My Sister, Leone (Happy Birthday!)

Today I am thinking about my sister, Leone Elaine (Gregory) Beeson-Carlson. For the life of me, I can’t think of the very first memory of her. I think it might be the time Dad & Mom took us all to Haigler and stopped in at Bill Wall’s place and Daddy bought us all a soda. Then we all got in the car and went to St. Francis where Daddy watched us play in the park while Mamma went into the Court House to take care of some business and probably pick up some books from the library that was in that building at the time. “Us kids” liked to walk around the top of the big fountain in the center of the park and run from tree to tree playing follow the leader or hide and seek. Then we would run over to the swings and merry-go-round and play there for awhile. I remember Leone being there that day. She was probably a big girl of 5 or 6 at the time.

In our family, there were three of us girls and Dickie (until Eunice, the “tag along” joined us in December 1951). Leone was the second child, born on our Grandma Mae Crabtree’s 57^th birthday – January, 27, 1943. She was born at Mrs. Freeden’s house in St. Francis. Since we lived 20 miles from town, Mamma went to her house until it was time for them to call Dr. Walz to make the delivery. All of us were born there except Eunice, who was born in the St. Francis Hospital.

The first picture I have of Leone was taken with Mamma and Leah beside the south side of the house where we all grew up. She was cute and chubby with lots of naturally curly white blonde hair and probably about a year old. Leah is 4 years old and has red hair which Mamma carefully curled and combed. Of course you can’t tell from the picture that the trim around the window screens was dark green and Leah’s overalls were red corduroy. But I remember the windows and Mamma told me about the red overalls.

Her sweet disposition and happy personality showed up very early and she loved music from the very start. She and Eunice were the two of us who loved practicing for piano lessons without constant reminders from our Mamma. As a result, she grew up to play the organ and piano with great accomplishment, which is something she enjoys to this day.

Leone wasn’t really the kind of person who should have grown up on a farm. She hated bugs, but when Leah fed them to her, she dutifully ate them with no complaint. She hated chickens and anything else that would flutter. She would much rather be inside reading or playing the piano than helping with the cattle or field work.

One evening after supper, following a nice day when the windows had been left open to catch the fresh air and breeze, Leone went up to her room to go to bed. We heard an explosion of screams and a pounding of feet running down the stairs as she burst out the door into the living room. She was incoherent, but was able to let Dad know that there was something terrible in her room. We all ran up the stairs to rid the culprit. We could find nothing!! But she wouldn’t go back into her room and she insisted that there was a big black bird in her room. The next day, Leah, Dickie and I discovered a BAT hanging in her closet and chased it out the open window using brooms to guide it in the right direction.

One time, Dickie and I ran across a big bull snake in the yard near the chicken house, so being the brave kids that we were, we took the hoe and killed it by chopping off its head. Then we conspired against Leone… We thought it would scare her if she found a snake in her room. We took it up and placed it on the floor so the head was unseen under the edge of the bedspread, then curved the visible part so it looked like it was just resting there. At suppertime, Dick and I kept looking at each other in anticipation of the outbreak of screams we would hear when the snake was discovered. Since it wasn’t Leone’s turn to do dishes, she headed up to her room to read as soon as supper was over. Dick and I stood at the bottom of the stairs waiting and waiting for the outburst. All of a sudden the snake came flying down the stairs and it was us that was startled into screams of fright!! She wasn’t scared of old dead snakes at all!! So the joke was on us!!

Leah, Leone and I spent hours and hours playing with paper dolls. Most of them were books of dolls we had bought at the Duckwalls’s store in Wray or the Ben Franklin store in St. Francis, but since there were never enough clothes in those books, we cut beautiful dresses and suits for our families from the “Monkey Wards” catalog. (as our daddy called the Montgomery Wards catalog). We made rooms and towns and houses all over the upstairs of that big 5 bedroom farmhouse, even out in the upstairs hallway that had a bookcase under the west window and along the banister and up the attic steps. Sometimes, we would even take them out on the east porch and play.

Just north of the east porch at the corner of the house, daddy made us a ‘sandbox’ where we played with sticks and stones and the few little cars we had. There were lilac bushes protecting us on the north and the wall of the house and the north porch on the west where fragrant yellow rose bushes grew. The north porch was closed in with a vine that grew up the wire “wall” and made it dark and cool in the summertime.

One Christmas, Leah and Leone got doll buggies for Christmas and I got a wonderful little blue metal high chair. Daddy made doll beds from orange crates and Mamma made sheets and blankets and pillows for our doll family. We had plenty of homemade doll dresses and booties. For awhile, the only doll I remember is Leah’s doll named Diane. She was a composition doll with red hair. And probably another Christmas, we all three got “rubber dollies” that had bottles which we could fill with water and our dollies would wet their diapers. Then, when I was in the hospital having my appendix out, Mamma and Leah brought me a new dolly that I named “Pinkie” because she was dressed in a beautiful pink dress and bonnet. Her head was composition and her arms and legs were a soft new material they called magic skin. One day, Dickie and I were playing “Hospital”, which we did often after my stay in the hospital. Dickie was the doctor and decided “Pinkie” needed an operation. He proceeded to “take out her appendix”. My poor dollie didn’t have a crier after that and we had to get the help of our mother to “sew her up”.

In thinking about it, now, I wonder if Leone ever felt jealousy… Leah had her own Diane doll and I had Pinkie. We had the rubber dollies and maybe others, but I don’t ever remember her having one of her own. Just knowing what I know about Leone, I bet she never felt a pang of jealousy. Her disposition was that of a person who never showed anger or discontent. She was always such a pleasure to play with and be around.

