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.”

Heading West

I did not attend the auction at our little farm.  I had no desire to watch our meager and somewhat shabby but familiar possessions dispersed to strangers.  I had said my goodbyes to old Buck, that patient and gentle big buckskin horse, and to Red, the little blazed- face sorrel.  They had served us well and were my friends.

Mother had told me that I could keep one of our two guns—either the slim little twenty-two or the single-barreled breech loader shotgun—for hunting that fall.  I chose the shotgun.  I had only been permitted to carry a shotgun for the past year and some bird hunting wa all that it was likely to do in the fall.  I would be leaving in the spring before squirrel season.

Mother also asked me not to plague Grandpa and Grandma with a dog so, very reluctantly and having to hold back tears, I said goodbye to my good friend Pup and gave him to one of my cousins who I was sure would treat him well and take care of him.

On the day of the sale on a Saturday I simply helped Grandpa around the store and carried buckets of water from the well for Grandma.  I do not know how much money was realized, but hopefully it was sufficient to defray Mother’s expenses on the long trip west.

Departure day for Mother, Richard, Rex, and tiny seven-month-old Sandra arrived.  Mr. Ganaway loaded our old metal trunk and such housewares as mother could take into the truck, then he piled bedding and pillows on top so that Richard and Rex would have room to sit up under the canopy.  There was even a small space for them to hang their feet down at the back.  Mr. Ganaway said, “Well, boys, you won’t see where we are going, but you will sure know where we have been!”  It promised to be a long, long haul on those miles across Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Washington.

Our family was never very demonstrative.  My mother’s eyes puddled up a bit when she told Grandma and Grandpa goodbye.  She hugged me and admonished me to write a letter once in a while.  She turned then and climbed into the truck while Richard and Rex scrambled into the back.  Grandma reluctantly handed up Sandra Dean.  I patted Sandra’s tiny hand, then closed the door as the truck engine growled into life.  They pulled away and off down the graveled road toward Dadeville and the highway west beyond.

The last I saw was Richard and Rex waving gaily from the back of the truck until the dust obscured them.  I stood in the road and watched them disappear past the little house where we had lived, then I had to hurry off to school.

Dreaming of Washington, Walter Mitty Style

That day [his father left for the west coast] I was truly walking on air on the way to school.  My imagination ran wild.  During the morning, while the tenth grade was reciting, I got a picture atlas from the library shelves and flipped it open to the Pacific Northwest and the State of Washington.

It was a glorious prospect.  The pictures in the atlas were all in black and white, but my imagination added the colors.  There were green mountains, the snow peak of Mount hood, and vast expanses of evergreen forests of Douglas fir.  There were photographs of logging and one of a tugboat pulling a huge raft of logs down the Columbia River which, to me, looked as big as an ocean.  I could throw a rock across the Little Sac River in most places but the Columbia was more than a mile wide—as wide as the distance from our house to school!

Inevitably, I went off into one of my Fantasies.  This time I was a lumberjack in a red plaid wool jacket and calked boots. I was high off the ground, topping a tall spar tree, when the foreman came and yelled up to me, “Hey, we got us a log jam in the creek and it looks like a real killer.  You will have to come quick!”

I was famous not only for being the best tree topper in the Pacific Northwest, but also for being able to clear any log jam.  I finished topping the spar tree with two mighty swings of my sharp double-bitted axe and came down on the double.  The foreman led me trotting down a shaded forest path until we came to the large creek down which the logs were floated to the Columbia River.

The jam was a bad one.  Logs had wedged between huge boulders and those behind had been piled high in a tangle by the swift current.  My practiced eye quickly spotted the key log at the bottom of the jam.  Get that out and the whole shebang would hurtle down the creek.

I simply said, “Gimme a peavey,” and spit on my hands.

“But when you pop that key log loose, the whole pile is going to come down on you.  You won’t be able to get up out of there in time!”

I had already considered that.  “Never mind,” I said flatly, “when she pops out I’ll ride her down the river—done it before.”

I took the heavy peavey and nimbly hopped from boulder to logs until I had made my way down to the source of the problem.  The huge pile of logs towered over me and creaked ominously from the force of the water dammed upstream of the jam.

