Continuing Education

Oak Grove School was a one-room school four miles east of Grandin, Missouri in Carter County. Polly started to school at Oak Grove in August, 1925. In 1929 her younger sister Ruth started first grade. Ruth was too little to walk that far so Polly carried her on her back to and from school. Polly talks about going to school.

I had to walk through the woods and I was so afraid of meeting a mad dog!

Several of the big kids rode horses to school and they were tied to trees at the edge of the school yard. Sometimes a horse carried several kids to school at the same time.The 8th grade boys would carry a younger child on his back while they all did hop-along races. How we all laughed!




This book was in Oak Grove School and loved by all of us.*

We moved to Grandin for my 7th grade. I hated school there because I was so homesick for the little one-room school. My teacher let me go visit my old school every Friday because I made perfect grades the other four days.The next year I was 8th grade valedictorian, as big an honor as college valedictorian is now because so few even finished grade school.

I stopped going to school during the 11th grade to stay home and help run the sawmill. However, I never stopped continuing my education. I studied for the GED in my mid forties and made the highest score in my class.



7th and 8th grades at Grandin, 1929 (Polly front row far right.)

It's never too late to finish high school! 

* Students at Oak Grove School: (as recalled by Polly in 1996)

• Herbert Joplin
• Elbert, Edgar and Milton Smelser
• Joe, Valeria and Stanley Szymarek
• Pauline Smelser
• Rosie and Eleanor Gargack
• Dexter and George Griffin
• Elmer, Jo, Burl and Jake Marley
• Elizabeth, Bob and Georgia Wynn
• Charlie and James Crozier
• Jim, Georgia and Eva Baggett
• Polly and Ruth Baggett
• Mildred and Lee Henson
• George Crowell
• Alma and Delma Dildine
• Robert and Clyde Hixon
• Johnny and Harding Sears
• Altha Mae Hixon

  

Spring has sprung in the Ozarks



It's time to watch where you step.

There was one thing that Granddaddy could never teach me. Over and over he showed me how to harness the mules, but I was so afraid of them I could never do it. I always made sure they were fastened out if I went inside the barn.

He had taught me to always go slowly and be whistling or trying to sing when I went into the barn so Blackie would have time to hide. Blackie was the big black snake that had been there for many years.

Blackie had earned his right to live in the barn. The story was told about the time everyone gathered around to watch Blackie fighting with another snake. They cheered him on as he was fighting. Often he would stop fighting, go to the fence row and eat a little plant that grew there and go back to fight some more. Blackie fought until he killed his opponent, a big copperhead!

Blackie did bite someone. I often heard that funny story. The door near the top of the barn was open so the loft could be filled with hay. Granddaddy, barefooted, was in the loft catching the hay with a pitch fork as it was being pitched up to him from the wagon below.

Suddenly Granddaddy jumped out of the loft scared half to death. He was sure Blackie had bitten him on the big toe. How everyone laughed when he couldn't find any broken skin. During the thirteen years I lived there, I never saw Blackie.

Years later, however, I enjoyed a snake. I really liked Old Pete, the big black snake that had probably always lived near my little cabin in Missouri. I would often see him watching me. One time I kept somebig boys from killing him.

At another place I lived, we watched a black snake kill a copperhead. My little boy had run out from behind the cellar to tell us about it. "Mom, I peed on him and then he saved my life!"


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The black snake
is harmless to humans.



According to the National Wildlife Federation, a least 20% of the U.S. population suffers some degree of snake fear. Getting to know the kinds, natural history and distribution of Missouri's snakes can help you overcome your fear of them and appreciate there role in nature.

http://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/outdoor-recreation/nature-viewing/amphibians-and-reptiles/snakes

http://extension.missouri.edu/p/G9450#id

And to learn more about barns

http://thinkoutsidethebarn.com/

By the light of the fireplace

At far right Granddaddy is proud of his two sons and their families

Many years ago the older folks were called respectfully and lovingly, Uncle, Aunt, Mam, Sir or Grandfather. Arthur Willhite was my children’s grandfather so we call called him Granddaddy. He was my friend. He called me “Gal”. I could write a book just about him.

