CHAPTER 17
O
BOY CONTINUED (Dunsmuir)
More letters...
8/15/50 (after an inspection trip to
Dunsmuir)...The former minister says they always have at least 5‑6 feet
of snow in the winter and it sounds as though we'll be Eskimos. (That's what the boys think‑‑I've
read them the Eskimo Twins and a couple of other Eskimo stories and they are
training David and Billy to be dogs to
pull their sledges and go around explaining to everybody about how they'll make an igloo. My favorite story of the camping trip: Timmy and Charley were arguing over something
Timmy had and Charley wanted. Charley
kept saying "Please give it to me"
Finally Timmy said:"Well, I'll see" (adding after a thoughtful
pause) "...that means NO." It
was such a direct reflection on his ma
that I've been chortling ever since...Now it's bedtime for the boys‑‑they
(I mean the top 3) are in the bathtub washing off some of the mud. One of Charley's thoughtful remarks on our
camping trip was, "What are you going to do when you want to punish
us? There's no ROOM you can send us
to..." We found ways.
9/10/50...after the van left we
climbed in the car and drove over to Motherdee's. She had a nice light supper ready. By 5:30 p.m. we were rolling with Charley and
Timmy in the back of the car. We stopped to say goodbye to the Newhalls...had
a hot trip even at night..arrived in Dunsmuir about 12:30 A.M. and found we
couldn't break into our new home. All
the time the key sat under the mailbox but we ended up raiding the basement for
an old pair of springs and an old rug on which Dink slept. I slept in the front seat of the car while
the boys slept in back. They were good
little sports as we were not prepared to make ourselves comfortable and none of
us got much sleep. All we could see of
the house was an enormous pile of rubbish outside and I feared the worst.
Next morning after a hasty clean‑up trip to a gas station we got
hold of the key and even though we were weary and breakfast‑less, we were
astonished when we got inside the house.
A committee of church people had made it glitter‑‑downstairs
repapered and painted, etc. I am now
typing in Dink's study which is bigger
than we remembered and very cosy. The
boys felt at home at once and were soon busily engaged in collecting acorns
(they wanted to know where the pigs were), knocking the ripe plums off the two
plum trees (also the non‑ripe ones) and making countless tours of
inspection.
The moving van arrived Wednesday and
Motherdee arrived Thursday afternoon with David and Billy and Mary Jane.
As always she had managed everything wonderfully. David and Billy fitted in quickly...we
discovered the city park for picnic suppers on Friday‑‑it is on the
9 p.m. ...Bob suggested we all go to
the Young People's Outing, scrambling the children, bathing suits, hot dogs,
diapers, etc. into the car. The outing
was in two stages. First a nice place to
swim in a creek and then a rough ten mile ride on a mountainous dirt road to
where a campfire was planned. By the
time we got to the second stage thunder and lightning were threatening, and by
the time we had half eaten we were pretty well rained out. Such a mess!
But the kids were intrigued and cooperative while we repacked the
car. Bob left for a meeting as soon as
we got home, and I got the boys into pajamas and toasted the left‑over
hot dog buns which they ate with apple butter and milk. Then we read another chapter of "The
Dutch Twins" and now they are all tucked in. They are still not quite adjusted to
"trespasses"‑‑adding a new cousin to the prayers seems
quite routine compared to changing the Lord's Prayer. They ask every night if we can't do it the
old way, but are beginning to "help mama say it the new way" as Timmy
suggested tonight. Billy called the thunder "funder" all the way
home. Charley started to school last
week...I still have to walk him to school (a mile round trip and two trips in
the morning make it scarcely worthwhile).
The walk this morning was especially beautiful‑‑Mt. Shasta
had a fine new coat of snow...
