pages 28-31

When I was small they nicknamed me Humpty Dumpty. That name stayed with me until I was in my teens. Whenever they wanted anything done, it was Humpty won’t you do this and won’t you run here or run over there and hitch the horse for me. I have to go to town for groceries for the store. All the time he’d be lying in the cool shade while I was sweating in the hot sun. I soon learned I had become someone just to run errands for the whole family. I was an easy mark and today I am still just that because I am quick, fast, and most generally willing to do things just to be nice.
After my two older sisters quit taking music lessons the folks had my brother and me take from a lady who had moved into a neighbors place and was buying it after the owner had died. One evening they were having a big party at the home but we didn’t know it. They had a lot of their friends out from town. He was a band master and his wife played in the band. Of course, after we fot there they invited us to stay. Children like, we did stay for a while. Finally another girl and myself got tired of all the noise and we went out to swing. We were not there very long when I said, “there comes a lady all in white with six children all in white up the lane. Look she’s going in the barn. She has a basket on her arm, she’s gathering the eggs like she use to do when alive.” The other girl got exceedingly scared and began to holler, “where? I can’t see her.”
I said,, “can’t you see her. She’s going down by the spring now and the little children are still following her. Here she comes now and she is going into the chicken house. You can tell it’s her from the long train on her skirt and the white slat bonnet she always wore.” As she and the children all in white went into the chicken house the other girl screamed and jumping from the swing ran saying “you can stay if you want to but I am going in the house, as the chicken house was only a few yards from the swing. That was the last I saw of her and the children. She never came out of the chicken house. Maybe the other girl’s screams frightened her. It certainly did look like her and to this day that same scene comes to my mind. Later I figured it must have been a fantasy or a mirage for it was such a lovely moonlit night. Later when I talked to the old story telling negro mammy she said, “Law, Honey, Miz Proctor don’t want them dancing, drinking card playing folks in her house. Thas why she appear that way.”
As the party go under way, my brother and I soon saw there would be no music lessons so we slipped out and left. Figuring we didn’t know if we’d like taking music lessons from those folks or not because we knew Mrs. Proctor well and she was a saintly old lady. After her husband died and she wasn’t able to get around much, we used to deliver groceries and ice in the summer to her. She was so good to us. Our folks heard those people were such good music teachers is why they started us to take lessons there. The folks found another teacher after that.
In telling my mother of the mirage I saw that night she said my imaginations had run away with me.
Mrs. Proctor was so nice to tell us good stories. One time she told us of a mule her husband had. She said every day at eleven o’clock that mule stopped for dinner and would not move until he was unhitched and fed. She said he’d lay down if you whipped him to make him go. She explained it to us. He had been an army mule for years. Of course, as children, we listened with ears wide open and believed everything even to the old negro mammy’s fantastic tales or like the old army mule. If taps were sounded he’d stop dead in his tracks. He was just doing the way he had been trained for years.
Then the day came when the folks came to look the house and place over. The grist mill and saw mill equipment had all been sold and moved some days before and now they had come to inspect things in and around the homestead. Mama had everything in perfect shape for she was a wonderful housekeeper. I remember following them from room to room with some what of a heavy heart. When they began to look a little quizzically at some things I began to feel like the little boy in the story I had read in one of my Sunday School papers. It went thus:

When the stylish ladies began pointing out crayola and pencil marks and scratches on the wallpaper, with tear dimmed eyes he said, “Lady, I wouldn’t leave one of those for you could I but take them with me. You see they each have a meaning and a place in our heart. Why, this one, pointing to a funny shaped picture, belongs to little Sue who now sleeps where the mocking birds sing. That one belongs to brother John who went to seek his fortune and hasn’t returned yet. I could go on down the line, lady, but I see your thoughts are someplace else,: as he turned away and fled from the scene.

I too, did the same. I fled from the scene to the back of the old red barn which was always my retreat and there I sat down and had my last good cry on the old home place. It was there that mama found me an hour later, wondering where I had gone. “Don’t cry,” she said comfortingly, “this move, I feel will be best for all of us.” Thus we walked, with our arms around each other, back to the house that we would be leaving. With her big apron, I noticed as we walked along she dabbed a tear or two away that rolled down her fair cheeks.
There were memories, too, she was leaving behind. Her little first babe, a boy, lay buried not too far away as was her parents. There had been happy times there, the Thanksgiving dinners that made the table groan to hold the food piled upon it and the wonderful Christmas times, the lovely tree and beautiful ornaments. I had seen my folks sit until late in the night making ornaments to make the tree more beautiful. How our hearts were gladdened on those Christmas morning with the nice things our folks had provided for us. We most generally got what we asked for and if we didn’t it was explained in a nice way why. Something just as nice or better was there in its place.
Old Alice, charlotte and Leah came with tears in their eyes saying they had heard the news. Neighbors, wonderful neighbors came from all over, some for miles around. A lot of them had dealt at our store and had brought corn to be made for their winters meal to our mill and cord wood to be made into blocks at our sawmill for fuel. There were good neighbors we’d never before seen, each telling us how they hated to have us move. The sitting room and the parlor were full. They visited until late in the night. When that day came and everything was ready to be moved out and put in a box car for the journey to our new home, the neighbors were there again with wagons and teams.
When the next morning dawned bright and early, I had one more ride over my favorite haunts. When I returned mama had milk and sandwiches for us while the last load was being loaded out. Then mama, my two sisters, and I went carefully over each bare room, looking here and there through the four bedrooms, upstairs, the parlor and sitting room, big dining room and large kitchen. Each room looked even bigger than ever as my eyes opened wide to take in so much space. I missed Boots, my kitten, on jaunts like this. He was always at my heels but he had been put in a box and stored safely in the boxcar, as had our dog and favorite milk cow. The chickens, geese, ducks, turkeys and guineas, (a blue and white spotted bird like chicken that mama liked to raise) were all sold to the folks who bought the place. As we carefully took this in, we girls’ bedroom on the last round, here we all laughed when we thought of the cold winter night when there was a fire going in the stove in our bedroom. In getting ready for bed we got to laughing and having a lot of fun when I accidently backed against the draft at about the middle or near the top of the stove. I let out a war whoop that brought mama and papa on the run. I wore the brand of that draft for some time to come. It was funny now, but not then.
We walked slowly back down the stairs. We were ready to leave. The last load had gone and my father was going with the boxcar. The horse was hitched to the buggy and my pony still saddled were waiting for our twenty-five mile ride to another county, Princess Anne. We walked once more around the house, under the big cherry tree and old apple tree and around the porch that went nearly around the house and looked in the windows, especially the one on the south end where I, as a child, had lead my pony upon the low end of the porch and around to the south end and when I heard mama coming, thinking she would get after me for having him on the porch, turned him around the wrong way and in doing so the pony backed up and broke the window out. Mama really came a running then. Well, I caught it and good from both mama and papa. Then we walked around to the back and there was the well and its bucket. The bucket still hung there that each night in summer we washed our feet in before going to bed. If we forgot to pull the water up early in the day so the mid-day sun would warm it a bit before night fall, we had to use the cold water just out of the well. I can feel my feet yet and how they felt after putting them in that cold water just before going to bed.