Memories - Alice Gregory

I will make a sort of outline of those early years of my life.

1. The homestead where Ethel and I were born. Those baby pictures of me were at that place. I remember very little there. I got in trouble--seemed serious--because I messed up my curls crawling through the curtain that was hung up as a room partition. I also remember running down the Long, long row of giant onions.
   
   
2. The Fancher Place. Also known as the Jake Keller place. (They bought it from us)
   
   My first memory was riding around the bend east of the house. The road curved around the hill and stayed next to the hill. There was a bank on the right side of the road. As the road went along to the north it was between the bank and a pond then turned west. It was low ground for maybe an 8th of a mile or less. The road joined a road that came down a hill from the north where the two draws met. The house was on a hill between the two draws. Auntie Fancher was packing glasses into a box. She smiled at us. We thought that she was the nicest lady there was. I guess that we moved in as they moved out. I don't remember any of the moving work. I am assuming we had moved or were just moving in that day. That was about 1919. Lloyd was born that October.
   
   I started school at Prairie Rose School. District #34. Teacher --Vada Sapp. Ethel started the next year. Some teachers were Nettie Gillispie, Della Sims, Irma Combs, Ethel Smith, Mabel Merklin, Emma Freehling.
   
   Lloyd started school in 1925 and Floy was born in St. Francis that September. Mabel Merklin was the teacher.
   
   There were literary programs, box suppers once a year for excitement. Summer times we hardly went anyplace. Only to Parks with the eggs and butter. Ethel and I stopped off at Aunt Georgia's to play with the cousins. Fun times.
   
   Sundays--family dinners at Bartlett grandparents. Sometimes at our house. Sunday School in the school house. Sometimes when our daddy was busy in the field, Ethel and I would walk.
   
   We got Measles during the last part of February my 8th grade year. We couldn't move to our new home on the regular “moving day” which was March 1. The Jake Kellers couldn't move to our place until we got out of it. (They had brought the measles to us--exposed us--so they weren't faulting us very loud). The Joe Osters were waiting to move into the place where Kellers were moving from. I was the first to get the measles and felt great so our mamma let me go to school. Teacher Emma said it was OK. But one kid made a remark about it. That made me mad!!! I just went home that night and never went back. We were getting ready to move anyhow. Well we got moved.
   
   Things that I could tell about!
   
   
   --the big Rumly tractor
   --Shelling corn
   --Corn shucking
   --the haymow
   --Butte's barn and pen
   --the supply tank
   --the gas lights and iron and stove
   --Hired men in summers and corn shuckers in winter.
   --Butchering.
   --Horse with snake bite.
   --Neighbors: Sheeders, Armstrongs, Ritcheys, Freemyers, MacDonalds,
   
   East school--Prairie View. Where our cousins went to school. Harveys, Crabtrees, Staffords, Roundtrees, Burrs, Haineses, Hollimons.
   
   West School--Prairie Bell. Boyds, Walls, Zuege's, Woodwards.
   
   
3. Powell Place. Moved there in March. New school. New teacher, Mildred Boatsman. I didn't go take the county exams for 8th grade. Repeated the next year--taacher--Helen Smith Owens and Melvin Bannister. Went to DJA--Stayed with Aunt Sarepta at Marshall Aunt and Uncle. Rode bus. Second semester stayed at Shakespeare's --helped her for board and room and walked to school. 10-grade school. Mr Leinbaum was teacher for 9th and 10th grades. The 7th and 8th grade teacher taught English. Stayed home the next school year. Neighbors: Richers, Wilkenings, Owens, Forsythes, Shellers, Kelners.
   
   
4. Merritt place I drove team and wagon with one load of household things. Must have been about 12 or 15 miles. Scary--especially going down a big hill. We had 4 rooms and shanty on back. 2 rooms down and two up. Ethel and Lloyd were in school. Floy started later. Neighbors--Meineckes, Jake Zweygardts, Hurlocks, Arrants, Burnhams, Larsons.
   
5. High School in St. Francis --started riding with The Arrants family, Grace, Troy, and ???. Later rode with Hurlocks for a couple months. Then I moved into basement of Gramma Bartlett’s house. Uncle Jim and Aunt Ruth lived upstairs in 2 rooms. That was my sophomore year.
   
   The next year--junior year, Loell Jones stayed with me and Mary Ross moved in later that year.
   
   Senior year we moved into an apartment above the Quigley restaurant. Then I went to Denver with Aunt Sarepta and Uncle Dave and took some household jobs. I worked for Ellisons to take my friend Martha Meinecke’s place during her vacation; Spensers for 3 weeks while the regular maid had measles. Then to help and companion for Mrs DeRose until August when my parents wrote or called Aunt Sarepta saying that they were a teacher short and that I should come home. So I did, and taught the Klinzmann school for 2 years. Then taught the Mills school one year and the Sam Rath school one year.
   
   I got married that spring and we moved onto the Ritchey place up northeast of Fred Zuege’s. Rich worked for Marvin Mills and Chris Ferguson. I taught that year at the Klinzmann school again. Leah was born on Feb.29. That spring, we moved to the Rose place to rent for one year. Then we moved to Bertha Zuege’s place and rented from her. We bought it later. The other four children were born while we lived there. We lived on that place for 40 years.
   
   Once the kids got a little older, I went to McCook summer school and taught Haigler 1,2 grades first semester and then Kindergarten, second semester. Then summer schools and one full year until I graduated with a BA from Greeley. And 2 more summers for Masters in Libray Media. Some of this took place after move to Lamar and Granada.
   
   I need to take a little more to list the main things that took place along that time. and get the dates right. This is so haphazard.

-- Submitted by Alice (Crabtree) Gregory