Mia, aka WebbieGirl

There was a Sears Catalog For Toilet Paper

Old Fordson with 6' High Iron Back Wheels

Bessie King (Mia's grandma) and her sister Faye feeding the chickens.

Logan School in Bloomington

On a farm the animals come first. You take care of them before you take of yourself. Grandma and I were raising some baby turkeys – we had about 25 of them. We put them in a brooder house. One night a bad wind storm came up and blew the brooder house over. Baby turkeys were everywhere.

Grandma and I braved that storm and went out and gathered them up, placing them in her apron. They were wet and cold so we took them in the house. Grandma lit the oven in the kitchen until it was warm and then we wrapped them up in cloth napkins and put them in the warm oven for a few minutes. Soon they were chirping away and we didn’t lose one.

One time a bad storm came up in the middle of the night. I was sleeping upstairs.  The wind was blowing and it was hailing. It didn’t wake me, but it did wake grandad and he took me down to the cellar.  Seven windows in the house were broken out that night.

As I was growing older, grandad would let me drive the tractor. It was an old Fordson with 6′ high iron back wheels. It was so loud you could hear it a mile away. There were times I would ride the hayrack and was that ever a bumpy ride!

During the time I was on the farm, other grandkids would come and stay a while. Bessie King spent days there and so did Evelyn King. Russell and Cecil Carter did too.

Grandad had a 1926 Ford truck with a flat bed and he let me drive it around the country roads. One time I took all the grandkids for a ride. They were setting on the flat bed and one of the kids yelled at me to stop the truck. I turned my head to see who yelled and I ran the truck in the ditch.  Well, grandad had been watching us from the house and saw it happen, and here he came on the old Fordson tractor.  Hooked up the chain and pulled us out of the ditch.  Each kid was blaming the other… we had a lot of fun with that old truck.

Another thing we had a lot of fun doing was chasing eachother up the windmill. It was a tall one, about 80 feet tall, but the water from the well was not very tasty. Cistern water was the best. It was rain water.

Going to school at Logan as an adventure. There were 9 students and 1 teacher. Her name was Mable Brown. She would ring the old cow bell when it was time for recess or lunch. Everyone brought their lunch in a pail or paper sack. Of course the out house was behind the school and it was a “two-holer.” There was  Sears catalog for toilet paper.

At recess we would take walks down the road or play games… like drop the stick, tag or just chase eachother. After Mable left teaching they brought in a new teacher. Her name was Faye King… my first cousin. I thought “What a deal, I won’t have to read or write.” But it didn’t work that way. She made me buckle down and do it anyway.

I took aim at Thunders head with tears streaming down my cheeks

George Hill, Sr. (Grandad to George from this post, and Grandad to Bessie King, who is my Grandma) standing in front of the farm in early 1900.

Ida Jane Hill - aka 'snake killer' in this post, holding my Grandma Bessie.

Most of my young life was growing up on my grandparents farm, because my parents were very poor and it was 1929 – the great depression.

I was born in 1923 and was 7 years old when my parents took me to live with my grandparents.  I loved my grandparents so it was no problem living with them. Grandad enrolled me in the one room school which was 3 miles from the farm.

While living on the farm I had chores to do like gathering eggs, feeding the chickens, hoeing the garden and bringing in the cows for milking.  I adjusted well to the farm life and enjoyed it very much. There was always things to do around the farm.

It didn’t take me long to find out there were snakes everywhere. Grandma was always killing snakes in her garden – mostly rattle snakes. I remember one time walking in the pasture to get the cows and I stepped on two snakes fighting. I didn’t stop to see what kind they were, but ran to the house and yelled for grandma. She came running with a hoe and killed them both. She wasn’t afraid of anything!

Grandad had a big dog whose name was Thunder. He was a Collie.  Grandad would send Thunder and I out to the pasture to dig up cactus that grew wild. I would take a wooden 2-wheel cart with us to put the cactus in. When we took them home grandad would burn them. We would spend hours out in the pasture playing.

The flies were very bad one year and they had layed eggs in the ears of Thunder and they got infected and there was no cure for it. Grandad decided we would have to put him down because he was suffering so much. Grandad got his shotgun and we marched off to the pasture to do it.  Grandad handed me the gun. I took aim at Thunders head with tears streaming down my cheeks and couldn’t do it. I handed the gun back to grandad and he lifted the gun and fired. We buried Thunder out in the pasture and placed a big stone on his grave.

This post is part 1 of several letters from George Hill, Jr. ~To be continued.