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Volume V, No. 1, Fall 1977 |
I REMEMBER THE LITTLE THINGS
by Katie Lowry
as told to Beverly Barber and Lea Ann Sutherland
I remember the little things. I can remember when I was a little girl and my dad was clearing some trees out of the yard. He fastened a chain on a log and was dragging it in. I guess I must have been a little bit of a tomboy cause I was with him an awful lot and I thought to myself that would just be a good thing to ride on. I was sitting on that log just having a good ride. He happened to see me and I never will forget what he said. "Doggone you little fool! That will roll over and kill you." Oh, that was funny. Those words I never will forget.
Did I tell you about the time I got on a two year old horse my dad had? Well, I wanted to ride it so bad, but no, they wouldn't let me. They didn't know it, but I got it and I rode it around in the enclosure around the barn. Then I persuaded my brother to help me. He was ten and I was fifteen. I told him, "Let's tie a rope around its neck and you lead it." We went to the back side of dad's forty acres. My brother was deathly afraid of a horse, I don't know why. I wasn't. Well, it just went fine going down there. Then coming back, why the silly thing started to trot and that scared my brother. He turned loose of it. The nearer the horse got to the house, the faster it went. Mom and Dad were still at the dinner table where they could look out the window. Just as the horse got in front of the window, it started to turn and off I went. Oh, they thought I was killed, but it didn't hurt me. I would have gotten on it again. It looks like I still like to ride most anything. Ricky, one of my great grandchildren, took me for a ride on his motorcycle two years ago. I lived over on the hill at that time. Rick came over on his Honda and he said, "Grandma, how about you riding over to our house with me?" And I did! That was before I got in this walker.
[39]
I was born the tenth of March in 1894. So that shows you I was eighty-three the tenth of March. Isn't that thrilling? I don't think so. My mother and father were raised in Hamburg, Germany. My father must have been eighteen years old when he came over here and worked for the farmers in Iowa. His father in Germany had a secretary, and that was my mother. One day he said, "Margaret, I wish I had a picture of you from the shoulder up for my birthday. She had it made and what did he do? He sent it over here to my father and said, "This is the girl I want you to marry."
After that my dad went back to Germany. I guess he was there about eight months when they got married and come to America. Monmma had one of those bright shiny pianos she sold to make the trip. She thought she would see Indians and excitement. But she said it wasn't so exciting on that boat. When they came across, it was so stormy my dad would tell her, "It'll be all right, it will pass." But he had to tie her in the bed to keep her from falling out. And sick, oh, she said she was sick.
But they came over here, and in a year or so they found out I was on the way. So they went back to Germany and that's where I was born in Hamburg. Then they came back over here and finally stayed.
I think I'm pretty dumb because I don't remember the German language although I couldn't talk English until I was seven. I can count in it to fifteen. I didn't forget that--ein, zwel, drei, vier, bunf, sechs, sieben, acht, heun, zehu, eif, zwolf, dreizehn, vierzehn, funtzehn--something like that. But that's all. i don't remember the letters.
My mother already knew the English language when she came over here as well as French and German. My dad really didn't learn English till he came to this country. I don't think he learned it in school in Germany like Momma did because he got better all the time. He was kind of Dutchy. The young folks used to laugh just to hear him talk.
My father brought my mother to the farm--a little farm he had rented up north. She was so afraid of chickens that my dad had to set the old hens because, as she called it, they tried to bite her. Finally when she did get used to the chickens, she had a nice bunch of white pullets. One morning they all lay on the ground, for a weasel had cut their throats and sucked their blood--they won't eat the carcass. Another time my dad had a cornfield that come up close to the house. Momma had an old hen and a bunch of little chickens that would run around the cornfield. Then one night they just didn't come back. Something had caught them. Things like that Momma had to put up with and she didn't know much about it. She had a lot to learn.
When we came down to this part of the country my father had started to Arkansas because he had a good friend there who said, "Land is cheap and it's good, but it's a little hilly." My dad fixed up a covered wagon. That's the way we started out.
I can think of a lot of funny things my brother and I did. I think of these funny things to myself and now I am repeating them to you.
[40]
I must have been about three and a half or four years old, and I can kind of remember that because I was afraid they would lose my dog. I thought so much of my dog because my dad had made him a little dog house. My mother would put a quilt over it. I'd ride that old house and pretend like my dog was my horse. I don't know what made me like horses so well.
