smoke and loudly blowing their whistles, a sight and sound that never failed to frighten me. A small train, the Doodlebug, carried passengers from town to town, stopping at all of them as it made its way toward Kansas City and back each day. Many residents of the small towns did not own an automobile but easily were able
to travel to all the small towns in the area on the Doodlebug.
A three story brick building that sat on the east side of the park was the school where all twelve grades were located. Many school and community events were held in the gymnasium, which was attached to the school. It was there that I began my formal education in the First Grade.
Churches played an important part in the lives of small town residents, and mine had two - a Methodist Church on the north end of town and a Catholic Church on the south end, the one to which my family belonged. On Thanksgiving all the parishioners of the Catholic Church enjoyed a turkey dinner cooked and served in the church basement by the women of the parish. Hosted in the church basement at the same time as the dinner was a bazaar where many items made by parishioners were for sale, along with all kinds of delicious baked goods. In the evening following entertainment provided by local talent, a light meal of ground turkey sandwiches plus pie or cake was served. No one in the parish cooked Thanksgiving dinner at home when they could enjoy the camaraderie of fellow parishioners and the good food produced by their joint efforts.
When I was four years old, I occasionally was allowed to walk uptown during the day to the Post Office where my father was Postmaster and which was just a few blocks away. My father always made me feel he was glad to see me and would sit me on a stool he kept under a counter for just such visits. In a drawer near the stool he kept some coloring books and
crayons that were for me to use to occupy my time while my father continued his duties. When it came time to go home, we would walk hand in hand as we strolled the few blocks
toward our house. I felt very special having him all to myself during our walk home.
On one trip to the Post Office to show my father my new pinafore, after he gave me his usual hug, his face suddenly had a surprised look on it. He discovered I wasn’t wearing panties and my bare bottom was quite evident because the back of the pinafore was open.
“Marcie, where are your panties? Your little bottom is bare. Did your mother see you go out of the house like this?” My father tried to pull the back of my pinafore together.
“She saw me go out, but she was busy. I thought I had everything on right.” In my excitement to get on my way to show him my new outfit, I had forgotten to put on panties.
“We can’t have you walking around like this. Did you walk past the men who usually sit whittling out in front of the store across the street?”
“I did, but they didn’t say anything.” I thought back to my jaunt past where those men sat.
None of them had even looked up and seemed to be busy with their sticks and knives when I passed.
“I’m sure they noticed this little bare bottom, but we aren’t going to let them have a second look. Come with me and we’ll see what we can use to cover you.”
He very patiently took me into a back room, laid me down on a table and made some make-shift panties with a rag, which he pinned on me with a clothespin. “There, you are all covered. I want you to walk home a different way so you won’t be walking past those fellows again.” He thought they probably had seen my bare bottom and did not want them to see me in my makeshift underwear. I did as he said and walked home another way, all the while tugging on the rag that wanted to fall down my legs.
When I finally made it home and changed from the rag to panties, I spent the afternoon playing with my little sister, Barbara, who was two years younger than I, keeping an eye out for my father who would soon be coming home. I liked to run and meet him and walk the last part with my hand securely tucked in his.
My life to this point was carefree, surrounded by loving parents who met my every need, and a little sister for companionship. When I was five years old, my mother told me we were going to be getting a new baby. She rubbed her abdomen and said the baby was inside her and would be coming out soon. I was totally confused by that information because I knew nothing
about how babies arrived. I kept a close eye on my mother after that announcement, expecting
her to somehow open her stomach and let the baby out. Then one day she told me she was leaving for the hospital and would be back with the baby in a few days. I then assumed babies must be sold at the hospital and she was going to go buy one. I wondered why it would take several days, but I never asked nor was I ever told how people got babies. Whatever way my mother got her baby, I thought she made a very good choice when she picked out my baby brother, whom we named Joey. Now we were a happy family of five.
When it came time for me to enter first grade, I was apprehensive about leaving my sister and new baby brother to venture into unfamiliar surroundings. However, my mother walked to school with me the first day and helped me find the desk with my name on it. Sitting in the freshly cleaned room with the colorful bulletin boards and seeing Marcie Edwards on my
name tag, I was feeling comfortable by the time my mother left. Gradually I made friends with several girls and began to enjoy all the new experiences I was having, which made the year pass quickly.
The following summer, right before I was to begin second grade, my family moved to a small farm two miles outside of the town where I was born. The house had no electricity, and the plaster was falling off the walls, but it appeared to have potential with some work, which my parents began immediately. My mother mixed flour and water to make paste, soaked rags in the paste to which an insecticide was added to rid the house of bedbugs that we found joining us in our beds the first night in the house. The walls were wallpapered in cheery patterns, and soon the home was clean and comfortable, although a bathroom was never added in the four years we lived on the farm.
Water was brought into the house by a small hand pump that pumped water from a cistern which sat outside near the house and caught rain water from the roof. Our drinking water was brought inside in a bucket from a well. There was an outside toilet set out away from the house, and inside was always a catalog used for looking at and other things.
Our baths were taken in a large metal tub behind a coal-burning stove in the living room with water that had been heated in pans on the stove. I, being the oldest, got my bath first with the other two having to bathe after me in the same water, which meant that Joey’s water was usually cool and cloudy. During the summer we would take a pan of warm water to the outside toilet and bathe individually. Our neighbors down the road had a more modern method
of bathing, at least in the summer, and they allowed us kids to occasionally use their “modern
facility.” It consisted of a bucket of water with a lid in which holes had been punched. This bucket was placed on a high shelf in a little shed that stood in the yard. Water that had been heated on a stove was poured into the bucket. It was anchored in such a way that, after our bodies were lathered with soap, when a rope that was attached to it was pulled, the bucket would tip upside down causing the water to pour out the holes in the lid –a shower was created. What a luxury it was to stand under that clean, warm water as it cascaded down over a soapy body. It didn’t last long, but it successfully did the task for which it was intended.
Since there was no electricity, kerosene lamps were used for light. We didn’t mind; it was cozy sitting around the cook stove in the kitchen or the coal burner in the living room with the flame from the lamps casting dancing shadows on the walls and ceilings.
Above the stove in the living room was an open register where heat entered the upstairs bedrooms. When the coal in the stove below burned down near morning, it became quite chilly upstairs. My sister and I would snuggle together as closely as we could under the heavy quilt our mother had made the winter before when we had been homebound by snow and cold weather.
A few months after moving to the farm, electricity was brought down our road and into the house. What an exciting moment it was when the lights came on for the first time! I