The Ailmore Place in Nickerson

 Until I reached second grade we lived to the best of my knowledge, on the Stroh place.  That is where my memories of life began.  I do not know where Donna and Mary came into being, but I remember momma laying in bed with baby Dorothy beside her.  I hated her!  She made momma stay in bed and I could not be held by momma because of her.  She cried and momma cuddled her.  My cuddling days were over at that point.  When harvest came momma even took her in the truck with her to haul the grain to the elevator.  She left us home with Josephine who must have been about 10 or 11 at the time.  I am sure someone older actually ran herd over all of us, but I do not remember because the seventy some years of life that followed fairly well erased my memories of that time!

I do recall the move to the Ailmore place.  It was on the hayrack, straight down the road, across the highway pulled by the two big horses that were my dad's pride and joy.  " A matched pair, Chris!  Look at that!  Gotta have a matched pair.  Won't work any other way."  Of course, all a matched pair meant to me was that I was going to wear the same coat to school that I wore last year and the first 2 months of school there would be no shoes on my feet, or on Jakes either.  Josephine was big so she had to have shoes.

The house was 2 bedrooms, a front room and dining room combined.  The front bedroom was big enough for all of us.  Josephine, Donna, Mary and myself slept in one bed and Jake made a pallet on the floor.  Dorothy was still nursing so she slept  with mom and dad.  There was a light that hung in the front room and one in the kitchen.  Since electric lights were still a novelty to my dad we used kerosene lamps and did not mess with that new fangled stuff.

I am sure I have writtten about the bullfrog incident somewhere and also about Jake blowing on the gas tank and spraying gas in Donna's eyes.  Across the road lived the Barthold sisters.  They were old maid schoolteachers.  We used to hide in their forest and spy on them drinking tea in the flower garden.  While we were sure that we were well hidden, momma did give us a licking because they told on us.  We swore they were lying, but we got a licking anyway!

It was during this time that Nickerson had a cyclone. Dad had gone to Hutchinson for one of his drinking trips. John Britan knew this and knew we were in for bad weather and came by to check on us. While he was there the storm hit. I remember the lights went out and we only had one lamp burning. I think that a cyclone rotates one direction, and a tornado goes in the other. Not sure what happened, but I do recall it being very scary. Maybe a cyclone is a straight wind.  One thing is for sure, when you are a little kid and the wind is blowing so hard the all the buildings in sight are destroyed and lumber is flying past the window, you get a quick lesson in how to pray and mean it!  In due time the storm "blew itself out" and we went outside.  

The haystack was gone.  The pump house was gone.  The tree that stood in the corner of the yard and served as  cemetary marker for the small animals that passed in our care was still there, standing sentinel over the tiny bodies.  The old milk cow stood beside the water tank and looked very forlorn.  Chickens and ducks wandered around where the chicken house used to be.  About the only thing that survived with little or no damage was the house.

And then dad drove into the yard in his rattle trap old car. Even in his inebreated state he was amazed at the damage.  He thanked Mr. Britan for being there in his absence.  My dad worked as a hired hand for Mr. Britan for many years, so he knew dad pretty well and accepted that dad had a drink occasionally.  Mostly he drank "hot toddies" for his colds.  Not a social drinker, just medicine.  Of course, in hind sight it appears that my dad had a drinking problem.  The upshot was that one day he quit drinking completely and with that he quit having colds necessitating his need for the toddies.  As a little kid we learned to adjust.

We left the Ailmore place a couple years later and moved to 709 Strong Street which would be our home for the rest of my grade school and into high school.  I drove past the Ailmore place several years ago.  It is gone, of course.  Roy Keatings farm is still there and the Rumble house was starting to fall into Bull Creek.  The Barthold house still stands, but the Schultz property is bare.  

Ah, but in my mind I still wade in Bull Creek and seine for crawdads.  I still sing "Buttons and Bows"  for Mr. Rumble.    Mrs. Rumble still gives me a cookie.

Who says you can't go home again?

Peace!

