OLD JOHN

Coyotes ate the ducklings they'd watched over so lovingly. Chickens were messy and might meet the same fate as the ducklings. Uncle Pete's cattle grazed down the front acreage. Mom & Aunt Hazel were 67 and 73 respectivly, but for some reason, live stock of their own seemed important to have, so they kept sheep.
The sheep didn't need a lot of care except during lambing and mostly ambled about gnawing up plant material. They also kept the snake population down, according to Aunt Hazel. We kind of smirked when we heard that, but as usual she was right. I watched a placid ewe turn Rambo when faced with a rattler. She jumped straight up into the air and landed with one hoof on the rattler's head, and another on the middle of it's back. By the time she finished stomping, you couldn't tell what that slitherer had been. I became a believer.
The sheep lived in the barn with pasturage that ran down toward the old log cabin. A gate that appeared in photos from Mom and Hazel's childhood led from the farmhouse yard into the lot. A burn barrel held trash waiting to be disposed of when so ever the weather was wet and/or dry enough. Each week it was Hazel's chosen duty to carry the tiny bits of debris to the barrel.
She stood beside the barrel but decided it was too windy to light a fire and turned to go back through the gate. As she stepped out Old John, the lord emperor of the tiny flock put his head down and butted her face first into the dirt.
Hazel rose with her usual composure and aplomb and dusted herself off. With dignity she turned to face the old ram.
"Why, John!" she said.

LIKE THE GIFT OF THE MAGI

Grandma Campbell had a fierce and determined love of all learning, and she determined fiercely that each and every one of her children would finish high school. Today, this does not seem like an unusual ambition...it is generally expected that our kids will graduate from High School and go to college. But when Grandma was 13 her father decided that the high school was too far away, the neighbors might talk, it was not seemly for a young lady to ride all that distance, her mother needed her at home to care for the littler ones, and that was that. Even with the backing of her beloved teacher she could not change the mind of Matthew Nettle, "gentleman farmer", who, by the way, served on the school board! When they married, Grandpa Arthur loved her so dearly and supported just about anything she wanted, as long as he was not too much bothered with the details. All the children attended school. When they outgrew the little one room school house on the farm they were shipped off, usually two at a time, to friends or relatives in town for the school year. When it was time for Mom and Arby to go, they stayed with distant cousins. Arby had a job and Mom helped in the house and they paid their room and board in money and in service. That first year, although she loved school, Mom missed her mother, Hazel, and probably even Girly and Art desperately. Arby could hear her crying herself to sleep every night. There was no expectation of going home for holidays as we would do today. It would have been a wagon trip of the better part of a day each way, and the bus fare was beyond dreaming of. A few days before that first Christmas away from home, Arby presented his little sister with the most amazing gift, a round trip bus ticket home. He had shoveled coal for neighbors, toted feed bags for farmers and any other odd job he could find to save enough for the ticket that would mean that while he spent Christmas alone, she did not.

A FORGOTTEN BIRTHDAY

I don't know the date or even the month, but it was warm and very green and it was Marlene's birthday. How I came to be there is a mystery as I surely didn't live nearby, but there I was. Terry was there, and Pris and Charles. Marlene's best friend and some neighbor kids were there, too. I don't recall either Dwayne or Colin being there, but they were "big boys" and probably off doing "big boy" stuff. We sat on the living room floor and played "Button, button, who has the button?" and "Spin the bottle" and "Telephone". The day was pure gold with dust motes glinting and reflecting light. We had cake and lemonade then piled onto the big ol' hay wagon. Aunt Ruth hiked up her skirt and climbed onto the tractor. For some reason that surprised me. As she started the engine she turned, her face lit with pleasure as she observed us. Sweet, plain Aunt Ruth was prettier than any movie star in that moment. She put the tractor in gear and we jerked away down the hill to the creek. We paddled in the shallow waters in dappled sun and shade until we were hauled protesting and dripping back to the house. In retrospect I wonder where my mother was, where my other aunts were, and Grandma? Has memory wiped them off the slate of the day? How old was Marlene that day? 2 years older than me! But how old was I? I guess it doesn't matter. We were together, and happy in the day.

