that there dog popped back up and he had a string of catfish in his mouth and fifteen cents in change!”

They all laughed and went back to whittling while Cook Neil spat a big squirt of tobacco juice into the dust of the road.  I was tickled pink and took Buck’s galvanized water pail and drew him a bucket of water from the well to take home.  I used that tale of his about Pup several times years later.

Bona School the conclusion: Poetry, Shinny, and Spelling

Bona School 1937 Conrad is in the very back on the left, leaning on door jam.  A somewhat sullen look I recognize from his grandsons.

Bona School gave us a solid foundation in all the basics—English, mathematics, science, history, geography, etc.  The big advantage was that, since each class was so small (there were seventeen of us in my class and it was one of the larger ones), we got lots of individual attention from the teachers.  We also got a lot of lessons that were not in the curriculum, especially after Mr. Mitchell came there in 1934.  He always took advantage of our individual characteristics and got his points across.

Sometimes, to our dismay, Mitchell’s lessons were severe and could be embarrassing.  We were usually assigned homework for over the weekend.  On one occasion for English, Mitchell told us to write an original poem.  I thought that would be a snap and, as often happened, blithely put it off until Sunday evening.  When I finally got down to it words seemed to just pop into my mind as I put them on paper.  I had absolutely no recollection of having read or heard them anywhere.  As far as I was concerned they simply came to me.

Monday for our English recitation each of us had to stand up and read the poem we had written.  When my turn came I walked to the front and proudly read what I thought was a dandy poem.  It was about Heaven and Hell.  I do not now recall the first stanza but the ending was:

“The road to that bright happy region, is a dim narrow path so they say.

But the broad one that leads to perdition, is posted and blazed all the way.”

They seemed to like my poem and Mr. Mitchell reached to take the paper and I figured I would get an A; however, the Simmons sisters, Lois and Martha, were whispering to each other and then Lois’ hand shot into the air.

“Mr. Mitchell,” Louis said, “that is not Conrad’s original poem.  We got a new book of cowboy songs from the Grand Ol’ Opry the other day and that is in one of the songs in it!”  [indeed, Google lists it in a collection of Cowboy Songs and Ballads]

I froze in dismay and I could feel my ears getting warm as my face turned beet red in embarrassment.  I could not recall ever having heard the song, but I did listen to the Grand Ol’ Opry from Nashville one in a while on Grandpa’s radio and supposed that I could very well have then forgot until the words came back to me.  The whole room was looking at me and most of them were smirking perhaps because I was usually one of the ones who got the best grades, seemingly without effort.  There was some snickering.

“Well, now, Conrad,” Mr. Mitchell said in his mild way, “is that right?”

I tucked my head and stammered, “Well—I—uh—I dunno.  I suppose I might have heard it sometime on the radio, but I sure don’t remember and I know I never saw it anywhere.  I did not copy it from anything.”

“All right,” he said, “I am sure you are telling the truth, but there is a word that I think that everyone should remember.  I want you to write ‘plagiarism’ on the blackboard then get the dictionary and read the definition of plagiarize to the class.”

I did as he said, mis-spelling it when I left out “I”, then got the dictionary and read in a weak voice, “plagiarize—to appropriate and pass off as one’s own the writings, ideas, etc., of another.”

It was a mortifying and humbling experience.  That lesson stuck with me so well that thereafter I was so careful to write down only my own words that sometimes, as in a science report, I would not even quote a book when I could have, but would put the idea into my own words.  That resulted in the ideas and concepts being firmly implanted in my mind and sometime I could clarify what the author meant or improve on it.  I believe that Mr. Mitchell was fully aware of that.

The Bona School grounds were a full acre so there was plenty of room for our recess and lunchtime sports so we got plenty of exercise even though there were no organized sports activities.  Originally there had been backstops in front of the school and the school had a basketball team.  About the time we started there, however, the basketball backstops had rotted off and they were taken out and not replaced.  The men of the community built teeter-totters and swings on the south side of the building for the smaller children.  We who were older contented ourselves with games of longbase baseball and, in the large open area south of the school, shinny and football.

