A! My Life as a Teen-Ager

Ah!  My Life as a Teen-Ager

 

First-the setting!  I lived in a huge white seven-bedroom house just five minutes from the college campus.  I could make it to class in five minutes for the first bell and into the side door which was the entrance for the high school.  You see, I attended the college high school, a school which  had students especially for prospective teacher to practice on –built-in guinea pigs!But I loved it.  We had access to the college library, we got to use the gymnasium for my favorite, volleyball, and we could swim in the college pool and even play tennis on the courts when they were not in use.

 

But back to my home.  It was like a small farm; we had seven acres with chickens, a cow and her calf Bubbles, a huge garden, a large pasture, the traditional red barn and a big yard.  We lived on the very edge of town, Maryville, a town of six thousand residents, not counting the college students. Prather Avenue was the last street of the town and it ended with a road going into the neighboring farms: we were on the corner.  Our front yard must have been designed by someone from the Dakotas because it had two rows of trees, enormous trees on the north and west sides of the land.  This was designed as a protection from the high winds and snows which were so common in Missouri.  The trees were enormous and formed a double lane all around the house and yard.  It was beautifully cool in summer and MAYBE it was a help in the winter!

 

Almost all across the back of the house was a huge porch with fancy designs next to the roofline.  There was a porch with a wonderful hand-cranked doorbell and a beautiful stained glass door opening to it and also another stained glass door to the parlor that also opened to this porch!  Oh, no, we are not finished with porches.  There were two for the kitchen!  Don’t know why two unless one was for the servant’s entrance—and of course, no one had servants.  Take that back—the owner of the grocery store had a cook! But I am getting away from my story.  We had a parlor with sliding wooden doors-pocket doors that we did not use in winter.  A living room with a large picture window with a stained glass panel above it.  That is where we mainly lived.  Mother had the window full of beautiful plants, we had a big brown stove for coal or wood.  Our dining room was off the living room, a large room which opened onto the long porch.  Next to it, the kitchen, the pantry and yes, the bathroom.  It had a zinc tub and sink.  This is grey metal and cold! We had two stoves in the kitchen (it was very large) one for winter cooking and one for summer.  We did a lot of canning so it kept the kitchen from being so hot!  The stove which we used most of the time had the equivalent of about six burners and to the side a reservoir.  You filled the reservoir tank with water and as you cooked the water heated and you had nice hot water for dishes or whatever.  Above the top of the stove surface were two warming ovens.  You could put anything in there and it would keep warm.  This was separate from the oven, a big oven that would hold several loaves of bread to bake.

 

Although we lived in a huge house, I shared a room with my sister Eula.  I am not sure just exactly why, maybe we liked company!  Our room was very plain with a white iron bedstead and a pretty walnut dresser.  Of course when we were having an argument with each other, we would draw a line figuratively down the center of the bed.  It had white metal rods for the head and foot  with fancy scrolls at the top of each rod.

 

Enough about “the setting”.  On to spring.  I lived a very gentle life—not much excitement .  It was time to clean –spring clean--.  We did not have a vacuum  but generally our carpet sweeper served very well and a dust mop, but no, not for SPRING CLEANING.  Everything  must be cleaned and polished and waxed.  Eula and I took the huge rug outdoors, put it on the beautiful freshsmelling green grass and pulled it around the yard.  Around and around we went and soon it smelled fresh as spring. Our neighbors put their carpets on the clothes line and beat them but this was much more fun.

 

Dusk came and my best friend, Grace Whitehead and some of her siblings, came by to play Hide and Seek.  I know that sounds very childish but it was lots of fun.  We would hide behind the trunks of the huge trees.  We had extra excitement because there was an owl that would come down and nip us on our heads.  I guess he didn’t like to be disturbed and we sure disturbed him with shreeeeeks and loud calls. Wonder we didn’t get rabies or something!  But after all, we didn’t have TV, movies were too expensive and we had only one radio and my father listened to sports and news.

 

Saturday night arrived and we, Grace and I, headed for town.  That was what EVERYONE did on Saturday night in little towns.  The farmers brought their produce in and shopped for what they needed the next week.  There often were band concerts as the town was designed around the handsome red brick courthouse and there was a bandstand on the lawn.  All of the stores were next to each other around the courthouse.  So, Saturday night Grace and I and lots of people walked around the square, saw our friends, chatted, listened to the music and then went to Cobbs Ice Cream Parlor for a double dip ice cream cone (five cents).  It was the most delicious, mouth-watering thing we could posssibly have for our five cents—because this was all we could afford.  There were no jobs of any kind to be had either for adult or teen-ager.  My senior year of high school I worked  in the principal’s office first period and earned $7.00 per month.  I remember how excited I was. I could buy my clothes and have some left over to help expenses at home.

 

On some nights during the summer an outdoor dance floor was set up next to a restaurant and you could dance to the juke box tunes.  That was lots of fun

 

In the fall, along came the ferris wheel, and all of the rides.  Of course, we saved up our money for our favorite rides and would yell happily when the ferris wheel stopped at the very top and everything looked very far down!

 

Summertime Eula and I would mow the lawn—no, we did not take turns.  We would each get one end of the handle of the push mower and around and around and around (big yard) we would go.  Usually, we would sing.  Also, we had to water the garden.  It was beyond the fence and a slight distance from the house.  We would take turns pumping and pumping pail after pail of water.  The garden was very important both when everything was fresh and when canning time came around and we shelled peas, picked green beans, tomatoes, corn and everything I am sure in the whole wide world!

 

One hot summer day my parents were away  tending to the hatchery.  It seemed very hot and steamy but also very still.  Very still.  The sky grew dark and the wind began to blow.  The dining room door blew open.  I closed it.  It blew open again and again.  Even locking it made no difference.  I decided to hold it shut.  It took all my strength but I managed to keep it shut but the wind was so loud-sounded like a train. Soon the wind died down and I opened the door.  In shock, what did I see but one of the  enormous oak trunks directly above, crashed onto the roof and just a few feet from my head!  No, I didn’t faint but I thought what a ninny I was not to have gone to the cellar when the wind started blowing so hard!   There was not a lot of damage. Nothing had collapsed. However, all of the windows on the Administration Building of the college which faced in our direction were blown out.  Our next door neighbor’s garage was turned around and faced in a new direction still on its foundation.  But one of the most unusual, was one of our chickens  did not go into the chicken house.  Usually, when it begins to get dark, they go to bed!  I guess that is where the saying came from—“You go to bed with the chickens!”  Anyway, this chicken didn’t go with the rest of them and was running around the yard , sqwauking and screeching!  It had good reason—the tornado had taken off every one of its feathers!  Poor thing! I hunted for it in vain, thinking it would need suntan lotion!  However, several days later we had chicken pot pie for dinner!  Mother swore she was thinning out the flock of chickens.  I half-believed her!

 

Enough excitement for the day!  In fact, several days.  It took a bit of time to get things back to normal.  We missed the big tree; it was the closest one to the house but there were plenty more in the yard.