Anyway, I can remember that they got as far as Lathrop, Missouri, where we stopped with some people who were German, too, and you can't imagine how nice they were. They let my dad put his team in their barn and invited us in the house. They put me in a little bed that had slats kind of like the little beds they make now and I remember sleeping there. I remember they had pancakes, bacon and molasses for breakfast. Then they told my dad why didn't he just go on and get settled and they'd send me and Momma on a train.
He got as far as Lebanon where he met a man who told him, "You don't want to go to Arkansas. I can sell you a farm lots cheaper than you can find down there. It's nothing but hills down there." So my dad took his word for it.
Momma and I got on a train and those people we were staying with didn't have no children and they wanted to keep me. They said they was well-to-do. That was an unreasonable request, but anyway I can remember that I just hung to Momma's coat.
I remember riding on that train. I was scared to death. If I remember right you could look down in Shat toilet stool and see the tracks. The people could drop diapers or anything right on the tracks!
The little place my dad bought was so poor, it wouldn't raise beans. It was in the Dry and Dusty area. It had the right name! I hated dust. I hated dust on my feet and on my hands. I thought when I get married, how in the world will I ever stand flour on my hands? That is true. That's what I thought. But I soon got over that, because I helped Dad plant potatoes. He was so particular. You know how they cut potatoes up? Each piece has to have one or two eyes for sure. He would have me to stoop down and put each cut piece down so they come right up. Of course my hands got dusty doing that, but I thought, I'll fix that. I'll just spit on my hands. And I made it worse! That's just some of the little experiences of growing up.
My father made a dog house for me. Momma would put a quilt over it. I would put a strap around the windmill my dad had put on the end and I would pretend like I was riding a horse.
[41]
I used to always get scared. I remember one time I was going to the hen house. Boy, I come flying back home. I saw a snake there that had two legs, one on each side of its head! Of course, my dad rushed up there to see about it. He couldn't believe it. The snake had swallowed a toad and his feet was sticking out.
My dad had a lot of rabbit traps and he taught me how to kill a rabbit caught in a trap. He said, "Now you just take 'hold of that rabbit's hind feet. Take him out and when you get to his head, just knock him on the back of the head." Oh, I just simply thought I couldn't. One day I went down there and it wasn't a rabbit. I reached in there and it felt different, so I ran to the house and told him I thought maybe it was a young bear. I guess he didn't know what it was, but it was a Possum. Anyway he shot that thing in the trap. He wouldn't pull it out while it was alive. Then he took it over to some people that lived pretty close and asked them what it was. They told him, and they told him it was good to eat. Why, he told them they could have it. He wouldn't eat it himself.
When we lived in the Dry and Dusty area, we lived by a dirt road--the Springfield Road. Now it's called 66 or I-44. The first thing I can remember was a man with a monkey and a little grinder. He'd have that as a little act and we'd give him, not much because we didn't have much in those days.
Then one time there was a man came down the highway and he had a little girl. She couldn't have been over four or five years old. He was trying to get somebody to take care of her and he would get a job and pay them. That was hard to turn down because she was a pretty little girl. But Momma was afraid that he would maybe leave her and just disappear. She had her own family and she couldn't.
Then there was always gypsies stopping wanting books, or old clothes or food. The ones I remember wore any old clothes they could get a hold of. They stopped one time and wanted to sell Momma some bulbs that would make flowers eventually but she didn't buy them. Momma had a bunch of fryers running around and one gYPsy bunch had a little dog that took a fryer to the wagon. One of the neighbors told my dad he should have taken his gun out there and got after them. My dad said, "Doggone, I didn't want to. I just wanted them to go on."
Once a tramp come and wanted something to eat. Momma fixed him two big slices of bread with jam on it. And he looked at that and said, "That isn't enough to keep soul and body together." Momma wished then she hadn't given him anything.
Another time Momma and Daddy had to fight fire in the springtime. They had rail fences and they had to stop the fire from getting to their fence. There was myself, my brother and sister at home alone. A man drove up with a cart. He was cold and could he come in and get warm? Well, dummy me, I let him in. He didn't do us no harm. When Momma got to the house, she had a rake or something, and she kind of thumped it on the floor and said, "How dare you come in on these little children!" My dad said, "You were a little hard on that old man. You could have at least let him sleep in the barn." Momma didn't. She told him to get on going. She was mad.
I think I'd went to Dry and Dusty school two years when my dad bought a farm on the other side of Lebanon. We always said that it was just like moving to another state for the soil was so different, so much better.
