Early memories are precious to us all. They may be colored (like our beloved Blue Ridge) by the scrim of distance or glossed by sentiment, but they retain their value because they carry flavors that we would never exchange for simple facts.
In these stories, certain themes recur: how children with few financial resources amused themselves with astonishing creativity; how difficult routines of common daily life could be; how self-sufficient not only children, but also parents and grandparents had to be in a time when technology was represented by running water in the house or an electric light bulb. Some of the tales show the odd, painful, and often humorous ways in which their authors learned some of life’s most useful lessons. By reading them, you may recall some events in your own past you thought you’d forgotten, and surely you’ll feel the satisfying resonance of shared experience.
Joan LaPrade Cannon has been a teacher of high school English, an editor of a museum newsletter, and a writer of fiction. Her short stories have appeared in both "little" and commercial publications.
Dr. Jean Conyers Ervin is a retired educator who has taught in residential schools for the deaf and four universities. She has written articles for professional journals, a dissertation on Mark Twain, the Speechmaker, and an autobiography. It was she who initiated the concept that ultimately became the retirement community known as Grace Ridge.
The year 1914 was a memorable year, not because it was the year of my birth, but because it was the year the "war to end all wars" was begun. Too young to recall the hardships of a people at war, I have, nevertheless, memories of the disciplines, sacrifices, and deep feelings of patriotism that resulted from a wartime environment. There is only one emotion that comes to mind that was directly related to the war: the anxiety of the possibility my father would be drafted. As the war ground on, the draft age escalated until my father, then age forty, was eligible to serve in the army. No one ever discussed with me the likelihood that he would become a soldier, but somehow I knew, and fear permeated my deepest feelings at age four. Relief came with the announcement in November, 1918, that the war was over. Dad and Mother were jubilant, and no one ever knew of my concern.
We lived on a farm seven miles west of Muskogee, Oklahoma. The war years taught everyone to conserve and to "make do." Our home continued to be a center of activity for teaching rural housewives how to use well whatever was available. String was an important item, and as I reached school age, one of my responsibilities was to wrap all used string into a ball.
School was one and one-half miles away, reached by walking US Route 62. Children took seriously the search for tinfoil along the road, much of it from discarded wrappers of chewing gum. Like the string, it was made into balls that were given to our parents when they reached the size of tennis balls. I have no idea what it was used for.
School was an exciting experience. Students varied in age from six to an occasional sixteen in grades one through eight, all in the same room. Beginners were not known as kindergartners, but were said to be "studying the chart." The chart was similar to newsprint on an easel with the lessons printed in large bold type. The first page was the "At Family." The challenge was to make words by placing a letter in front of "at" as in bat and cat, etc. I don’t recall when I learned the alphabet, but it was probably before I started to school, but I recall the thrill of realizing words could be built by using different combinations of letters.
School began at 9 A.M. and closed at 4 P.M. Weather permitting, we were not allowed in until the teacher rang a melodious brass bell to signal us to stop talking and to line up in front of the school steps...boys on the left, girls on the right. On command, the girls marched in first, followed by the boys. The girls marched to the "girls’ cloakroom" and the boys to the "boys’ cloakroom," which were nothing more than partially enclosed areas with hooks upon which coats or jackets could be hung.
School usually began near the first of September and ended on Memorial Day, May 3lst, but there was a two-week period in the fall that the school closed to allow many of the children to help pick cotton. The blackboards, made of slate, covered most of two walls. A fingernail drawn across one would send shivers up and down the spine. To "dust the erasers" was a privilege granted daily to the two most exemplary students of the day.