SIDEWALKS

I walked to school, rode my bike, roller skated, pulled and was pulled in my little wooden wagon. My mother and I walked to the grocery store and we pulled the thisas and thatas home in that same wagon. We visited neighbors, crossed at the corners, went to the library, ran to the drug store, strolled to the movie theater, called in at the church, relatively safe from passing trucks, cars and buses. On the sidewalks we waited for our best friend to come out to play, set up a hopscotch game, played jacks and jumped rope. We played mumbly peg and hide and seek on the grass, but kick the can was played on the sidewalk. During the war we tied cans to our shoes and stomped up and down the sidewalks until the cans were smooshed flat for metal recycling collection. When it snowed the first job of every kid over the age of 6 was to shovel the sidewalk. It was not just to get to school, or so our moms had dry feet on the way to the store, it was so our dads could catch the bus to work without catching cold. Everyone knew that to go all day with wet feet ended badly. Probably with "P-new-mon-ya"...and hafta call the doctor, a fate worse than death, which would end with a shot at the least as well as being asked who it was that DIDN'T clear the snow off the walk. Sidewalk defined our neighborhoods. This side was ours, that side was theirs. Yes, there were sidewalks on BOTH sides of the street. Little old ladies guarded their blocks jealously and vigorously. The sidewalks were safe with them on duty. They did not hesitate to dress down a bully, or dress a wounded shin for that matter. They knew where we lived, where we went to school, they knew our mothers, and often our grandmothers and would call them if need be. And if "need be" was called for, you probably would get a paddling when you got home. Sometimes the little old ladies were little old men. It really didn't matter, and as much as we fussed about the "nosey parkers" watching from behind their curtains, we knew nothing really bad could happen with them on duty. Watched sidewalks were just part of the upside of small town living.

I scream for ice cream 1

In the years following WWII the hearse was the only ambulance the tiny town of Aurora, Missouri had. This meant the funeral director or an assistant was on call around the clock every day of the year. Now, calls were not necessarily coming in around the clock every day of the year, but if they did....well, you get the picture.
This meant that when we had a picnic or a gathering of any kind the huge concrete apron of the enormous garage housing the hearse became party central.
I don't mean partying. The hardest beverage available was iced tea. If we were lucky the kids got Kool Aid and home made cookies. If we weren't so lucky we got to share the iced tea.
But sometimes, just sometimes, there was home made ice cream in an old fashioned churn. 60 years later I can feel shivers of anticipation and the chill of sitting on the churn. The flavor might be whatever fresh local fruit was in season, but plain old vanilla was just as welcome. And I don't remember chocolate ever being an option.
At first we kids would turn the handle, but later the men would take turns as the mixture got thicker and harder. Eventually the paddles would begin rising as the bottom of the pail froze and pushed up. The smaller boys and girls would then take turns sitting on the churn while the men sweated the last crankings a few turns at a time as it got harder and harder.
Whoever was sitting on the crank when it was ready got the first lick of the extracted paddles. As hard as it was to sit still while your friends ran and played this was a glory moment. You usually only got one or two licks in before every kid gathered to share, but OH to be that first one!
Making ice cream was a long and arduous and expensive job that only happened once or twice a year, and was treasured for it's rarity. The ice cream from the drug store came in your choice of flavors, but the stuff we made on the apron of the funeral home garage tasted of summer and freedom, friends and reward. And in my memory my mom's curls catch fire as she turns in her lawn chair to smile at me, sitting in glory on the top of the churn.