When we first moved to that place I always felt sort of haunted. Right down the hill from the house, the people who owned it before us had dug a well eighty feet deep and they had to go around boulders. The next day they let their son down in that place with a sort of wheel. But during the night the well had formed a gas and when he got down so far he passed out and fell on down. He'd hit one boulder, then the other when he fell. It killed him. Then to get the body out they had to find somebody that would go down there. They started to let one man down, but he jerked the rope and wanted them to take him back out. He was passing out. But there was an old man who offered to go. He went down there and tied that body to the box and brought him out.
They filled the well up after that, but all the time we lived there that spot would always sink down. Then my dad would put on more rocks and stuff and fill it. I can still see where it was. Every time I looked down there I felt haunted.
[43]
Another time that Momma got mad was when a neighbor girl came over to accuse me of taking her watch. Momma saw her and came to the house from the barn. She had a pitchfork and she just thumped the ground. She said, "That child wouldn't pick up a pin!" What faith Momma had. Mona told her to get out and never come back. So the next day that girl did come back and wanted to apologize. She said they found out that a boy had taken the watch. That was an incident that Momma showed her temper. When she was mad that was just too bad.
But I had a good mother. I can remember if I didn't feel good she would drain the peach juice off the canned peaches for me to drink. But one time when I got sick, Momma was going to give me some castor oil and I'd say, "Momma, I cannot take it. I just cannot take it." She said, "You'll have to. You have to take it." I said, "I'll close my teeth. I just can't take it." And she said, "I've got a way of getting those teeth apart." So she scared me and I took it. Oh, that was the nastiest stuff! I never did make my children take it. There were better things to take.
I was blessed with a good mother. My father was good to me, too. I always helped him saw wood and helped him stack hay. My dad was afraid of height. Momma told him one time, "You're just a coward to put that child up there to stack that hay." But he'd tell me just how. I was just a little bit afraid. I didn't much like it. But he would always talk so nice how I always helped him and so forth and so on, so I didn't want to disappoint him. I helped him do things like that.
I'll say he thought I was pretty fine, too. I don't know you girls, your religion or anything. I know you believe there's a God, which I do. I'm a Christian, but I remember after I was married when Hugh and I went to a tabernacle meeting and were converted. My father-in-law was a Christian and always taught in Sunday School. Now my dad never did believe, I'm sorry to say. When my father-in-law met my dad he told him about our being converted. My dad told him in his German way, "She was always good. She didn't have to get any better." Wasn't that something nice for a father to say about his daughter?
We had a neighbor who I really didn't like, but she hired me to help her before I got married. Twenty-five cents I would get a day. But a man only got a dollar a day in those days and with a team he got two dollars. In those days they would make rows of corn three foot apart, then cross ways four foot apart. Each cross place was where you planted corn by hand. She hired me to plant corn for her. I dropped it, just two in a place. I guess I overlooked it but there was three kernels in one place. And you know, she made me come back and pick up that extra grain of corn!
I would also help her with the bees. She had fifty hives of bees and a row of peach trees. I used the smoker. She would fix me up with some of the boys' old pants and tie them tight around my legs and I had a hat with screens.
Threshing times were so exciting. I could always hear them coming and I thought it was really exciting.
[44]
The smoker looked like a tin can, but it run to a small point where there was a little hole. They'd fill that full of rags. Those rags were not supposed to blaze. They would just kind of smolder and make smoke. There was a thing underneath you would kind of pump and somehow or other it'd make a terrible smoke. The bees just couldn't stand it.
She was supposed to give me half a gallon of honey for doing that. I'll tell you why I didn't like her. I just loved honey. There was a knife laying there and I took just a little dab of honey and ate it. She looked at me and she said, "I'll give you your honey." She bawled me out.
Another time I took my little sister with me over there. On the way home there was a mud puddle. You know how water stands in tracks? There were little pollywogs there. Some of the pollywogs had their legs and I was trying to explain to her that they would finally be big frogs. So later that old woman told Momma that she ought to teach us to come right on home and not be fooling around along the road. She didn't know that it was all right with Momma. You know I just couldn't hardly stand to look at her. After I married I had an old pet hen that I named Meely because that was what we called that old woman and the hen actually favored her. That's part of growing up, really.
I was almost seventeen when I married. I decided maybe that would be the best. And I guess it was in the long run. I've ended up with a wonderful family. Hugh, my husband was always good to the children. He was good to help me with them, dress the little ones and get them ready for breakfast. You just think of the good things when you get older. We had our disputes too, but they didn't amount to anything really.