All of us boys played shinny, which is a version of field hockey.  We made our own shinny sticks by selecting a hickory sapling the right size and having a big root at the base that could be carved into a rough approximation of a wood golf club.  We always used an empty Pet Milk can for a puck.  That meant that eventually the game could get a mite dangerous the metal can would soon get beat into a compact, jagged ball of metal.  If you got a fair poke at it with that hickory shinny stick, it would fly through the air like a bullet and raise bruises and cuts.  It was necessary to duck in a split second sometimes. 

Shinny was also very good for footwork.  If a player did not have the knack of dancing out of the way, his bare ankles could get to be a mass of bruises and small cuts from either that beat up Pet Milk can or the opponents shinny sticks.  We certainly did not need Nintendo games for hand/eye coordination!

Our Bona School brand of football was we were playing it when Mr. Mitchell first came onto the scene could be a dangerous game as well.  It was an un-coached, rough and tumble, full tackle game without benefit of yard markers or referee.  We had not pads other than our overalls and shirt and a jacket and clodhopper shoes late in the fall when the weather got cold.  Our specialty was the flying tackle.  I only weighed a bit over a hundred pounds but when I took off full tilt and made a leaping dive at a larger ball carrier, he was almost guaranteed to get knocked off his feet and probably lose the ball.  You had to knock the ball away because we did not know about ten yards in four downs.

The first fall he was there, Mr. Mitchell came out to watch one of our lunch hour football games and was soon shaking his head in dismay.  He thought someone was going to get badly hurt although I do not remember any injuries beyond good bruises and fairly frequent bloody noses.  Of course you often got the wind knocked out of you but we took that as a matter of course and part of the game. 

Mitchell soon banned the flying tackles, insisting that we keep our feet on the ground at all times.  He taught us about touch football, yard markers, tec. But somehow the game just was not the same after that.  We privately agreed that he was making us play sissy football and began to lose interest.  One result was an increase in the number of good fist fights because we needed some way to work off our aggressions, I guess.

I look back fondly at my years at Bona School for many reasons—not the least of them being that I found it easy to be at the top of the class scholastically.  The reason was that I was very curious about everything and I wanted to learn everything I could.  I did not like to be wrong and I did not like not to know something.

None of the boys could match my grades (most of them just did not care) and almost none of the girls with the exception of Martha Simmons (who would go on to a career as a teacher) and Cook Neil’s daughter Mary.  For instance, almost invariably when were was a spell-down, it would be Mary Neil and me who would be the finalists and it was a toss-up as to who would trip up first—and sometimes it was me who went down first.  In retrospect, I am grateful that I had Mary Neil’s competition to spur me on—but I did not much like her at the time.

Bona School part 5: Lesson of a School Play

An outfit similar to what might have been worn by the author for his school play

I never forgot one lesson that I learned at Bona School that stood me in good stead in later years when my career at Boeing got me involved in public speaking.  One of the school plays that we put on around 1933 or 1934 involved some skits that depicted going to school in an 1880s’ schoolroom.  I was to be dressed in a homespun shirt and old time short pants.

My mother found some authentic clothes for me to wear.  Pour neighbor Bertha Beck had a truck full of old clothes from the time when her father was a boy.  She loaned me a pair of short homespun pants, a pair of galluses, and an old-fashioned white shirt.  The skit called for my pants to have a big ragged hole in the seat.  Of course Bertha did not want her father’s pants ruined so my mother loosely pasted on a piece of white cloth.  In the light of those few gasoline lanterns she figured that the audience would not know the difference and it turned out that it worked great.

I do not recall the point of the whole skit but there were several of us in it.  When my turn came I stood up in my clodhopper shoes (I was wearing a pair of my father’s work shoes so they really looked clumsy) and faced the audience to recite a ditty.  As my grandmother once said, I could not carry a tune in a milk bucket so I sort of chanted:

“Nine o’clock spelling lesson just begun,

Johnnie throws a spitball—just fer fun,

Hits the teacher’s ear with an aw-ful splat—

She turns around and says, ‘Now who did that!’

“Jonnie’s told to stand up with his face to the wall,

He says ‘I dowanna’ and he tries to stall.

If’n I stood up there I’d take an aw-ful chance—

Cause I gotta big hole in the seat of my paints!”