The four-foot thick key log was jammed against the edge of a big grey boulder.  Calculating the angle, I got the point of the peavey into the thick red-brown bark, set the hook, and heaved mightily.  There was a groan and a scrape as the end of the log came loose.  It started to move and the pile of logs rumbled as they came loose.  Catlike, I leaped onto the log, my calked boots holding firmly to the shaggy bark.

The log lurched then, a split second ahead of the crashing pile, shot out into the current of a white water rapid.  I balanced the peavey crosswise in front of me and, as we shot out of sight around a bend, the canyon echoed my triumphant “YAHOO!”

I suddenly snapped back to reality there in Bona School.  The room had gone silent and everyone was staring at me.  In my excitement and enthusiasm, I had shouted “Ya-hoo!” out loud!  Mr. Mitchell was looking at me and grinning.  “Beg pardon, Conrad—what was that you said?”

My face was beet red and my ears were burning in embarrassment.  I slowly closed the book and mumbled, “I—well—ah—I was thinking about something else I guess, sir.”

All thirty kids in the room roared with laughter at my discomfort.  Mitchell rapped on his desk for order and said dryly, “Yes, I guess you were and I think I know what it was.  We appreciate your enthusiasm for the great Pacific Northwest under the circumstances but we do have work to do.  I shall call recess five minutes early then we will get back to work on our science project.”

Of course I was razzed unmercifully on the playground, but beneath it all, most of the kids were envious of the prospect that Richard, Rex, and I faced.

Home is Where the Heart is.

Last home Conrad lived in with his parents.

Dad was not much of a hand to write but we got short letters every week or so.  He had found a job at the DuBois sawmill on the waterfront in Vancouver where he had worked ten years before.  George DuBois had remembered him and what a good worker he was before.  In due time Dad saved enough money to rent a house and get the basic furniture so the problem became how for him to get my mother and us four kids to Vancouver.

It may have taken weeks for Dad to save the money for train tickets, but fortunately, there was a friend, a Mr. Ganaway, living near Arcola who decided that he wanted to see the Pacific Northwest.  He had a pickup truck on which he had built a homemade canopy.  A deal was made that Dad would pay for the gas and, after an auction sale at our little farm, they would load in our possessions.  Mother and baby Sandra would ride in the cab with Ganaway and us boys would ride on top of the things in back.

Even though it was my ambition to leave the hills and, initially, I had been elated at the prospect, in September when departure was a matter of a month away I began to have some second thoughts.  The school year was well under way and I did not like the idea of interrupting my final year there to start in the middle of the term at a new and much larger school.  I had been told that Vancouver High School where we would go had around three hundred students in each class.

As the month wore on, I became ever more reluctant.  I was still competing with Mary Neil for valedictorian of graduating tenth grade.  I was also aware that I was getting an exceptionally fine education from J. B. Mitchell.  More and more I was torn between my original sesire to get out of the Ozark hills and wanting to finish the school year at Bona.

One day when we were to spend our last night in that little grey farmhouse, I was a long time getting home from school.  I remained after the others had gone, cleaning erasers and taking a long look around that familiar room where I had spent so many hours.  I wanted very much to finish the year.

Grandma and Grandpa Stanley's house 1936, Bona

As I finally walked slowly homeward, I paused in Bona.  I looked for a long time at my grandparents’ house and store, at Tom Humbert’s store across the road, the road down the hill west past the frog pond, and I gazed across the rolling hills and woodlands to the east from the porch of Grandpa’s store.  All this was home and down inside I did not want to leave.  I was torn, too, between a dread of the strange new world out there and eager anticipation of a better life to come.

I stared again at Grandpa’s house then trudged on up the road toward home, an idea forming.  I nearly chewed the inside of my lower lip raw thinking about it.  I am sure Mother made note of the fact that I was unusually silent and thoughtful during supper.  I was ordinarily the ebullient one and should have been dancing with glee.

After supper, while Richard was drying the dishes I had washed, I took a look around the familiar kitchen in the soft yellow light of the kerosene lamp (no more of those, I thought silently—we will have electricity in Vancouver), then I went quietly through the living room and out onto the small front porch.  I sat on the step in the darkness.  There was a moon overhead and the pale white moonlight dappled the grass in the yard where it came through the red leaves of the maple trees.  There was no breeze but there was a hint of fall frosts in the air.

I sat there for a long time thinking.  Finally the screened door behind me opened and closed and my mother sat down beside me, draping a sweater around my shoulders.