Even though, she wasn’t ‘the farmer” type, she did do her chores (except gathering eggs and feeding the chickens). When we were old enough to help, we each milked a couple of cows and bucket fed the calves and squirted milk at the many cats that lived in our barn. However, I don’t remember her ever driving the tractors or doing the field work. I think she stayed in the house with Mamma and helped fix meals and other things around the house and garden. I don’t remember her liking to ride the horses, but she did love our dogs, Penny, Nipper and Gilda, a white German Shepherd.

I don’t remember us ever fighting or not getting along. We were each other’s best friends all through our lives – still are. We were each other’s playmates and confidants. We knew each other well.

We loved it when our daddy or uncles would play “dare base”, “Annie, Annie Over” the chickenhouse or “pom-pom-pull-away” as we call the game where we chose sides and had a jail and tried to get across the playing field to the “other side” without being caught and put in “jail”.

We all liked to climb!! Even Leone. We climbed up on top of the Grainery, the barn and even the house. We loved seeing the world “from on high.” We had a rope swing in the haymow in our big barn that hung from the track where the hay fork used to swing. By the time we can remember, the hay was no longer stacked inside the barn, so this was a perfect play room for us. We hauled all kinds of things up that straight up ladder so we could create houses with rooms and furniture. Leone and I spent hours playing house up there during the summer when it was warm. When people with kids would visit, it was one of the favorite places to play.

We all had to take turns “doing dishes” and “cleaning the bathroom”. Two of us had to do dishes and one would clean the bathroom and we were supposed to keep track of it ourselves!! Of course, even though I said before that I don’t remember us fighting, this was a point of contention. I remember one time when it was Leone and I who were doing the dishes – she was washing and I was rinsing and drying and Leah was finished cleaning the bathroom, so came to the kitchen for a drink of water. Of course, she had to fill her glass at the sink where Leone was washing the dishes, then after drinking as much from the glass as she wanted, Leah put the partially filled glass in the dishpan. Leone became very upset and started yelling at Mamma….. “Mamma!!!, Leah spit in the dishwater!!!” Of course, none of us could understand what the problem was, but now looking back on that incident, I know it was because, with Leone, things had to be done in the proper way. You just didn’t do “unthoughtful” things. Leone also arranged her food on her plate so nothing touched each other and had to have a clean fork or spoon for separate food. She would eat one thing first, then the next. She never mixed her food together. If we had dessert, she had to have a clean plate for her cake when the rest of us were happy to eat from the plate our dinner had been served on. When it was her turn to clean the bathroom, you KNEW there were no shortcuts taken. All the surfaces were wiped down, even if they LOOKED clean. Her room was always neat and clean and her bed made. When we all learned to sew, her seams were straight and corners sharp and perfect. She liked to do things “right.”

Leone was the only one of us who wore glasses when we were kids. She hated them!! She also hated her curly hair because it was always flying about and hard to control. She always felt like she was “different” and she WAS. She was beautiful and smart and talented. She was a musician, an artist and a “thinker.” The rest of us were tomboys and “farmers”… She was made for Opera houses and concerts and music and art studios and travel to far away places.

…To Be Continued

(This story about Leone cannot be told without including the rest of us, because we always did things together, so it becomes a story about “The Five of Us.” Which might become a sequel to Mamma’s autobiography, “From Where I Rock.”)

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You summed up your sister's life and personality very well. I really enjoyed reading it. Owney enjoyed giving you girls special names. I can't remember Leah's but Leone's was Magnolia - if I remember right. You were Brigette, I think. You are all very special in your own way. One memory comes to mind when Leone was in her high chair and learning to talk one of her first words she learned was "more." She loved food and when her mouth was still full she would call for "more." That is organization - no wasted time.

Love, Floy

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I was trying to think of my first memory of Leone. I was the youngest, and probably the silliest one of all – and she was the “regal” one, just like you said.

I don’t remember her small childhood because I came along later. I do remember those paper dolls and her artistic abilities were incredible!! She didn’t need monkey ward catalogs to make those paper doll clothes. She drew them and colored them herself. I remember her drawing faces of people and they were beautiful! When I played with the paper dolls, I always liked the clothes that she made, better than the ones that came in the book.

My memories of her became more vivid with she was in the academy and I will never forget a music competition she was in where she played a Bach Fugue on the organ. Part of that piece was a pedal solo and she brought the whole house down!!! It was incredible!!!

I also remember that she had the most beautiful face that I ever saw! I thought she should have been a movie star.

Then when she was being courted by Norman Beeson, we had one of those old wooden wall phone with the crank on the side. All of the neighbors could hear the ring and could listen in on everyone’s conversations. One evening when we were all gathered at the supper table, Norm called her. Dick became the “teaser” that night. He would swallow a big gulp of air and belch loudly, close to the phone. We were all dying with laughter, even Mamma and Daddy!!! Being the proper person that she was, she was mortified!!!

Leone was the first of us to have a baby and that would be Kevin and shortly after, Kelly came along. I got to baby-sit at their house and watch “Ben Casey” on the black and white television. We didn’t have one at home. That was a real treat to go take care of these babies.

After two more children, she was busy raising her family, but still did her art as a hobby. I have two of her paintings in my house and a charcoal drawing of my face that she drew from my senior picture. It hangs in my office and every single person who comes in here thinks that it is such an incredible drawing. She captured the twinkle in my eyes on a charcoal!! As talented as she is with her pencil and paint brush, she only wanted to do it as a hobby, so I treasure the ones that I have, because there probably won’t be any others.

Now, I am the lucky one because I am still making special memories with her since we both love music and play together at church. We made a CD together a few years ago. Anyway, Sherri, I know this is leading up to her birthday and I hope this is the best one yet for her. She is the quiet, smart and talented one!! She wants no glory, even though she deserves it. Pretty much like our Mamma.

Baby Sister, Eunice