10/8/50 Dearest Molly...you know the
only thing that haunts me about your being a step‑mother is how mad I get
at my own children and how horrible they can act. I mean if I were their stepmother I might get
to feeling very subjective and as though I were a fiend. I love them very tenderly when they are
asleep, sick or on picnics (where they act like perfect little Indians); my
affection for them when I am dressing them and at mealtime reaches a pretty low
ebb. Especially at mealtime. I forgot to say that I love them a whole lot
when I'm reading to them. When we take
them all on a tedious trip, I alternate between moods of egregious pride and
black despair. Right at the moment,
Charley, Tim and Billy are at Sunday School and David is taking a nap preparatory
to going to the nursery while I take Charley and Tim to church‑‑so
I am feeling very fond of them. But at
breakfast this morning I felt like leaving all the porridge on the table and
going off into the woods with the three bears.
10/8/83 Took a heavenly trip halfway up
10/21/50 Recent incident:
Charley (bashing Timmy) Bash...
Timmy: (sitting on Billy) Owwwww...
Billy: Owwwww...
David: Wahhahahhhhh
Robert: (assuming the slightly
beaten‑but‑patient expression that has furrowed his brow in recent
months) Now, is everybody even?
All right, what shall we do now?...
10/27/50 ..rain and more rain. The boys get sort of house‑ crazy, but
they're a lot of fun...David still doesn't walk, but stands alone and so nearly
walks that we expect that development momentarily. He eats most everything we do, but I am going
more slowly than I did with Billy. He is
very efficient at feeding himself, but is so vigorous in heaving his bowl when
he's through that we are wearing out even the heavy plastic ones.
Billy is still his funny engaging
self. He rushes into his daddy and says,
"DADDY, you know what I went into?"; Daddy: What? Billy: "I went into baffroom..." He is still far from perfect but he IS
getting the idea.
A gal who borrowed some cups for a
scout function donated a couple of left‑over tunafish sandwiches to
us. We had them for supper and they were
quite fishy. Timmy took one large bite
and said, "Tastes just like bait..."
Another Timmy‑quote. I had "sneaked" a lime life‑saver,
having found the package in the middle of cleaning up the house. I was sucking it very discreetly‑‑and
I have learned through many years of practice (I thought) to be very discreet
at hidden eating. Timmy sauntered into
the room and put his head up in the air like a puppy scenting the wind; his
eyes got that bright look and he said to me, "Do you smell what I
smell?" When I said,
"What?" He took another sniff
and said..."Lifesavers..." Had to be seen to see how funny he was.
10/29/50 Pulpit exchange at Fall
River Mills. Took all the boys, leaving
Dunsmuir in torrential rain, stopping by the side of the road to see a cute
family of pigs and huddling around the wood stove in the small church. A long day including a venison dinner, visit with Nancy Gordon on the way home. We got back in time for Bob to conduct his 7
p.m. evening service and I fed the children cornflakes and milk and washed all
the piled up diapers and hung them in the basement.
ll/l/50 Practically verbatim stories:
Timmy
(while playing with the Montessori toy pretending it was a train): And then the train carries buckets and
buckets of water down to the ocean; and then the train goes up to where the
Eskimos live and melts all the snow and it goes into a big black pipe (at this
point I asked which, the train or the snow) no the water that all the snow melted into, and then it goes
down in the big black pipe, down deep, deep under the ground where all the
angleworms are sleeping and the dead people are, until it comes to a big sack
of coal and then it gets its coal car all loaded up.
I said, "Tell me a story
Timmy..."
Timmy:
One day there was a little fox that was running away. He was planning to do that and then somebody
came and caught the fox, and then along came a boy, and a man with a
newspaper. And then they ate some ice cream cones out of the
paper, and then here came a BIG ice‑cream cone that the fox had to eat,
and then he had a popsicle and oh it was so good and then he went and found two
old jack‑o‑lanterns that somebody threw away and then pop ‑‑
he didn't know what that pop was but he heard a sound that was popping, like
this, and it might be a lion or a tiger coming to fight, but he could fight
better than any animal in the world even lions and elephants, and he could
fight them till they were dead. And then
he could hardly be out of the grass because he was so scratched and
bitten. And then it went pop again and
he knew it was a lion or a tiger so he peeped behind a palm tree and saw two
tigers coming to fight the fox's children and then he was going to snatch their children‑‑that
wasn't nice, was it‑‑that's the end of the story.