During the punch line I turned my back to the audience, bent over so they could see the fake hole, and peered at them through my spread-apart legs.  I had sweaty palms the whole time but it turned into a very gratifying moment.  Everyone laughed, applauded, and there was even a whistle or two.  I could feel my somewhat oversize ears getting red from embarrassment as I stood and bowed stiffly as I had been instructed to do.  I left the stage with a very good feeling about getting up in front of people.  It gave me confidence that would stand me in good stead later on as a commencement speaker, lead in my high school paly in 1939, and—much later on—in public speaking literally all over the world.

My mother’s idea about the fake hole in the seat of my pants worked so well that, after the program, Bertha Beck came around a bit upset that we had ruined her daddy’s pants by tearing a hole in them.  She was quite relieved when I showed her that it was just a piece of an old handkerchief basted on.

The deep impression that little performance made on me is probably why, after all these years, I am able to recall every word of my little ditty.

Although short, this episode give me a lot to think about as my father's great-grandchildren have been in several plays.  What influence of that will we see down the road?

Bona School part 4: Intrigue at a Pie Supper

I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter that Bona School was sometimes used for social events and sometimes for a fund raising “pie supper.”  I suspect that it has been a good number of years since the last pie supper was held anywhere.

Woman placing her pie (maybe hers) with others for

A pie supper was actually an auction with the proceeds going to the school fund.  When one was scheduled, all the ladies and girls in the community would bake their favorite pie.  They would then put the pie in a box and decorate the box with fancy crepe paper, ribbons, and bows.  The idea was that when the pies were auctioned the bidder would not know whose pie it was or what kind it was.  After the auction was over, the successful bidders would sit down and eat the pie with whoever it turned out had baked it.

This auction winner looks like he wants to take a bite out of her!

Maintaining secrecy resulted in some spirited maneuvering.  The girls would often trade pie boxes before carrying them to the school or else would cover them with a newspaper or a grocery sack.  In turn us boys had a regular spy network to attempt to determine in advance which pie box belonged to whom.

The whole thing would get complicated since boys and young adult males wanted to bid on their girlfriends’ pie since they were going to eat with the baker.  Conversely, they did not want anyone else to know.  (I suspect that, in some cases, the girls simply told in advance but not usually as that would take all the fun out of it.)  A couple of years I had a pretty good crush on Betty King Lindley and wanted her pie.  She was best friends with my cousin Mary Catherine, and I figured they would carry each other’s boxes so I bid on the one Mary Catherine had carried in.  I was right.  I ate pie with Betty King.

Another time I decided that I wanted to buy the pie of cute little Betty Lou Long (she was pretty as a spotted pup) but she was two grades behind me in school and I did not want anyone to know that I was sort of sweet on a girl that young.  I got a peek at the box Betty Lou’s mother carried in and bought it.  Of course I pretended to be very surprised when it turned out to be Betty Lou’s pie.

As you might well imagine from my comment about his nature, Richard one time came up with a scheme to make a little money on the side at a pie supper.  Got him in trouble, too.  He was in cahoots with our first cousin James Lowell Tygart.  The two of them volunteered to direct traffic in the schoolyard where folks would park their Model T’s, wagon, or buggy as the case might be.  The idea was that they would get a peek at the boxes, figure out who was carrying whose pie, then they would sell that information for a dime to the fellow that wanted a particular pie.

It worked out pretty well at first.  By the time the auction had started they had collected maybe a dollar between them.  It was afterward that they got their comeuppance.  Jaycee Lindley, who had already graduated from Dadeville High and was full grown, wanted his sweetheart’s pie but she coyly would not tell him what the box looked like.  Jaycee paid Richard to tell him which box it was and old Dick solemnly assured him what it looked like.  Well, Jaycee bought the wrong box and wound up eating pie with the widow, Bertha Beck, who lived across the road from us south of Bona.

Jaycee was mad, of course, because he had wasted a dime on Richard’s information.  He was a good sport about eating with Bertha (she made great apple pie) but afterwards he cornered Richard out by the coal shed, demanded his dime back, and was going to beat the tar out of Richard.  I did not think that was quite a fair fight so, when I didn’t see James Lowell making any effort to help Richard, I sort of dived at Jaycee from behind and knocked his legs out from under him just as he was reaching for my brother.  Before Jaycee could get to his feet we had disappeared into the darkness.  Jaycee was pretty big and I was glad that he was not one to hold a grudge—he just laughed about it later.

