Competition for Valdectorian

I wish I knew which was Mary Neil.  My dad is in the back row leaning against the door frame on the left.

The school year was going fast and I had been letting tomcatting around with Roundtree on weekends interfere with my studying.  After I cut that out, I buckled down to it especially after Mary Neil had made 100% on a history test and I only got 96%.

Soon my fifteenth birthday came and I knew that Mr. Mitchell would have to say who the valedictorian would be before long as graduation was only a month away. (The length of the school year was different then.  I believe it was adjusted so that the older children would be out of school in time to help with spring planting.  Anyway, our graduation was scheduled for the evening of April 2^nd at the Bona Church.)

An example of flour sack dresses during the Great Depression

A few days later during a nice spring afternoon, at the end of the school day when he dismissed us, Mr. Mitchell quietly said, “The rest of you are excused but I would like for Conrad and Mary Neil to stay for a little while.”

The others filed out casting knowing smiles at us.  They had known all along that it would be between Mary and me.  I looked sidewise across the room at her.  She was sitting very straight with her hands folded in the lap of her faded cotton print dress and with her chin set determinedly.  She turned her head to look at me so I quickly looked away and stared at the picture of Sir Lancelot and his horse on the wall above Mr. Mitchell’s desk until he said, “Come up here, both of you.”

We stood side by side in front of his desk waiting.  Mitchell reached into a drawer and took out two slim books—one red, the other blue—and laid them on his desk.  The title of the blue one was “Valedictories” and the red one was “Salutatories”.

Mitchell studied us and said, “Relax.  I want you to know that I am really proud of both of you.  You are, without a doubt, two of the best students I have had in my classroom and I know that you will both go far.  The competition was good for both of you and forced you to do your best.

“I will not keep you in suspense any longer.  Mary you did better than Conrad in History, a little better in Geography, and you were dead even in English.  Conrad had a definite edge in Mathematics and Science.  It was close and I congratulate you both.”

He picked up the two thin volumes and handed the blue one to me and the red one to Mary.  I must say that she took it without wincing.  She touched my arm and said softly, “I’m glad for you, Conrad.”  There was just a trace of moisture in her pale blue eyes.  At that moment I almost liked her.

Mr. Mitchell said, “Don’t memorize any of the sample speeches in those books—they are old fashioned.  Just get the idea and write your own.  I would like to see them next Monday.  You can go home now.”

The other had all gone so I walked the mile to Bona with Mary Neil.  She didn’t say much, maybe because she was not used to walking with boys.  I was happy as a turkey gobbler in a polkberry patch, but somehow, I could not lord it over her.

She had a threadbare sweater over her well-washed print dress.  I knew that the Cook Neils did not have much.  In fact, Cook Neil was one of the regular loafers at Grandpa’s store.  I do not know how he kept groceries in that little shack, much less clothes.

I felt sort of guilty somehow.  I said lamely, “You sure are smart for a girl, Mary.  Maybe you should have won.”

She smiled wanly and answered, “It doesn’t matter, Conrad—I’m used to sucking hind tit.”

“Hah,” I scoffed, “you won’t always be.  You know what I bet?  I bet that when our graduate from Dadeville High School in a couple of years you’ll get a scholarship and go on to teacher’s college or something.”  I grinned at her.  “I won’t be here so you won’t have to worry about me!”

Dorthea Lange Photo

By then we were at the crossroad in front of Grandpa’s store.  She laughed and, unexpectedly, held out her small hand to shake hands with me.  “I hope you have good luck out there in Washington,” she said, then she turned and marched down the hill clutching that little red book.

A Love Affair Deepens

1931 Bird Biplane

It was in the spring of 1937 that my interest in aviation increased to a near obsession.  I had always liked airplanes and Charles Lindberg was my idol.  I had a “Lucky Lindy” brown leatherette aviator’s helmet that I almost always wore during the winter.  I read World War Flying Aces pulp magazines avidly and would always stop whatever I might be doing to watch when very infrequent airplanes flew overhead.

One time before he left for Washington, my father dropped Richard and me off at a little silent movie theater on the square in Greenfield to see the original version of Howard Hugh’s film “Hell’s Angels” twice, but not because of Jean Harlow.  We did not think she amounted to much at all.  To us she was just a blonde woman that looked like a grownup version of our cousin Mary Catherine and who had the same kind of high-pitched voice.  We sat through it again just to see those old airplanes dogfighting, the zeppelin getting shot down, and the German bomber episode.

Anyway, in the spring of 1937, Grandpa, Grandma, and I went to Springfield one day.  Grandma had been poorly and she had to have some tests at the hospital as I recall.  They told Grandpa it would take a couple of hours so he asked me if I would like to go to the zoo or something.  I asked if, instead, we could go to the Springfield Airport to look at airplanes up close.

