A long switch and cheating at spelling. Our class room had three grades in one room. This resulted in hearing oral teaching three times. You heard it in the fourth grade. You heard it all over again in the fifth grade and again in the sixth. This sets up the thing that happened in a spelling exercise that was going on in front of the class room. One grade was line up in front of the room and the teacher was giving spelling test in turn to each student. The teacher was named Jo Wasson. She was single and pretty and I loved her and had plans to marry her when I grew up. She kept close discipline when she taught. To help her in the task of discipline she had a long switch which was green and pliable. As she was giving out the words for the students to spell my cousin J. D. Watts was setting on the front row. He decided to help the slower students by mouthing the letters for the students. Jo caught him doing this and gave him a warning to stop doing it. He tried to be more subtle and continued. She caught him a second time and gave him a stronger warning. He keep it up and the next time she caught him she said nothing but turn to him with the long switch in her hand and administered a cut across the neck and the top of his shoulder with the full force of her power. He stopped mouthing words after that. But he made another error in judgment.  He went home and told his daddy what the teacher did to him. For this he received a very hard thrashing from his father.  There was a time when parents expected their children to obey their teachers.

Best friend and fighting siblings. Cranfield McGovern was born December 23, 1936. I was born October 26, 1936 so I was just about two months older than he. We were in the same grade and were great friends. We sometimes got into scuffles but quickly made up. We sometimes would walk with our arms around each other’s neck like little girls might do. My brother Leroy and my sister Wanda would fight with his brother Bruce and his sister Debora. They were older than Cranfield and me. This fighting was often after school on the way home. If I missed a fight he would tell me and I would tell him about the fight he missed. The fact that our brothers and sisters fought did not affect our friendship. One Friday, Cranfield woke up in the middle of the night and asked his older brother for a drink of water. His brother went to get the water and the bucket was empty so his brother went to the spring and got a bucket of water to give him a drink. He went back to sleep and woke up in Heaven. That was on February 9, 1946. He had not been sick so it was not known what caused his death. That was the first time that death touched me up close and personally. Sixty-seven years later I can still remember seeing his freckled face lying in his coffin. 

School stories

            Love and passing notes. When I was in my first years in school I fell in love with a most beautiful girl. I really do no remember if this was in the first, second or third grades. I do know it was the real deal. Her name was Jerri Aday. We had a wonderful letter writing romance that lasted until her parents moved away from our community. The sum total of those deep love words consisted of the words, “I love you. Do you love me?” I have no recollection of any other words that were written but we wrote those words over and over.

Sewed up in a bed sheet. My grandma Taylor told my Uncle Floyd to do some chore,

When he did not do the chore she got a switch and was going to give him a good thrashing. He was about 16 years at the time and believed that he was too old to be whipped. He took the switch away from grandma and broke it up. She walked away. That night when Uncle Floyd went to sleep my grandma came into the bedroom and took the sheet he was laying on and folded it over and sewed him up into the sheet. She then took the new switch she had secured and proceeded to administer the punishment that she had been thwarted from doing.

Dividing the catch of the day at the local cemetery. Two men after a successful day of fishing were returning home and as they got to the local cemetery where the road forked they stopped to divide their catch. Because they were tired they went into the cemetery and sat on some large tombstones. As they walked into the cemetery one of the men dropped a couple of the fish by the gate as he entered. Two brothers were returning from a date and were walking by the cemetery. One was a cripple who walked with crutches. They stopped by the gate when they heard the voices. They could not make out the image of the speakers so they stood still. They heard the voice saying you, “You take this one and I’ll take this one.” I’ll take this one and you take that one.” The brother decided that God and Satan were dividing up the dead. The brothers keep listening until one of the fishermen remembered the two fish he had dropped near the gate. He then said, “You can have the two over there by the gate. The crippled brother said, “He may get you but he want get me and the crippled brother beat his brother home.

Going through a cemetery at night. A man out late one night decided to take a short cut through the local cemetery. Unbeknownst to him there had been a new grave dug in the cemetery and he fell into the grave. He tried to extract himself but the grave being deep and rather sandy soil he finally decided that he would wait until the next day and maybe someone would hear his call for help. He moved to one side and got as comfortable as possible, then went to sleep. It happened that another man decided to take the same short cut. He too fell into the grave and started trying to get out. This woke up the first man who had been asleep. The man who had been asleep said, “You can’t get out of here”, but the second man did.

Foot prints in the snow. One evening when my grandma Taylor was at home with her smaller children, grandpa was gone off on one of his many adventures, someone shot a gun and the bullet came into the house. Grandma grabbed a gun and went outside but the person had disappeared. There was snow on the ground so she followed his foot prints. They let to the school house where a revival meeting was in progress. She went into the service and interrupted the service and told the people that someone had shot into her house where she and her children were and she ask that they point out who had just entered in to the building. Not wanting to see a man shot in their church service they very logically refused to tell who had done such a cowardly thing.