“You’ll catch your death—it is getting chilly out.  What are you doing out here by yourself?”

“Oh—I was just thinkin’.”

“Think-ing,” she said automatically.  “What were you thinking about?”

I shook my head and looked down at my bare feet in the moonlight, “Nuthin’ much.”

She was very perceptive.  She put her arm around my shoulders and said softly, “You don’t really want to go, do you?”

For all of my fourteen years, I suddenly felt very young.  I felt tears sting my eyes as I let the things I had been thinking come tumbling out.

It’s not that I don’t want to go, Mama!  I do want to go—and in the worst way.  But not just now.  If I don’t finish the school year here, old Mary Neil will be valedictorian for sure.  I can do it if I could stay!  No old girl can do better than me!”

I turned to her pleadingly.  “How would it be if I stayed here for the rest of the year with Grandpa and Grandma?  I could help them some and they have that little room on the back of the house that no one is using.  I could sleep there.  Then, after we graduate, I could come on to Vancouver on the train—I’ll save up all I can toward the ticket!”

There was a secretive smile on my mother’s young face in the moonlight.  “I guessed that was what was bothering you several days ago.  You just have not been yourself.  As a matter of fact, I have already talked it over with your grandparents.  They are willing for you to stay if you want to do that.”

My spirits soared to the stars as she went on, “It would be the worst for you to change schools just now.  Richard is hardly settle in at Dadeville High and Rex is young enough that it won’t matter all that much.  They will just miss a week or two of school.

 “I know how bad you want to be valedictorian and Mr. Mitchell thinks you can do it, too.  Yes, I have already talked to him.  He has faith in you, Conrad, just as your father and I do.  You will have to be very good for your grandparents and not give them any trouble.  You must help them and work hard at school.”

I promised and, after she went back into the house, went capering around the yard in the moonlight in a wild sort of dance, swinging from tree limbs and hanging by my knees.  The old irrepressible Conrad was back—I did not have to leave the Ozark hills just yet and I would be living full time with Grandpa and Grandma!

Old Fashioned Fourth

A big event each year in our part of the Ozarks was the Fourth of July picnic in Greenfield, the county seat of Dad County.  I do not know why it was called a “picnic” because it was far more than that.  It included carnival rides set up all around the courthouse square, hamburger stands, all the usual carnival booths with prizes, a few sideshow tents, and a fireworks display at dark.

During the first half of the year, we boys tried to save some money to spend on fireworks on the 4^th.  We did not usually save much because the rabbit selling season and possum hinting were on in the fall and winter.  My mother, however, always managed to give us enough for some firecrackers, a cap gun, and a hamburger.  I think she sometimes sold some of the chickens to give us fifty cents apiece.

Our fireworks in those days were not subject to the safety regulations we know have and, consequently, were far more potent and a lot more fun.  We were taught the dangers involved and were then on our own.  I never heard of a serious injury involving fireworks; however, we were all subjected occasionally to minor burns, numb fingers, or temporarily deafened ears once in a while.

We had firecrackers that would blow a Maxwell House coffee can fifty feet into the air.  Our cap guns sounded like real revolvers and the Roman candles would send fireballs a hundred feet into the air.

One of our favorite devices we called a “cherry bomb” but it was not a firecracker with a fuse.  It was an innocuous appearing brown ball about the size of a walnut.  It went off on impact like a miniature hand grenade.  Thrown high in the air so it would come down on pavement or thrown at a boulder, a cherry bomb made a soul-satisfying bang.  I recall one 4^th when we saved some of those cherry bombs and had a “war” the next day before Sunday dinner on a rocky hillside near my Uncle Coy Tygart’s spring on the old home place.  Fortunately, there were no casualties.

We usually arrived in Greenfield on the 4^th before noon and spent the rest of the day.  My mother sometimes took biscuit sandwiches for lunch.  Dinner would be a real hamburger from a stand on the square—a nickel for a small plain one or a dime for a big one with mustard and onion.  No MacDonald’s, Burger King, or Wendy’s can compete with the delicious taste of those 4^th of July hamburgers.

Even though we were old country boys from the hills, we were smart enough to know that most of the game booths for Kewpie dolls and stuffed animals were rigged and were nearly impossible to win so we rarely wasted our money there.  Any one of us could have cleaned out a shooting gallery except that they would not allow anything but BB guns in the town square and they were never accurate.