(Mama asks well what happened?
Did he eat them?) NO. (firmly) that's the end of the story."
Charley: Once there was a little
boy only he was a great, great big boy, almost a man. And along came a big crocodile and he had a
big spear, and he lifted up his spear and the crocodile sank down into the
bottom of the sea and he was dead. And
he went and told everybody about it and said "I saved you from the
crocodile", and they changed him from a giant into this beautiful king,
and the boys were princes and the man turned them into soldiers and they
magicked a beautiful palace and there was...and the palace was made of pure
gold. No it wasn't pure gold because it
was too strong, it was made of stiff gold, no I mean metal. Oh it was pretty. Then the giant was so glad he had killed the
crocodile he magicked the spear into
more spears and gave the spears to everybody.
That's the end of the story.
Timmy: Once there was a normous
king that lived in a palace and they found a man and magicked him into a
soldier. He had a normous rifle so he
shot everybody down except his own king. Once he found 600 soldiers who were marching
around trying to catch everybody. So he
said,"march with me" so they marched with him to his palace. They came to the doorway and everybody put up
his hand and said "RAY"...and they ran as fast as they could and they
banged into the swords and they were killed because they were wicked
people. And that's the end of the story.
12/5/50 Our first big snowfall December 2nd ‑‑
have had several power failures that eliminated our cooking, heat and lights.
When Dink explained to Timmy's worried question the first time it happened, he
said "No, we can't turn on the lights, because the company turned them
off..." Timmy brooded for a while
and then, after we had gotten out of context, started asking " Well where
IS the company..." We finally came to...he thought company was
always what stays for supper.
12/17/50 Charley and Timmy have "pieces" for
the Sunday School program and will also sing a duet. The pieces are "I shoveled snow for all
the neighbors; earned Christmas money for my labors" (that's Charley's‑‑part
of a group piece) and Timmy says "I hope your Christmas will be glad; the
nicest one you ever had..."
They love to turn out all the
lights, except the creche, and sing carols.
Re David and Silent Night. I
didn't mean to imply he sings the whole thing, but he sings the first line
using the syllable "Ho‑o‑o‑o" in excellent tune,
and in the middle of the program Friday night when one little girl got up to
sing it, David chimed right in louder and much more on key than she was. As far as I know it is his only song. He jabbers a great deal and his walk is
really comical. He has held on to things
so long that he still walks sidewise most of the time‑‑completed a
large circle in the kitchen that way this morning‑‑I think it may
spring from his delight in playing Ring a Round a Rosy with the boys.
1/7/51 One of the big hits of Christmas was Tim and
Charley's pocket knives found in their stockings. They promptly fell to work peeling the apples
(also from their stockings) with such gusto that nothing else was noticed for a
full half hour and we had apple peelings everywhere. The wagon we thought would be the hit of the
day proved to be of minor interest (hills too steep maybe). The trains Alice & Luther sent kept the
boys delighted. I have put them away for now but they keep asking for
them. Motherdee sent them handsome plaid
shirts...David watched his big brothers and chimed in with most everything they
did and finally resorted to his two favorite things (l) pulling the paperbound
books out of the bookcase and (2) settling down at "his" drawer with
all his nice old familiar toys‑‑happy as a clam all day. More tonsillitis‑‑poor little
Billy, he has the worst time and the
doctor recommends that we get all their tonsils out in the spring. Tim asked this morning (with only 3 feet of
snow on the ground piled in many places over his head), "When will winter
come?"
2/4/51 Billy goes around the house
singing "Where have you been all the day Billy Boy, Billy Boy; Where have you been all the day Charley and
Billy..." Charley has been having
"A Bomb and Bomb drills" at school...he alternates between shyness
and show‑off in the face of the ruff‑and‑tuff school
competition. But he retains his sweet,
generous ways. Timmy is more articulate
and extroverted. I feel sympathetic for
Charley's incoherence remembering how frustrating it was to me as a child. Charley jumps into the middle of a story in a
burst of excitement and leaves out several vital links to sustain his audience
whereas Timmy organizes his material intuitively. David trots about busily‑‑he can
be very stubborn but in the main is a sweet, fat, jolly lunp.
