When I was about seven, a great disturbance came into our home. Two of my uncles had been drafted. I am speaking of World War I. My aunt was still working at the ranch, but my mother became very restless because it was getting close to the time for school to start. She kept saying, "Henry, we have to move closer to town. We have two children that must go to school. It's our responsibility to see that they get a good start." Dad would say, "Oh, they are real young, they do not need to start school right now, they have been doing fine. Mother would still insist ws had to go to school. Dad was working very hard since he was short of help. Although he had all the farm hands he needed, the milking and the dairy work was hard for him. I don't remember the move, but one day my mother just moved into town. We were still a long way from school, but we were able to walk to school. Mother said Dad would be along as soon as he could get somebody to manage the ranch, then he would be with us.
I remember that when the weather got cold, all the children would come to school with their miottens, caps and galoshes, and the teacher would have a fire in the pot bellied stove. We would take off our wraps and sit around the stove to get our feet warm and then put our shoes back on.I thought this teacher was the most wonderful person in the world. On a cold day, she would make vegetable soup for us. We didn't watch her make it, but when we opened our lunch buckets filled with cold food she would give us all a cup or bowl of this delicious soup. Much later I found out that this was Campbell"s soup. To my amazement it had little letters of the alphabet in it. I was sure she made each little letter. I wondered how whe could possibly make them so small. I used to try to see what she spelled in my bowl of soup.
Oner day I was allowed to bring my little sister Fern to school as a special treat. I was supposed to tell her all the rules of the school and what she had to do. She was pretty good for a while. When she got restless she went over to the step ladder, which was also our coat rack. We put our galoshes on the lower steps and our jackets and coats on the next steps and our caps as high as we could reach. So little Fern played with these wraps for a while and entertained herself with them. Then she got restless and wasn't getting any attentionso she called out and we all turned around and she was at the very top of the ladder saying, "My hat is at the highest." The teacher had to rescue her and i was disgraced for my little sister causing such a disturbance. Quite a few of us would walk to school together. My older brother was the oldest of the group and he usually took pretty good care of us. On the way we picked up a boy named Teddy and he and my brother used to quarrel as they were always in competition with one another. One day Teddy said, "My father is smarter than your father. He went to grade school and then he went to Missionary school, and he is smarter than your dad." Sp my brother said, "No my dad is smarter. He went to missionary school, and then he went to reform school." At that time we didn't know what reform school was so we had to find out later that Teddy's dad wasn't smarter. One day Doug came home without me, and my mother was very worried and said, "Whatever happened to Luzene?" He answered, "I couldn't bring her with me because she's having a fight with Teddy." "A fight?" "Yes, she's having a fight with Teddy." My mother said, "Why in the world didn't you stay and help her?" "Mother, she didn't need any herlp, you should see Teddy, he has a bloddy nose and everything."
On one of these same long walks home from school, one day Douglas called me to secrecy and said, "I have something I want to show you." "What in the world is it you have?" "Well, this little tiny thing here is a bullet." "Well a bullet belongs in a gun, doesn't it?" "No, the boys told me if you hit it with a rock it will go off. So when we were quite a ways from home, will you watch me hit it with a rock?" I wqould do just about anything for my brother, so I agreed to watch. We found a large flat rock to lay the bullet on, then he hit it with the other rock. I don't think the bullet penetrated his arm, it only grazed it, but the blood shot out. I don't know how we managed to bandage his arm and get home but my mother didn't find out about it. We'll never know, but to this day I think my brother must still be carrying the scar from that bullet.