In those days Spring Airport was just a big level grass field with a row of wooden hangars along one side.  There were no airplanes parked outside and, to my disappointment, none were flying.  Grandpa went to a little office and asked a man there if there was an airplane I could look at somewhere.  He directed us to one of the hangars which had the door standing open. 

I got goosebumps on my arms when we walked into that hangar and there sat a beautiful open-cockpit biplane.  It was shiny red and it and the whole hangar had a heady aroma compounded of airplane dope, grease, gasoline, and rubber.

I suspect that my eyes were as big as saucers.  I walked around to the front of the airplane and it had an honest-to-goodness radial engine.  I had read all about that sort of thing.  It seemed like a big airplane and engine to me then but in later years when I was flying myself I concluded that it was a little Bird biplane with a small five-cylinder Kinner engine. 

While I was gaping in awe and reverently stroking the taut fabric of the wing covering, the man from the office came in.  He watched me for a minute then came over and said, “You want to sit in the cockpit, kid?”

I could only grin at him delightedly as he boosted me onto the lower wing then helped me get into the back cockpit.  He pointed out the instruments and controls and let me wiggle the stick so I could see the ailerons move.

I was in seventh heaven and I am sure it plainly showed.  As the man helped me out of the cockpit I asked, “Can you fly this here airplane, mister?”

He nodded.  “Yes, it belongs to me.”

When I was back on the dirt floor of the hangar, I turned back to the man and said emphatically, “I aim to fly one of them airplanes someday!”

He grinned and whacked me on the shoulder.  “By god, boy, I bet you will, too!  You got the right look.”

Hijinks with Roundtree

As the school weeks went on, Mary Neil was making it really tough for me.  I would see her going home from school as she came through Bona with her sisters, then down the hill to their shack carrying an armload of books every day.  During spelling bees, we remained about even.  I could best her handily on math tests and in science, but she was a whiz at history and geography.

I often wondered how Mr. Mitchell rated us.  When we were all furiously working on a test, I would sometimes see him with a half-smile on his face watching first me and then Mary Neil to see who would finish first.  All too often it was almost a dead heat.  I knew that he would never play favorites and would judge us purely on academic excellence.  I always worded my essays carefully and made sure that I got all the answers on the tests right.

One problem I had Was that I was now old enough to go out on Friday and Saturday nights and I got to running around with Roundtree Lindley who was my age and was allowed to drive the family pickup.  He thought he was pretty hot stuff and that he was worldly wise because his family had lived for a while in a big city.

Roundtree and I had been good friends and were usually seatmates all during our years in the eighth, ninth, and tenth grades.  I am pretty sure that Mr. Mitchell knew that Roundtree got some of his answers off my papers but he never said anything about it.

Roundtree and I would sometimes go in the pickup to the movies at Ash Grove up toward Springfield.  Grandma and Grandpa did not like that much because they had heard that Roundtree was getting to be something of a hell raiser, but they indulgently allowed me to go until I sawed it off on my own.

We started out for Ash Grove on Saturday evening and Roundtree stopped at the Sac River Tavern over beyond Tarrytown where he knew they would sell him some beer.  We got a couple of bottles—all we could afford and still have money for the picture show—and drank them under the trees near the tavern (they would not allow us inside).

It got late so when we finished the beer we tossed the empty bottles into the brush and Roundtree zoomed off up the highway too fast.  I guess he was really feeling that bottle of beer.  We came up behind an old farmer and his wife in a rattletrap Model A Ford that was chugging slowly along.  Roundtree speeded up and said, “Let’s give ‘em a scare!”

As he passed the Model A, Roundtree swerved toward it deliberately.  He overdid it and I ducked as he sideswiped the old car, knocking the door handle off the pickup on my side.  That made him swerve the other way and I knew there was quite a drop-off on that side.  I scrunched up and shut my eyes but he got the truck under control and slowed down.  I looked back and the Model A was still coming so we figured they were all right.

I asked Roundtree how he was going to explain about the broken door handle and a dent in the door to his father.  He just airily said, “Oh, I’ll just tell him it got sideswiped in the parking lot while we were in the show.”

Roundtree was one of those grinning, fast-talking fellows who could sell iceboxes to the Eskimos and he got away with it for a couple of days.  He got it in the end, however.  After all, it was a backwoods community and there were not too many blue pickup trucks around in those days.  The old farmer described the truck to the sheriff who tracked it down to Joe Lindley.  Old Roundtree did not get to drive the pickup for a while and, thinking about the close call with the drop-off, I flatly told him that I would not go drinking beer with him or ride with hi to Ash Grove when he could drive again.  That pretty much ended our close friendship which was fine with Grandma and was fine with me as the smart aleck was not my type.

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!