We had three children. The little one who is the baby, she was born in 1928. My other daughter was born in 1921. And my son was born in 1913. So he's way up there. Poor guy. I just think he looks like an old man. I have five grandchildren and nine great grandchildren.
I married a farmer and oh, it was rough. I've helped my husband saw wood rather than for him to hire someone and have to pay them back. And I'd help him in the hay--I didn't mind it. I was used to it for I helped my dad like that. But I had always said when I was growing up that I'd never marry a farmer. But you get ambitious and when you work together it works out pretty good.
When I met Hugh, well, I claimed boys and they claimed me before then, but we had been to a Christmas program and Hugh asked me for a date. I hadn't ever been anywhere because my folks didn't like for me to tag along with other couples. Hugh and I kept company until that fall on the twenty-third of November we were married. Let me see, is today the twenty-third? What do you know{ Today's my wedding anniversary. If my husband had lived we would have been married sixty-six years today.
[45]
Hugh had two sisters. When we was going to get married one of them and her husband was going to go with us to stand UP with us. We had my husband's horses which were young and frisky--and cold--and a buggy with three seats. My husband and I sat in the front. His sister's little boy was with us and he said, "What are we going to do?" His father said, "Hugh and Katie are going to jump the broomstick." When we got there the preacher performed the ceremony and went through it just like he should. And the little boy said, "Well, Momma, when are they going to jump the broomstick?" Of course, that caused a big laugh. But that was about all there was to that. We drove back and my mother had dinner ready for the whole bunch. Then they had what they called--I saw it in one of your Bitter-sweets--the infare dinner. That was the next day at my husband's home. Everybody was there and that was Thanksgiving.
My husband was going to rent a little apartment but his folks had built a house down here, all good pine and well built. Doesn't look like it now, but it was a nice house. His father talked him into us living with them. "Not a bit of use of you renting that. You could just live with us. We've got two upstairs rooms," he said. And so that's what we did.
We lived with my husband's folks the first year, almost until October. And oh, it was the coldest, wettest October you ever saw. I remember us trying to move into our little new house. I thought it was a mansion then. It just had a big living room and an addition for a kitchen. And then a front porch and a back ell porch. We thought we were pretty well off.
When I first got married, oh, I was kiddish. It come a big rain and I would pull off my shoes and I'd go down there and wade the water and come back by and pick a green apple and eat it. Grandma Lowry would just swear that I would die. And she said, "You must have a stomach made of iron." I guess I did.
I'll have to say Hugh's mother had to be a pretty good lady to take in a sixteen year old girl. But then I did just what she wanted me to do. She would lots of times sit down and tell me about her life. It was interesting. She was something. After we built our little house she thought Floyd, my son, he was a little guy, she thought he was just about it. She about spoilt him rotten. She always had a piece of ham meat for him and she was never too tired to go to the cellar and get him a glass of milk.
We always got along, but I was used to helping at home. My mother-in-law did the cooking. I did the dish washing. I always thought, well when I get to cooking for myself I'd do so and so, but the only thing I knew to cook was apples. My mother had a great big square pan and I would cut those apples that baked real well in two and take the core out so I had a great big square pan filled with those apples. Then I put a little water in the bottom and filled the cavity with butter and sugar and a little cinnamon. Oh, they were so good! I'm going to make some again soon some day. And fry potatoes, I could fry potatoes, oh boy.
But my mother-in-law did all the cooking while we lived with them. She always baked cornbread. She had to be different. Hugh had an unmarried brother that lived at home also. He and his father wanted thin crusty cornbread. My husband and his mother wanted thick corn-bread. So she had a big square pan that fit in the oven. And she always stirred her cornbread with her hands and she kind of fixed one side of it thick and the other side thin.
My father-in-law wanted what he called red-eye gravy. She would fry ham and she'd pour the top grease off and put it aside. The goody, you know the brown part, she would put water in that and make it so it would be kind of red and she put that in a separate bowl. Then my husband and his brother wanted what they'd call white gravy. It would almost stand alone. So then she'd pour the grease back in the pan and she'd make that, too. She was really all right.
She had a lot of this expensive cut-wear. They'd gone to town one day. They was a long time getting back home. So I got those things all out--they were kind of dusty--and I got me a brush and really gave them a going over. When she got back I said, "You come and look in the safe." "Oh, my," she said to me, "They look pretty. But my, I'd have worried myself to death if I had known you was going to wash those dishes." It was a good thing I didn't break one.
