Twenty
____________
Corn on
the Cob
We were on the move
again. We were let out of our sharecroppin’ lease in the middle of fall just
after harvest time; Pa took an offer to work at a place at Hydro for a spell.
This farm was only a couple of miles from town and just as close to the
Catholic Church. We even were able to attend a Bible school that lasted for two
weeks. I become the good friend of a girl named Nattie Jean during this Bible
School time and was even invited to her birthday party… my first. Back in the
days when we lived at Binger and Eakly we only went to church on occasion, the
nearest one being a small red-brick one in Hinton, miles away. Richard, Teddy
and I made our First Communion and Confirmation back in those days.
Hydro did not have a school building for the
previous two or three years before we moved there. Children attended class in
an unused repair garage and some went to class in the basement of the First
Christian Church while a new brick school was being constructed. We went to the
new school when it was completed. It seemed so large, havin’ so many rooms and
all, compared to what we were used to. There were two grades to each room. It
seems so small by today’s standards.
This was the first time I remember having really
close friends and playmates. We rode the bus each day and I became very good
friends with Lorena Neuman whose family owned a large, prosperous farm, and
LeeAnn Jacobsen who lived about a mile away from us. About a mile away from us
in the other direction lived Ma’s cousin Thomas Darnelle and his wife Debbie
with their two daughters. There was also a petrol station close by. Pa said the
owner of the station was a bootlegger and that proved to be a fact. We finally
had friends to play games with like Chinese checkers, marbles, jacks, kick the
can, hide and seek, jump rope, you name it… we played it.
Another friend I made here was Carol Wozenski
who I met in Bible school. She was born in a shotgun house in Macon, Georgia,
but shortly after that her family moved to Oklahoma. Their farm used to have a
coolin’ shed for milk and other things that was built on top of a natural
spring, now long dried up. Carol had a stuttering problem but overcame it later
in life by studying drama and taking acting classes. A doctor she visited once
had heard that the practice of an actor focusing on lines to remember and to
say correctly had a positive effect on some folks who stuttered. It worked for
her. Carol and I found a diary once from the 1800s at the back of a shelf we
were cleanin’ together in the church. We showed it to the minister and he
looked through it and said we could have it as long as we both read it
together. It felt like we’d found a secret treasure or something. We read that
diary faithfully as often as we could.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“C’mon, we ain’t got all day,” Richard
admonished his climbing partners. “Pa will be back at dusk to get us.”
Teddy, Rae Ann, and her friend Carol, hurried
along to catch up to Richard. Richard’s excitement all but overwhelmed him. He
could not believe that they were being allowed to climb to the top of the 1500
foot tall Ghost Mound.
Ghost Mound is a rocky plateau situated in
pasture land a few miles south of the town Hydro in Caddo County. The climb is
not all that difficult, but can take some time to accomplish if it happens to
be an exceptionally warm or hot day. The mound is shadowed by Indian legends,
one of which involves a local Indian Chief’s daughter. The beautiful princess
was to wed a neighboring tribe’s chief but was hopelessly in love with a
handsome warrior from her own tribe. The sorrow of losing her true love and
having to marry another was more than she could bear, so she climbed to the top
of the mound and leaped to her death. It is said that one can hear the princess
crying when the wind blows against the mound. Some have claimed to have seen
her crying on the mound, silhouetted against the twilight of the evening sky.
Others claim her final footprint embedded itself into the rock as she leaped to
her untimely death and that it still remains on top of the plateau’s surface.
“You ok, Carol?” Rae Ann questioned her friend.
Carol replied, “I-I-I’m ok. Th-this is fun.”
“I heard that people have carved their initials
and names up at the top,” Teddy informed his fellow climbers, “and that one of
the dates someone carved is from 1911.”
“We’ll see when we get up there, Teddy,” Richard
turned around to reply, “Let’s hope you didn’t get bamboozled by someone’s tall
tales.”
“I didn’t,” Teddy affirmed defensively.
“H-how long’s the c-climb take, R-Rae Ann?”
Rae Ann answered her friend, “I’m not sure,
maybe an hour or two?”
Richard turned again to respond to the two
girls, “Girls can’t climb this in no one or two hours I bet.”
“I bet we can,” Rae Ann shouted back. “You just
wait and see, Richard.”
Teddy caught up to Richard and said, “I hear it
only takes ten to twenty minutes to get to the top if you’re a good climber and
all.”
“Me too,” Richard affirmed, “I’m just messin’
with ‘em.”
Teddy chuckled.
“Gr-grasshoppers!” screeched Carol as the little
creatures leaped around on the path before her and started to bounce off of her
legs.