4/1/51 ...Nighttime prayers...Timmy
got into the habit of adding,
"Bless we for the rain,"
"Bless we for Grandma," or Bobby or whoever was uppermost in
his mind. So Charley added very
fervently "and ESPECIALLY
4/12/51...The triple
tonsillectomy...Alice White kept David...the rest of us reached the
5/6/51 Reading aloud about Jesus I mentioned that
Joseph died‑‑Charley said "Which Joseph" and I said
"You know, Jesus' father."
Charley was thoughtful a moment and said, "Why do grandmas stay
alive better than grandpas?"
Charley and Timmy brought me a jagged bouquet of iris they had picked
for Mother's Day and Timmy spilled it all over creation‑‑it's the
thought that counts!
5/20/51 Climbed out of bed this morning wondering
whether Timmy was sick or not (slight fever yesterday); decided he was well
enought to make it to Sunday School. By
the time I'd breakfasted the family and had half their hair combed (feeling
thankful for the l000th time for the shirts motherdee got them for Easter) it
was time for Sunday School. One of the
mothers had asked me to see that her Jimmie's birthday offering was taken care
of, so I went over and tried to see the right person. The right superintendent was late and Jimmie
hadn't gotten there either so I ran home again to discover David had gotten
into the cupboard and mixed up all the offering envelopes. Sorted envelopes. Decided to see if Jimmie had arrived yet;
went back to Sunday School. En‑route
found Mike, a 5 year old who should have been in the Sunday School
already. Asked him why he wasn't. He said he didn't know anyone to sit with so
I said "Oh, c'mon, you can sit with our boys..." Sunday school had already begun, but I
thought I saw a vacant chair next to Charley.
I knew Mike knew Charley so I
told him to go in there and sit next to him.
Meanwhile somebody else took the chair so Mike tried to take Charley's
chair. Charley firmly pushed him
off. Mike pushed back. Everybody rose for a hymn. I didn't see Jimmie. Tried to get the boy at the end of the row to
move back. Decided to go home and let
them fight it out feeling I had precipitated a completely unnecessary row. Went home.
David had pulled my bureau scarf off and was helping himself generously
to cologne and talcum. Cleaned up
bureau. Doorbell rang. Rushed downstairs. Had forgotten a Sunday
School class was due to meet in the livingroom.
Sent the girl back to be sure the teacher was with them. Dashed most conspicuous disorder out of
livingroom into playroom. Rushed
upstairs to stop David playing with toilet.
Rushed downstairs to answer doorbell.
The Sunday School class arrived with
Mr. Gray as teacher (he is the chairman of our official board, school
principal, etc. and I wished I had cleaned up better). Upstairs again. David finally discovered putting on Charley's
tennis shoes having taken off his own.
Also soiled. Cleaned up
David. Assembled toys for the
nursery. Billy didn't want to go to the
nursery but wanted to go to church.
Decided to let him. Explained
nursery to new mother. Herded Billy,
Charley and Timmy into church during prelude.
Well church went pretty well, except that they got restless during the
sermon and I wanted to beat them just while Bob was preaching on
"Christian Persuasion" and how you shouldn't have to knock people on
the head and MAKE them be Christians.
Life is less turbulent part of the time . It was a beautiful day and after dinner I
left Bob with the kids and went to call on two new mothers (I mean they have
sons less than 2 weeks old). Then I took
our four out to a lovely birthday party at Brown's Motel (later Cave Springs). The party was outdoors where they have a
fountain of mineral spring water, genuine "Shasta Water" which makes
good fizzy lemonade. Cereal and milk
supper, Glinda of Oz, prayers, drinks and bed.
It's even quiet now.