[46]
When we was first married it was the 23rd of November, but they were still making molasses. They had a molasses mill. And, of course, you know how people are like that. They get so tired of working at that for maybe several weeks. But I thought it was fun and I would just feed that old molasses mill. They let me do it and when the juice was all squeezed out, then there was that big molasses pan that had sections. They had some sort of long handled thing. Maybe you've seen them in pictures. Haven't you? You don't know anything about anything like that? Oh, that's a shame. You've missed it all. Its like a scoop that had an edge to it and a handle. This juice when it cooks it foams up and you have to dip that foam off. If you dip enough of it off, why then it will be real clear. Have you ever eaten molasses? Well, you've not missed all of it then.
And also I remember when Hugh would sow grass he would stand in the back of the wagon. They didn't have the things to sow like they do now, the tractors and stuff. But he would stand in the back of the wagon and he had a bag full of seed and a sort of opening in the bottom. They'd turn a wheel and it would just send the seed flying. I'd drive and he'd do that. And I was always afraid he'd fall out.
My mother-in-law was a christian. When we lived there she wouldn't let nobody play cards and I had to hide my Flinch cards. My husband was just like her. He didn't want me to have them. And I hid them. But he chewed tobacco, though. I knew that before I married him, so I didn't have no reason to fuss at him about it. But, my mother-in-law, oh, I don't think my father-in-law ever took a bite of tobacco that she didn't gripe at him.
I can remember my husband was going to be real nice. He bought a spittoon. He didn't like it because of the way it sounded whenever he'd spit in it. I don't even like to talk about it. Whenever he spit in it, it went plink! So he said, "Well, I'll fix that thing. I'll fill it with ashes." That got soaked full. It got caked down and he couldn't get it out. That old thing sat back where he never touched it. He had to use something else--a bucket. But I couldn't get after him because I knew he had to have it. They can have worse habits. So I always just think, "Well, chewing tobacco isn't the worst thing."
I don't really remember when Hugh was first courting me. It just come on so gradually. Now I should remember that, shouldn't I? Most people would. I think it just sort of worked up to it. We just sort of took it for granted that we were meant for one another. It was in August that he got me this ring. And you know what he gave for it? He worked two hard days for it. And it's real gold. It has his initials and mine on the inside.
I do remember he got too much to drink one Sunday before we were married. I had my own horse and he had his horse. He wasn't walking very good and somebody told me that. I just rode off and left him. I told him he didn't need to come back. But he talked me out of it.
After we was married and lived in the rock house, somebody gave him some hard cider. He wasn't walking very good when he come back. I locked the door and wouldn't let him in. And he sat down and I guess he just fairly cried. He said, "I am sick. I promise you I will never do it again. I didn't know that stuff would do me that-a-way." I finally let him in. But listen, he was one sick guy and I don't think he ever did it again. That's just one of the little incidents that happen.
My dad said I should have been a boy because I always wanted to go with him.
When I married I always had a horse to ride to go visit my mother. There was always someone jealous of me. They said, "Oh, I wish she'd have twins so she wouldn't be riding up and down this road." I think just as little of the lady that told me.
[47]
I've lived on a farm all my life. When I was growing up at home I thought oh, I'll never want to live on a farm because Germans thought children just work. I learned to work and I appreciated it afterwards, but I thought it was terrible. It was my dad's hunger to have a farm. He got sickly then and he had to go to the hospital. You see that so much. People work so hard. My own husband did that. He worked so hard and then something happens and you don't get to enjoy the retirement years in the home.
And that's another story. My husband worked in the hay field in 1936 and he had a sunstroke and he just never was well after that. The children even had to go with him when he went to the field. He was afraid to go by himself because he didn't feel good. In his later years he just didn't get to enjoy his home. That happens to lots of people, even to women.
I spoilt my husband. I would help him plant potatoes. Well, that was no more than right. I would help him dig potatoes because I was afraid he would leave some of them. And when it come to gathering corn off the stalk, he would take two rows and break the corn off. And I could do it just as fast as he could and I could take the down row too. That's blowing on myself. That's not very nice. I spoilt him and he thought I had to help him with everything. I was ambitious and I went along.