UNCLE JOHNNEY'S STORY

Grandpa's older half brother Uncle Johnney Campbell was the son of Jerry Campbell and Mary Elizabeth the first.
He was a foreman at a lead mine in Aurora, MO when he and Henrietta helped to found the First Christian church, pillars of the community that they were. They adopted a boy from one of the orphan trains, but within a few years the boy ran off to Texas because they were so mean to him. Mom's words, not mine. My mother rarely spoke ill of anyone. Uncle Johnney was the sole exception.
In some kind of defense, Uncle Johnney suffered the usual side effects of lead mining and eventually was forced to retire. They moved back to Union and lived either with or near my grandparents. He medicated the pain with liquor.
Mom and her little sister, Girly would hide when they saw Johnney reeling on the seat of his wagon, whipping his horse through town. I heard that even Aunt Hazel and even the older boys did much the same. If he saw you he was as likely to use the whip on a human as on the horse. My guess would be that he had used that whip on the orphan boy who ran away, but it is only a guess. Lead poisoning creates a hell in the body and slowly destroys the brain.
He finally died, either of lead or booze poisoning, no one said. Etta lived long and prospered, honored aunt of the Campbell clan. Her "jewelry" and goods were left mainly to her namesake, Blanche Henrietta, my mother. To this day I have a delicately painted china cup known as "Uncle Johnney's cup", and this is a story to go with the cup.

"Over-halls"

When I was little only the poorest of the poor wore what we called "over-halls"...the straps let them up and down for the next kid. They were always frayed, patched and faded, but never dirty.
Rarely did the child have shoes, never socks and at a guess, no underwear. The kids usually smelled bad, not from dirt, but malnutrition and bad teeth.
A boy sitting next to me in first grade could not be allowed to have crayons because he ate them as fast as he could get his hands on them. His father was a lead miner, out of work after the mine closed and they were starving.
Their home was a tar paper shack, literally. There was a light bulb hanging from the ceiling over an old wobbly dining room chair. In one corner was an old bed with broken metal springs and a threadbare quilt folded neatly at the bottom and one pillow at the head. A huddle of fabric scraps in another corner served as a bed for the baby and several children. In the place of honor, in the center of one wall was an ancient console radio. The light bulb over the chair had to be removed to plug in the radio. A pot bellied stove with 3 intact legs and a couple of bricks served for heat and cooking.
I know all this because my father took me along on 'pastoral calls' like this so he could say that "Judy wanted to stop in to say hello to her school friend." I had several of these friends, some I never knew at school as they were older or younger.
Most families were too proud and refused any help at all. But we got free milk for a lot of them because all the kids got it. Some wouldn't even accept it then. They didn't want to be beholden.
What a change to the welfare way of life. Today those kids would be fed, but would they ever understand the pride of a day's work? I can't judge about better or worse.

The ladies in the outhouse.

Judy,

One thing I remember is your mother, Girlie, and my mother all sneaking out to the outhouse at Grandmas to smoke!! My daughter was astounded when I told her that.That these grown up women had to sneak around to smoke and in the outhouse! I couldn't remember if your mother smoked, though. I knew Girlie and my Mom did.

Of course, they didn't all sneak out at the same time!
Love the stories.

Priscilla

To:
"priscilla lewedag"
Yes, my mom smoked at that time, too. Grandma C could be pretty fierce! Remember the story about her taking a couple of Aunt Maude's boys by the ears and making them pour their "hooch" down the drain? She told them she didn't allow that rotgut in her home!

Grandma and the Jameses

We were at Grandma & Grandpa Campbell's little house on St. Claire Road. All the uncles, even my dad, had gotten together to build the house above the Bourbouse River outside Union. It was a ramshackle place by today's standards, but Grandma was happier that we had ever seen her. A home of her very own, after all those years.
All the big people had wandered off, the men had gone fishing, The women were in the kitchen, or sitting on the porch drinking lemonade or iced tea. Grandma was glorying in the quiet, alone for a while in her own living room.
Several of the cousins were playing in the terraced front yard between the gardens. Flag stone walk ways and steps led up to the highway. At the corner of the house beside the summer kitchen was a whet stone run by pedal power. Grandma's cats and kits mewled under the porch, untouchable and unreachable.
A game of cowboys and Indians was in progress and as I slurped up a quick drink I announced to Grandma that I was going to join the game and be Jesse James.
Grandma went still as a pouncing cat. Her voice RANG in the quiet house.
Those Jameses! They're TRASH! NOTHING BUT OLD WHITE TRASH!
I'd never seen my grandma angry before and this sounded real personal. I think my mouth dropped open. I slipped out of the house and I am not sure she noticed right away.
We never talked about it again. But I never mentioned Jesse James in her presence, either. Probably should have. But she wouldn't have told me. You don't tell the kids.

