One day I was walking in the kitchen and banged my head. I had been in the habit of walking right under the kitchen table, but this time I banged my head! I was growing. But this small body could see things others couldn't. I asked my dad "How come the paint stops at the edge, and it's not painted underneath?" He said "Because no one can see it." But I could see it.
Grandpa Blankenburg once had come down to visit. He was standing by the front door. I walked up to him and noticed the veins on his hands were protruding slightly, and I felt of them and asked why. He and my dad just laughed and said, you just wait, and some day yours will be just like that. Well, the day has come, in fact quite some time ago.
Grandpa Blankenburg would often take the trolly from Rockville down to Ogden's Corner, then walk the better part of a mile to our house. One day I went with him up to his tobacco shed on the front Penny lot. (A tract he had bought from the Pennys, and before he sold it to my parents). There they were measuring out fertilizer, and Grandma was doing the calculations. They were bagging it as they were weighing it. The Mazon brothers were growing the tobacco on shares, and the Blankenburgs were providing all the capital. Well, on the way back, we went past a patch where Grandpa had planted wate
rmellons. One looked ripe, so he picked it, and then got out his jack knife, opened it, and plunged in into the ground a few times. I asked why. He said, to clean it. It was the first I knew you could clean a knife by dirt.
Grandpa Blankenburg would often take the trolly from Rockville down to Ogden's Corner, then walk the better part of a mile to our house. One day I went with him up to his tobacco shed on the front Penny lot. (A tract he had bought from the Pennys, and before he sold it to my parents). There they were measuring out fertilizer, and Grandma was doing the calculations. They were bagging it as they were weighing it. The Mazon brothers were growing the tobacco on shares, and the Blankenburgs were providing all the capital. Well, on the way back, we went past a patch where Grandpa had planted wate
rmellons. One looked ripe, so he picked it, and then got out his jack knife, opened it, and plunged in into the ground a few times. I asked why. He said, to clean it. It was the first I knew you could clean a knife by dirt.Before the years of school began, I had just two friends on a regular basis, Irene Worcester, and Charlie Thrall. I had an extra "kiddy car", so when Charlie came over to play, we would ride up and down the front walk (those flagstones inhabited underneath by ants). The Thralls and the Worcesters both had "running water", i.e. with inside plumbing, but we didn't. Thrall's was obtained from an artesian well atop a hill the other side of the state highway, and it ran by itself with no pumping required. Worcesters, however, was pumped by a little gasoline powered pump. Neither family had electricity yet. Thralls were close to it, but couldn't afford it. Worcesters were quite far from the state highway power line, and we were much further away.
In the springtime our road would get tremendous ruts in it, being so muddy. In the early springtime we would tap all the maple trees and my mother would use the kerosene stove to boil it all down to get maple syrup. The depression came about the time I was old enough to start school.
Time's up for now.
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