Without radios, televisions and few telephones, stories were told for entertainment. Reading material was scarce and not many people could read or write, anyway. Now I tell the stories that I listened to as we sat by the light of the fireplace working with our hands.

A toy one of the men whittled out for the children

Sometimes we were shelling beans or corn. Sometimes men were whittling, women rocked babies or cut quilt pieces. Most women could even knit by the dim light. If food was cooking on coals of fire, no one could spit tobacco juice in that direction as they usually would.

The whittlers were making something useful, wooden spoons, axe handles or pegs with which to set out plants. Women could whittle too. We all made braces to nail to trees for the first phone line. Grooves had to be made around them for glass insulators to screw onto. We even made a corn sheller and a cotton gin.

Ma’am, (my mother-in-law), was quite a scavenger. She did most of the going places and brought home strange things. Where she got the cotton seeds, I don’t know, but she and I had the only small patch I ever saw in that country. Then she came back with a real boom handle to make rollers for the cotton gin.

I am not an artist and it seems impossible for me to accurately describe that little old homemade cotton gin. The rollers had to turn together to let the fiber through but not the cotton seeds. It had a crank on one end of each roller turned by someone on each side as they fed the boles through. It made the worst screeching noise you ever heard. It was an awful looking contraption but was so much faster than picking out the seeds by hand.

A drawing of the Eli Whitney cotton gin

The cotton had to be made into batts by brushing them between cards (two wire brushes). When fitted smoothly between the quilt top and lining, they made soft fluffy, easily-quilted warm cover for beds.

I can’t remember how the corn sheller worked, but it too, was made of rough scraps of old lumber.  Many, many years later I saw it sold at an auction in Kentucky.

Whittled by Polly 1984

Hoots was a jolly fellow

The old time department store in Grandin was owned by Mr. and Mrs. B.

Early one morning Hoots went to buy some tobacco.

He greeted the white head bent over the desk. “Hello” he said.
“How’s yer hammer hangin’ this mornin’?”



Oh, Good Heavens! Instead of Mr. B it was the little old lady! Hoots was glad he was the only customer.

Embarrassed as he was, the little old lady didn’t know what that meant, anyway.



Clarence "Hoots" Willhite and Polly

The Little Black River Fire Truck

The Little Black River Fire Department was having a turkey shoot fundraiser. I was shooting the only long barrel shotgun. Not many people had ever seen one. After I won a package of meat, someone asked Marvin “Who is that old woman?”

Everyone that knew the truth laughed when Marvin answered, “Hell, I don’t know!”

"Hoots" was Marvin Willhite's father

PS: Hoots and Polly are my parents and Marvin is my older brother.

Ozark Dog Malarkey

My neighbor’s dog Little Blackie came to see me. He was crying and in his way was plainly whimpering, whining malarkey, patting my hand then looking back at me begging me to follow him.

Plainly he was saying “Come on! Something is WRONG!”

I hurried after him. His beloved old lady wasn’t sleeping just inside the window where he could see her. I found her sleeping in her bed, not just napping on the couch by the window.

When we saw her we both danced and danced a joyful Ozark jig!

My eleven year old beagle, Julie, had taught me ‘dog’ malarkey. I knew the sounds of ‘joy, follow me, help’ and ‘feed me.’

The beagle told me a bad snake had made her sick. She knew I was crying tears as I doctored her by nearly drowning her with melted grease.

When she was better, we went snake hunting with my shotgun and ‘got em!’

Even my pet deer understood my malarkey, and I knew hers. Once a couple of hunters came out of the woods when I called ‘come home, dear! Come home, deer!”

Julie

Now, do you understand when I say the little black dog ‘whimpered’?  --Polly

Fido with us at our home on Hwy. 21

PS: I'm sure many of you currently have or have had a dog that becomes your best friend.  The dog I remember most while I was growing up was Fido. He was always by our side. I never knew who Fido really belonged to. I think he belonged to my Uncle Dempsey's family but Fido was always at our house or where ever we were.