Preacher Gray & Jesse James

Dick' grandfather was a Methodist circuit rider minister. He farmed outside of Allerton,IL and was also the editor of the local paper. He was not a young man when he married Orpha Jane and started a second family. But the exciting story is that he rode with Jesse James! Ha! a connection with my family! I was intrigued but like most of the family thought the story apocryphal.
It seems that Grandpa was driving the old wagon into town one day and saw a stranger along side the road. A battered saddle rested beside him, but no horse was in evidence. Grandpa offered him a ride into town and as they went, they talked. There is no record of the conversation, either by hearsay or guesstimate, but at some point a group of men overtook them on horseback.
"You need a ride, Jesse?" one of them asked.
"Nah, I'm doing OK, Frank" the man in the wagon replied.
And that is where the family story ended.
Fast forward to the mid 1990s. Son Geoff called one night all excited. He had been watching "Biography" on the History Channel and the subject was Jesse James. In an interview the great grandson told of Jesse's being "born again" after a wagon ride with a parson on a dusty old road in Illinois.
Fall back again to a Franklin County MO story that tells of my great grandfather and a group of neighbors building a church in the hills near the farm. A stranger stopped and offered to help. He worked hard, shared a meal and was gone. No one was sure who he was, but this was Union country and there were suspicions.
When my mother was a young girl a huge cavern was discovered across the road from her grandparent's farm. In the cave were artifact from the years following the Civil War including some things that were supposed to have belonged to a notorious outlaw.
I grew up visiting that cave, known across the country as Mermac Caverns, Jesse James hideout.
The wagon ride and the church raising fit nicely...and maybe they are true.

The Old Ice House.

Franklin County was a Union county. They didn't appreciate Jerry Campbell's Rebel sympathies but when push came to shove they took care of their own, even the adopted ones.
The Union needed cannon fodder and the foolish farm boys had quit signing up...probably because the previous "fodder" had come home on crutches, missing eyes, arms, or legs. Too many were not coming home ever, lost in a field or a ditch. Even the dreamiest eyed fool could see this was not the way to glory.
The fields were going untended without enough hands and feet to plow, plant and reap. A woman could plow, sow, reap, cook, wash, only as much as one woman could do. A child was help, but only help. A child could not go out and plow on her own until she was well grown. It wasn't the gender, it was the numbers. It wasn't lack of strength, it was lack of numbers. Farms require hands. So when the 'conscriptors' came to Franklin County looking for recruits, Grandma took the "boys" and hid them in the woods behind the old ice house in Union. She and the girls took baskets of food to them every day until the feds had gone and the boys could come back to the fields.
We, the family, don't remember the names of the boys or the girls, but we all know what Grandma did to save her family during the war.

