The Peterson Place

Janell,  you and Shirley were both born while we lived on the Yost place.  And it is the one on 51 by the AT&T tower.  The rest of us were born while home was the Peterson place.  I don't remember Sue or Mick being born but I was six when Bob came along and remember Grandma Gatewood staying with us at that time.   Dad came into the bedroom and told Sue and I we had a baby brother.  I asked if we could name him Bobby or Donnie.  I went to school the next morning and told the kids I had named my baby brother.  Joyce Steen said I didn't; parents named their children.  I do remember Mick as a baby in the bassinet in the living room.  Sue and I were playing around it and tipped it over.  Dad always told about looking up from the table and seeing Mick carrying the newborn Bob from the living room.  

I started school at Jefferson School with Mrs. Young as my teacher.  Or was it Miss?  She had taught Mother at Jefferson school.   The Smith's picked me and someone else up every morning.  One winter morning while I waited in the snow, beside the water pump.  I stuck my tongue on the pump handle.  I do not know why.  I heard the car coming up the hill and pulled away real fast.  I can still remember how it hurt.   Here's what I remember as my first day of school.  Mother drove me and waited beside the car while I walked up to that heavy door and went inside.  It may not have been my first day.  Mother said she probably had her wash in the car with Sue and Mick an would have been pregnant with Bob.

The windmill and the pump in front of the house provided the water for the house.  Mother or Dad would carry it into the house in a white enamel pail.  We had a matching dipper to drink from.  Yes we all drank from the same dipper.  The house had no running water and no bathroom.  There was an outhouse and a galvanized tub was brought in from the back porch for baths in the kitchen.

I remember  riding in a horse drawn wagon while Dad picked corn.  One side was higher than te other and he bounced the ears off that side.  I don't know if I got it by ears of corn.  I vaguely remember a lot of people butchering a pig.  I definitely remember the fatty"cracklings" Mother heated to get the cans of lard.  Then they were givie to Grandma Anderson for making lye soap.

One day Dad brought home two snowy white puppies, one for me and one for Suzie.  Apparently we could only keep one and one day mine was gone.  No explanation.  I think we named that dog Snowball.    I don't know if it was the one that bit Sue.  

I  got hit above the eye with a glass bottle.  Paul Dee was holding the bottle and told me to duck he was going to throw the bottle.  I didn't duck and the next thing I remember was laying on the kitchen table with wet cloths on my head.  

 

I remember both, Franty and Virgil visiting us in uniform.  It seemed to me they just appeared and stayed for a day or two and left again.  I knew they came from the war.  Grandma and Grandpa Gatewood would come to visit after they had been in Phoenix bringing grapefruit and oranges.   Grandpa had asthma and would burn a green powder called Asthmador.  We liked to "smoke" with Grandpa.   Julia, Harley, Delaine and Richard Gould would drive from Colorado for a visit.  Richard was always sick with asthma.   I  was digging in the dirt one time when Uncle Harley came by and asked if I was digging my way to China.  He told me I could.  I worked at it for a couple of days and then one night it rained and my very small hole to China filled with water and I lost interest.

Sometime after we left there, Eddie Peterson built himself a little house along the creek and tried to make a pond by building or having built a dam.  The beavers didn't like his dam and tore it down.   The Ethel and Eddie Peterson lived in Omaha.  Eddie needed a retreat.

There was a pond there for a while.    We no longer lived there when Dad tried to teach me to ice skate on Eddie's pond.  He could ice skate quite well and said if I could roller skate there was no reason why I couldn't ice skate.  Well I couldn't.