Sometimes we were a bit more gullible about the sideshow attractions.  One time they had a “Wild Man from Borneo”.  There were lurid signs outside the tent showing a savage with bones in his ears and nose sitting in a snake pit.  Occasional wild screams and unintelligible gibberish came from inside.

My curiosity got the better of me and I paid a nickel and went inside.  There was canvas “pit” in the center of the tent and, sure enough, a wild looking brown man with straggling and stringy long dirty black hair was seated in the dirt among several large snakes.  There were some harmless ground snakes and a couple of big rattlers that I figured out right away had been de-fanged because they did not try to bite the man.

The “wild man” sat in the dirt mouthing gibberish while he fondled the snakes and threw one or two across the enclosure.  I stared at him for a while and he finally looked at me through the dirty stringy hair falling over his face.  I suddenly realized his eyes were as blue as mine and I sure had never seen a blue-eyed Negro.  I grinned at him and one of the blue eyes slowly closed in a wink while a faint smile flitted on his dirty face.  I laughed as I left the tent thinking that I sure did not want to make a living that way.

The fireworks after dark were the usual display of fire fountains, big Roman candles, skyrockets, and aerial bombs that left females covering their ears and dogs scurrying for cover.  One main attraction was the small hot air balloons.  These did not carry people and were only about three or four feet tall.  The balloon part was made of gaily colored Japanese rice paper and the “burner” was simply a large candle suspended on a small platform.

When the balloons were released and soared about the treetops, the candle flames lit up the paper and made a pretty sight as they drifted away in the warm night.  Since everything was dry as tinder in those drought days, I have no idea why those balloons did not start a major fire when they came down.

By the time the fireworks were done, so were we.  Dog tired from the long day and the excitement, a few stray firecrackers and a cap gun in our pockets, we would be bundled into the back seat of the Model T Ford touring car.  We children were usually fast asleep before we got to the Bona turnoff at Tarrytown.

A Visit from Cousin Ray Dean

Chapter 10

Family Departure for Washington

In spite of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s efforts, Hard Times did not seem to get any better in the spring of 1936.  Congress had declared the NRA to be unconstitutional and the WPA faltered.  The drought eased a bit, but the price of eggs remained at ten cents a dozen.  Unemployment had soup lines in the large cities stretching around the block.  I recall seeing a sign in a café window in Greenfield: “BREAKFAST—two eggs, three strips of bacon, fried potatoes, toast, and coffee—25 cents”.  The work on the road through Bona was over and my father could not find a money job anywhere.

We continued to wear our patched overalls and faded shirts but we never went hungry.  There was always food on the table three times a day.  Breakfast might be only biscuits and gravy but it was good and nourishing.  We did not mind that often our syrup pail lunch buckets held only a couple of biscuits and some hog meat—it was good.

One of our favorite dinners was when Mother made macaroni and cheese and cooked a pot of beans.  We would stir the macaroni and beans together on our plates.  With a hunk of cornbread and a glass of milk fresh from the cow, it was delicious.  (It took me a few years to adjust to cold refrigerated milk—I preferred it straight from the cow.)

There was one thing that I really detested—turnips!  I do not know why it was, but besides the weeds, the one thing that seemed to thrive during those drought years was turnips.  We ate turnips fixed every way known to mankind.  Mother even cooked the turnips tops like spinach so we would have some greens.  To this day, I am reluctant to face cooked turnips.

A momentous turning point in our lives occurred in the spring of 1936 a few weeks after Sandra Dean was born.  One afternoon a shiny black new car pulled up to the front of our little house.  It turned out to be our cousin, Ray Dean Lee, from Vancouver, Washington.

As I mentioned before in the first chapter, Uncle Austin had a pretty good job with the city water department in Vancouver and had some money in the bank.  He was tight as the bark on a tree, however, and would never pass up an opportunity to save a dollar.

Uncle Austin wanted a new car.  He had figured out that if he bought a train ticket to Detroit for Ray Dean, Ray could go back there, buy a new car at the factory, and drive in out to Vancouver for a hundred dollars less than Uncle Austin could buy one there.  Ray Dean was on his way back to Vancouver with a brand new 1936 four-door Plymouth sedan.