“Don’t give ‘em no mind,” Rae Ann commented.
“They ain’t gonna do no harm to anyone.”
As the four youths started up toward the summit
the warm humid air pressed against them like a smothering blanket, sweat began
to drip down their faces.
Teddy continued to complain about the heat.
Richard, feeling a bit frustrated by Teddy’s whining, snapped at his brother,
“I know it’s hot, quit remindin’ me.”
“Sorry.”
The quartet scrambled over the loose rocks,
stickers snapping at their legs like turtles in a pond, until they reached the
summit and gazed out over the horizon and off into the distance to feast their
weary eyes upon the beauty of the grassy plains that rolled out before them
below.
Faster than a person could say Jack Crispy,
Richard climbed over the edge of the steepest side of the mound and hung over
the rocky precipice laughing.
“Richard,” Rae Ann scolded, “you need to get up
here right away. That’s dangerous.”
“You gonna tell Pa?” came the questioning reply.
Rae Ann had no answer to give.
“Hey,” Richard hollered, “there’s a carving
here. How’d a soul carve this?”
Teddy speculated that it was, “probably the same
way as you got there… doin’ somethin’ stupid.”
Richard pulled himself back up and said, “That
was fun. Let’s look for carvings and stuff.”
“Y-y-your brother is quite brave, R-Rae Ann,”
Carol commented.
“Yeah, Rae Ann answered, “and a bit foolish
sometimes if ya be askin’ me.”
“I-I-I think he’s real brave,” the dreamy eyed
girl affirmed her feelings.
Rae Ann just looked at her friend.
“Th-thanks for lettin’ m-me spend the night
tonight,” a grateful Carol said.
“We’ll have fun. And my sister, Mary will be
there too. Ma didn’t want her climbin’ no mountain today. This was nothin’ that
hard, Mary could have come. It ain’t even a real mountain anyway.”
The golden light of day faded swiftly for the
youths. John Charlton drove up just as the four adventurers descended the mound
to the field below. The Saturday evening drive home was filled with
conversation concerning carvings, dates, how far one could see from atop the mound’s
plateau, and the local legends surrounding the mound’s eerie name.
The next day after church Rae Ann and Carol
climbed into the hay loft in the barn to read in the diary they had found in
the old church. Mary was off playing somewhere with their dog while Richard and
Teddy had gone with friends from church to play football.
“C-c-can you read t-today, p-please?” asked
Carol.
Rae Ann replied, “Of course. I think it’s my
turn anyway.”
“Y-yes, it is.”
The diary turned out to be a weekly journal of a
young girl in the 1820s that had lost her mother at a very young age. She was
the eldest of her four siblings in the family and had ended up being the mother
figure in the home.
Rae Ann opened the diary to the place where they
had left off and began to read:
‘Today I studied Latin for one hour before
father and my brothers and sister woke up, at which point, as is usual for most
days, I prepared breakfast for all of us before it was time for school. Father
arose appropriately about the same time as I and was on his way to feed the
cows as swiftly as ever.
Hazel cried and did not wish to attend school
today. I convinced her otherwise by promising her she could assist me with the
baking of the weekend pies. She was happy and I have a helper – we both profit
from this day in one way or the other.’
“I-it sounds so, s-so formal,” Carol commented.
Rae Ann agreed, “Much different than we do
today.”
“Th-they must h-have been r-r-rich maybe.”
“Could be, “Rae Ann pondered her friend’s
assumption, “or possibly from a well-to-do place. Maybe she will say somewhere
later on in this diary.”
“Y-yeah. R-read some m-more.”
“Ok.”
‘This week went by faster than a herd of buffalo
crossing the open prairie. Father twisted his foot but continued on with work
like nothing happened. I was concerned for him. Hazel and James completed their
schoolwork without complaint. Phineas remained as fine and delightful as ever.
A letter arrived, being delivered by an official
man of some sorts upon horseback. Aunt Marne asked again if we would consider
returning home. Father said that we are home. I have resolved myself to this
life and it does not appear that we will move anywhere in the near future. We
all must learn to be content with things the way they are. The words ‘Godliness
with contentment is great gain’ are a comfort to my soul, as are ‘And having
food and clothing, with these we shall be content’, and ‘be content with such
things as you have. For He Himself has said, I will never leave you nor forsake
you’.”
The girls climbed down from the loft and
returned the diary to Rae Ann’s room before joining Mary to play with Lucky.
“I sure love Lucky!” Carol said without
stuttering.
Rae Ann held this occurrence deep within her heart.
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