An experience that was very exciting was when my husband's brother's house was on fire. My husband got over there first and his brother was on top of the house and had wet quilts and stuff. My husband crawled up the stairway in a little attic. He seen it was all burning inside the attic and he would keep throwing water as he could get it. My father-in-law would bring those big five gallon buckets and I would take them and lift them up to my husband. When you're excited you have double strength, you're so scared. I was afraid their house would surely burn but they got it put out. Then had to put on a new roof. That was one time I was truly excited.
Then another time I was so excited I just froze in my tracks. My husband called me. He was cutting down a tree. When it was just about ready to fall he happened to notice that our son--he was just a toddler--was standing right where the tree was to fall. Well, when he called me I just looked at Floyd and it just seemed like I just couldn't hardly move. I finally got unwound and got him out of the way.
Floyd was like all little people. Another time we looked out and he had walked down close to the barn where there was a horse that wasn't too gentle. He was standing there under that horse and just kind of feeling of his legs. I suppose the animal knew he was just something that wouldn't hurt him. Well, I'll tell you we was so scared. We was afraid we'd scare the horse. We finally talked Floyd into coming to us.
[48]
After my husband passed away I lived there alone for some time. I had a big old shepherd dog. He would bark of a night and all at once he would be still. I couldn't imagine what it was. It scared me. I wondered if someone would maybe hit at him and make him shut up. So I got real brave. I could always use a rifle. I took my rifle and I thought well, I'm going out there and I'm going to see what's going on. And the dog had a possum on the ground and he would fool around with it. When it would sull he would give it up--he wouldn't bark no more. But just as long as it would fight at him, why he would bark at it.
But I kept a rifle. I said that nobody would scare me. It they got to fooling with the door, Wham! I'd take them. But nobody ever .... There was a drunk man came to my house. I seen him coming towards the gate. He kind of acted funny. I always kept my doors hooked. He rattled on the door and I couldn't understand him. His tongue was thick. I told him, "You must be of a different nationality. I can't understand you." He started out to the gate and then he come back and that scared me. I kept my gun handy and he went around to the back and rattled the back door. He finally left.
I told my son-in-law who lived here about it. He went to town and said that drunk whoever it was, if he fools around there he is going to get into trouble. She keeps a gun. And he just sort of warned them to stay away. That drunk never did come back no more.
I was still living there alone when my eyesight started to get kind of dim. I would buy those little old ten cent eye glasses, spectacles or whatever you want to call them, at the dime store. I would get them just a little stronger and a little stronger until they run out. Then I went to the doctor and he said I was forming cataracts. I went on a little while. I had some kind of magnifying glasses. In 1962 my daughter Eunice took me to Springfield to an eye specialist, and they had to operate and remove the cataracts.
I went back to get the stitches out after so long. The doctor said, "Hold your head back, let me see." He said it kind of rough. Eunice was sitting on the couch, not in the same room, but where she could look in. The doctor was rough when he took those stitches out and I'd grunt, and Eunice fainted. He had to lay his tweezers down and go pick her up and lay her on the couch!
God did make it possible that I could see. I can remember before the operation I couldn't tell a tree from a house. If I can just always do this way and not be bedfast. You know, I've been told that it's a great privilege, but it does make me feel bad to take up the time to get this old. There's just been so many young people taken out of this life that are needed. They have families and it makes me feel bad every time. Ah, well, that's all I got to do now. Just think about all those things and look out at all the pretty things God has made for us. Oh, it's wonderful. It's wonderful I've got that privilege and can see real good.
I like to write letters. I'll write to you some of these days. You know, if I hadn't just tumbled over and got into a walker I had always thought how nice it would be to go to a hospital and write letters for people and maybe read to patients in the hospitals.
I lay and count my blessings. My grandson passed through here and said, "Grandma, how are you doing?" I said, "I'm doing fine sitting here counting my blessings." I have more time than anything else. I have to get up at five o'clock as old as I am. The folks say to if I want to eat breakfast with them, and I do want to eat breakfast with them, so I get up.
I wrote to a friend from my school days. I haven't seen her in years so I told her I would send her a picture. I said I don't look a bit like I did when we used to be together. But that's okay. That goes with life, doesn't it? I've learned to accept it. I just don't worry about anything, only if I think some of the children are sick. That's when I worry. I always just think what's to be will be. And what the future holds, we cannot see.
And I appreciate your coming. I just love company, I love people, and my mother--I guess I'm just like her--she loved people. My dad always was just a little bit distant. I guess it was his brogue difficulty. It's just things you pleasure. I couldn't tell you how much I enjoyed your visit.
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