Bona School part three: classroom distractions

Bona School 1928

When I get to thinking about Bona School (the old building has long since gone and present-day Bona kids go to the consolidated school in Dadeville) fifty-year-old memories come flooding back.  I will try not to bore you with miscellaneous details but will endeavor to stick to some interesting things.

Bona School had no big school bell on it.  The only bell was a small, hand-held brass bell.  One of the teachers would step out onto the front stoop and ring it five minutes before class time and you had better be in your seat right quick or you would have to stay an extra half hour after school—which meant having to think up an excuse for being late getting home for the evening chores without telling your parents that you had been kept after school.  When that happened to Richard, he would blandly announce at home that he had stayed after school to wash blackboards and dust chalk erasers—which could well be true because something like that was usually what the teachers would make the miscreant do.  (No, we never tattled on each other—that would not have been fair.)

Each room at the school had its own “library” which consisted simply of a bank of shelves along one wall.  There was an American flag in the corner and each morning we would stand and recited the Pledge of Allegiance.  I recall that in the Big Room at the front over Mr. Mitchell’s desk there was a large picture of Sir Launcelot and his horse.  The only other decoration was a portrait of George Washington.

The older boys had a nasty trick they would occasionally play in the wintertime when those old coal stoves were going.  Some of the boys carried their rifles while walking to school in case they saw a rabbit or a squirrel on the way home.  They usually had a few twenty-two shells in a pocket.  Every once in a while when one of them was sent out to fill the coal scuttle, a twenty-two shell would find its way into the coal.  It would sound like a firecracker going off when it got hot in the stove which, of course, was a bit of a distraction from lessons.

The twenty-two shells were not very dangerous because, when they went off, the lead bullet did not go anywhere and the little brass casings would simply ricochet around inside the cast iron stove.  The principal had to try to figure out who was responsible because it was not necessarily the one who went to get the coal—someone could have put them into the coal bin in advance.  Mr. Mitchell was pretty good at spotting the sly look that could give the perpetrator away.

The worst episode of that nature was one time when someone sneaked a four-ten gauge shotgun shell into the coal.  Boy, when that thing went off it was more like a hand grenade than a firecracker!  It did not break the stove itself but it blew the door open and the stove pipe came crashing down.  Of course it scattered black coal soot all over the room and everyone.  School had to be called off for the whole day while the mess was cleaned up.

I did not get very dirty in that one because my desk was right by one of the north windows.  When the stove blew I simply flipped up the window and bailed out closely followed by Rountree Lindley who was my seatmate.  Of course we were closely questioned by Mr. Mitchell because it made it appear that we were ready for it.  I convinced him, however, that the window was the way I always went out when we had a fire drill.  The culprit was not found because no one had carried a four-ten shotgun to school that day so Mitchell sent the girls home and made all the boys stay and help with the cleanup.  That ended the episodes of ammunition in the stove as, from then on, Mr. Mitchell would check all the pockets of all the boys who left guns in the cloakroom an confiscate all the ammunition until school let out in the afternoon. 

Another check the teachers had to make every morning in the wintertime was for skunk odor.  Several of the older boys had steel trap lines and might have skinned a skunk then not cleaned up too well.  Even when it was hard to smell when he came in from the cold, a boy smelling of skunk would really stink in there by that hot coal stove.  The result would be that he got sent home to have a bath and get clean clothes.

I recall one time that Mr. Mitchell tagged a distant cousin, Gene Asbell, for having skunk on him and sent him home.  Henry and Maude Asbell (they were the Asbells involved in the feud with the Tygarts) lived about three-quarters of a mile east of the school.  A few minutes after Gene was sent home, Maude came stalking up the road madder than an old wet hen.  She called Mr. Mitchell out into the cloak room in the hall and really laid into him, insisting that her boy did not smell like skunk.  (We all smelled it and he really did stink.)

Well, Mr. Mitchell patiently heard her out but finally had enough of her tirade.  He calmly said, “Missus Asbell, maybe you don’t smell the skunk on him because I do believe that you smell like skunk yourself!"

Of course that made Maude madder than ever.  She got so mad that she was red in the face and could not even speak.  She finally went off toward home sputtering and fuming to herself.  I do not recall how long it was before she was on speaking terms with Mitchell, but was quite a while.

I met Maud Asbell in 1970.  I do not disbelieve my father.