That new Plymouth was the finest thing in the way of an automobile I had ever seen.  After supper, while everyone else were taking around the table, I sneaked out front to look the car over.  I touched the shiny black paint reverently and finally worked up the courage to slide into the driver’s seat under the steering wheel.

The car had that new smell compounded of newly baked enamel, leather, and fresh grease.  I gripped the steering wheel and fantasized that I was ahead of Barney Oldfield coming down the stretch at Indianapolis.  They found me there later, sound asleep and still clutching the steering wheel.

Ray Dean’s unexpected visit changed our lives.  During that conversation after supper, Ray told Dad that there were jobs to be had in the Pacific Northwest in the lumber business.  We had been there, of course, ten years before so it was not unknown territory to Dad.  Before the evening was over a big decision was made—my father would go with Ray in the car back to Vancouver.  If he got a good job, the rest of us would come later.

We boys were ecstatic when we were informed of the decision at breakfast the next morning.  I reveled and thought gleefully, “Now I will get away from these hot, dry, dusty old hills.!”

My father gave us some sobering words of caution.  “Now don’t get your hopes too high, boys.  First I got to get out there and find a job—something that will pay enough that I can rent a house and send for all of you.  That may not come easy or quick.  We will just have to hope that I don’t have to come crawling home with my tail between my legs.”

He turned to Richard and me.  “Meantime, we got to keep this little farm going.  I am depending on you two boys—especially you Richard, because you are the oldest.  We only are milking four cows so that won’t be a problem.

“I planted twenty acres of corn down in that bottom land I rented and you will have to take care of that with the team.  You know what to do.  When you get it laid by, if everything has worked out and we are moving to Vancouver, we will hope that your mother can sell it in the field to help pay expenses and you won’t have to pick it.”

And so it was arranged on very short notice.  While we were in school the next day, Dad put his affairs in order and packed his meager belongings in a battered old cardboard suitcase.  The morning after that, right after breakfast, he got into the Plymouth with Ray Dean and they headed west.

The Family Increases

Another big event early in 1936 was the birth of my little sister Sandra.  Since it had been ten years since Rex was born, I expect that she may have been a bit of a surprise to Mother and Dad.

“All we children were “spring lambs”.  Richard was born in April of 1920, me on March 3^rd of 1922, Rex in May of 1926, and now Sandra on March 22^nd in 1936.

It seemed like Mother had gone around pregnant for a long time but finally she knew the time had come.  Sandra would be born at home just like the rest of us had been.  On a Saturday they sent us three boys off to Grandma’s house to stay the night.

Early Sunday morning, my Aunt Alice (she was an old maid living at home with Grandma and Grandpa) woke us and told us that we had a little baby sister.  Alice said that we could go home and see our new sister after breakfast.  I slipped away and walked the quarter mile home.

Mother was lying in bed looking pale and tired and the baby was in a basket behind the bed.  I sidled around there, pulled back the blanket, and looked at the little pink face.  Mother said, “Well, Connie, what do you think of her?  Who does she look like?”

Now newborn babies have always looked about the same to me—wizened little red faces and their eyes screwed shut.  This one did not look much different to me so I thought I would sort of make a joke of it.  I said diffidently, “Well—I guess she sort of look like a little monkey!”

Mother seemed a little put out for a second but then she laughed.  Guess I should have said that she looked like a cute little monkey—which she did.  In fact, when I looked close, she looked most like my Grandma Stanley and my mother and she would resemble them even more in later years.  She is short and round like they were and, when she walks she sort of trots like Grandma did.

I was pleased as punch when I got in on naming our new sister.  Dave wanted to call her Dean because one of our cousins was married to a girl named Dean whom Dad admired.  They talked about a lot of names that did not sound right to me.  In some book I had read about a girl named Sandra and I liked that.  I suggested that and they wound up naming her Sandra Dean.

We all adored little Sandra Dean.  We had a little red child’s rocking chair that all of us had used when we were tots.  I recall that the back bow was worn down from our turning it upside down and pushing it around the floor playing “choo-choo” when we were learning to walk.

I never learned to change Sandra’s diapers but when she cried I would sit in that little red chair and rock her while I sang cowboy songs.  It worked because she would stop crying and lie in my arms looking solemnly at me with her blue eyes until she fell asleep.