All in one place

(Notes in blue written by Carol) 

Oh the treasures I found when I opened the old book. Lots of ozark malarkey!

My scrapbook is so old it falls to pieces as I try to add more memories. Just scraps of paper I’ve collected over the last few years. I’ve moved twice since I last got the old book out to add more pictures, newspaper clippings, letters, post cards and notes to myself. Some make me sad, others make me glad, but I just can’t part with them. I guess a scrapbook is the right place for them – all in one place.  

Polly Roark, January 27, 1990

One such scrap of paper was noted as “Mom (Lottie) talking…”

I remember our first telephone. It was wonderful! There was a family by the name of Stacy that used to play music and sing. Everyone would take down their receiver and listen to them play music and sing at least one night a week. These were the old type of telephones that hung on the wall.

I also remember the first moving picture I ever saw. It was a small moving picture machine and the music came from a little Victor phonograph. This was at our little Upper Ten-Mile School between Hunter and Elsinore (Missouri). It was about 1908.

That was too much for my little brother Bill. He danced a jig all over the place! I thought that was the best part of the show! Lottie Baggett

Another such scrap of paper was a letter from KFVS TELEVISION, Cape Girardeau, Missouri…

Dear Polly:

From the three of us to the one of you…. You are really something else. Would that we had more viewers like that throughout the Channel 12 coverage area, we could probably inflate our salaries and be in the 90% income bracket. In all seriousness, thank you very much for your kind letter in regard to your TV watching habits.

We have your letter pinned up on the wall in my office next to the one from the little old lady in Metropolis who hates all three of us. We figure that yours more than balances out hers and makes all this early morning nonsense worthwhile.

Again, thanks for the letter. If you are ever in Cape stop in and say “hello”. The coffee is on us.

Very truly yours, Pat Gordon, March 19, 1971

The last BIG fight!

Thank goodness that my seven children had few fights. The two oldest boys only had two fights. The other two fighters (Carol and Sidney) often had more than a dozen a day.

The last one happened when they were almost teenagers. 

I had brought baby Paul home from the babysitter after a bad day at the beauty shop. When he started crying, they grabbed the little fellow out of the crib, each one pulling a little leg. As usual, Carol hit the first lick. I grabbed the baby and told the others to stand back while I made them fight until they were both bloody. I was tired of their fighting.

Every time they were ready to stop I made them go at it again. Gayle begged me to let them stop. Again and again I would say they were not bloody yet. She thought I had lost my mind, I guess. She said that I would have to take them to the hospital.

Finally, Sidney bloodied Carol’s nose. She hooked him behind the knees with her foot and when he was floored flat on his back she grabbed his feet and stood over him. Her blood was dripping onto his face. They were both crying.

“O.K.,” I said. If they ever fought again after that, I never knew it.  -- Polly

Carol says "We never did. We knew the next time Sidney would be bigger and stronger so I gave in that day. He actually earned the heavyweight title during that fight!"

Mrs. Addie's Bath

Some of my Kentucky memories fail to be forgotten back here in Missouri where I was born. When I tell the story about Mrs. Addie’s bath people can’t believe me.

The old folks (my mother- and father-in-law) had spent the night visiting and had slept in a bed where others had slept. She had caught the itch. (That’s what doctors call scabies.) I explained to Mrs. Addie that she would have to take baths and sterilize her clothing and bedding.

I carried water from up on the hill, heated it in big black kettle over the fireplace and poured it into a washtub by the fire. Beside it were clean clothes and soap. Out in the cold kitchen with my baby, I waited and waited.

Beginning to get cold I cracked the door and asked if she was about through. “Well, come on in Child,” she said. I went in and she was yet in the tub, but with her old dirty under clothes!

I explained that she should have put the dirty clothes into the kettle to boil and kill the germs. She cried, “But I’ve not been naked since the day I was born!”

I was dumbfounded. I wrapped her in her dirty bed sheet and started over. I even had to wash and scald the tub to have a new start and she thought I was goofy.

Those were the days before antibiotics. I was glad her homemade soap killed germs – or perhaps it was the boiling water.