Jerry Reb

We were at a family funeral. I didn't get to attend many, living several states away, but this one coincided with a visit. It might have been Uncle Charley's or Aunt Maude Brown"s, but I am not sure. An elderly relative, seen seldom, known more through story than sight. There were cousins there I had not seen since childhood, others I had never met at all. All of Franklin County is related in some way. They were mostly my mother's cousins, many some degree of distance, second cousin, once removed. Most of my generation lived at a distance or were working.
We stood in the church talking family talk with those who remembered when. Always curious about family "secrets" I asked cousin Myron about Grandpa Jerry, my grandfather's father. No one has been able to trace his origins back any further than the Civil War when he arrived in Franklin County, a decidedly pro-Union county, with a wife, Mary Elizabeth and small children.
Now mind you, we were a family who knew our people. We KNEW Great Grandpa fought in the Revolution and got his plot of land in payment. We knew who married who and who moved where. We kept track of these things.
Well, not too long after they arrived Mary Elizabeth died. Saddled with young children, Jerry remarried soon changing wives but not names. Mary Elizabeth Gideon was his second bride.
And now the story gets guessy.
How did an incomer, a stranger, marry into one of the oldest families of Franklin County, an insular kind of a place to say the least? We know that with the war on there may have been a shortage of marriageable men. Maybe Grandpa Gideon needed help on the farm. Maybe ME the II was besot and determined. Nonetheless it seems a bit odd, viewing the information passed on by Mom's cousin Myron at the family funeral.
In true Franklin County style Myron remarked offhandedly, "Grandpa Jerry was a rebel, and the neighbors didn't like it much."

Matthew Nettle was my great grandfather. He was a farmer in Franklin Co. MO from about the time of the Civil War through WWI, I think. A man with a twinkle in his eye and a love for things that little boys are made of such as snips, and snails and puppy dog tails.
Mom (Blanche H. Campbell Downs) tells that Grandpa would come into the kitchen with his shirt rippling and a big grin on his face. He would pull out little green snakes or big black snakes, curling them around his arms and stroking them lovingly. Grandma Nettle was not fond of things that crawl, but her only admonishment would be a tiny shake of the head and a sad "Why, Matthew..." I suspect she had learned that a greater reaction brought larger incursions...in true little boy fashion. But we'll never know, now, will we?

The Red Riding Hood woods

My mother was born in 1914, the 5th of 7 siblings. The Campbell family lived with Rebecca's parents on the farm near Stanton, MO.
The older children attended a one room school house up by the road about 3 miles along the driveway and south a bit. It is long gone, but if you know where to look you can find the ruins. It wasn't too far from where the boys killed a wolf one winter.
The fields all lay beyond the woods...Little Red Riding Hood woods. Big, dark and scary to 6 and 4 year old girls commissioned to take the stone jug of lemonade and the basket of food to the men in the field. The older girls and the women were cooking up supper for the field hands. Biscuits and pies in the oven, pots at the boil, babies can't be left alone, feet and hands must be useful. Even tiny fearful hands and feet.
My mother never forgot those trips. Her voice trembled when she talked about it at the ages of 40, 57, 78, and 84. The dire fear of not only knowing that her brothers had killed a wolf nearby, but the responsibility of her little sister never left her.
She did it. She survived. But the adventure was pretty much knocked out of her.
She didn't like storms, but I never knew it. She didn't like the dark, but I didn't know it. She hated surprises and anything new or different, but I never knew. I thought she was strong and unconquerable, but really, she was just stubborn...and the bravest person I ever knew. Because I never knew...not until she told me.

My great grandfather Matthew Nettle, owned the farm Uncle Orville purchased just before he retired from the St. Louis Post Office. He was an Anderson and Aunt Hazel (Campbell) was my mother's oldest sibling. Both families had and still do live in Franklin County, Missouri.
The farm is 500 acres that would probably double in size is you could iron it out. With hills, gullies, creeks, dry creek beds, forests, bluffs, caves and a few tiny fields and ponds, it is beautiful and more than a little dangerous. My uncles killed wolves in the woods above the house. Coyote dogs killed and ate a flock of ducks. Lambs and calves disappear entirely on occasion. The family pony, April wandered down the hill, never came home and was never found. The sheep kill rattlesnakes in the old barn every day.
But there has never been a smell like that of the cedar woods at any time, but especially after a rain. There's fresh washed odor with an ancient tang at the back of your head that says heaven is very near here and has been, forever.
The stone in the shelter of the towering cedars is carmel colored, and so smooth and beautiful you want to taste it like candy. A shelf of this stone forms part of the old road down to the cabin. Chips from horse shoes and cuts from iron wrapped wagon wheels can be seen when you know what you are looking for. Cool and smooth on the hottest, dustiest day, I think it must be God's footstool.