The sound of silence is killing me.

https://youtu.be/bGLHadex0B0

I wake up most nights just after midnight.  It is then that I do my best thinking.  Last night was no different.  I have nothing in particular to worry about, so I just lay there and think and inevitably end up back in Nickerson and I can hear a lonesome train whistle coming from the track that ran about 3 blocks from the house.  Mostly what I hear is silence, but the silence is broken occasionally by a coyote.  Rarely it is a wolf, but rarer still is a panther, or mountain lion drifting up from the river.  I love the river and I especially love walking the banks of a river or creek.

There is so much to see, or at least there was back when I was a pubescent girl with a vivid imagination.  Maybe it was just that back then the river and the cemetery were the 2 places I could go to escape the tedium of every day life.  Mom let me go to the cemetery with no qualms, but she worried when I walked along the creek.  Now granted Cow Creek ran past Nickerson on one side and Bull Creek on the other.  Access was restricted when those 2 flooded which they did every Spring.  The fact that the third and final escape was the Arkansas and it was always running high.  I went back to Nickerson a few years back and was surprised that nothing had been done about flood control, so they were pretty much busy building little dirt dams here and there to keep the water out of their houses.

There is just something about a quiet stream far from the city.  Little spiders skate across the surface where the water is still.  Tiny minnows gather in still places.  Baby frogs find their first water legs in pondlike places.  The abundance of flowers and mosses gives hope to a world that is still living away from the crowded city.  I am terrified of snakes, but in the wilderness they do not bother me at all.  I just back up and go a different way.  I am in their territory and that makes a world of difference.  When I find one in the goose house, it becomes my duty as superior human to kill it.  In the wilderness, I am the intruder.

Do you know what a crawdad house looks like?  If you come upon a small hole with balls of mud piled around it, that is a crawdad house.  I used to think a crawdad was a tiny lobster, but late in life I learned they were the cockroach of the creek.  I still like them.  When they are in the water they mostly travel backwards.  When Bret was 4 years old I took him fishing at the park and he caught a crawdad.  Actually the crawdad caught him because it had a grip on his hook and when he let go, he fell to the ground.  Bret was terrified of the "crab".  Jiraiya and I found one by the ditch a week or so age.  He and his daddy went back and found it and it was nearly dead, so Bret put it in the duck water.  The next morning we found its lifeless body near the duck water.  We had a funeral complete with rivers of tears for the poor little crab.

If I live to be 100 years old, I will never forget my life in Nickerson, Kansas.  I go back there sometimes.  I do not know any of the people there, but I haunt the places I used to walk.  Bull Creek was a dry creek bed last time I was there, but I still recall how it could fill the banks and overflow across the fields when the Spring rains came.  I  remember my brother catching a bull frog and putting it in my skirt with instuctions to take it to the house and find something to put it in.  I was mortified that it would bite me.  As luck had it, I opened my skirt to show it to Josephine and it leapt into the house.  She almost beat me to death before I recaptured it.  I think I told you she was mean.

I want to go back home next Spring.  I will drive 96  Highway and the State Patrol will have a man at every bridge, because the creeks all flood in the Spring.  It is just something that we can count on.  Since Kansas is flat it floods easily.  I love Colorado, and my life is here, but I think when I die, my soul will live in Kansas.

At least I hope so!

Well, hello new neighbors! Looks like fun ahead!

And so with everything we owned on a hay rack and kids on top holding it down and  the old milk cow tied behind, we embarked on a new life clear across town.  Things would change here.  I was probably in the second grade by this time.  Josephine was 13, Jake 9, so I must have been 7 years old.  Mother was now cleaning houses and dad was still farming.  Josephine was in charge of us since she was the oldest.  Her job was to keep us alive, not bleeding and to clean the house.  I am here to tell you, that girl took this seriously all except the part about keeping us uninjured.  She damn near beat us to death!  And who do you think did all that house work?  Not miss "just figured out there were boys and she was a girl"!  We were banished from the house as soon as our work was done and not allowed back in to "dirty the place up" and besides one of her boyfriends was usually there and they were "baking cookies".  Eating the cookies too as near as I could tell, because we never got any.

The floors of the house were wood planks about 5-6 inches wide.  Not like the wood floors in the rich peoples houses that mother cleaned.  These had to be swept every day and everything in the house had to be wiped down with an oiled rag since the dust blew in every day as a matter of course.  Dishes were washed by heating water in a pan and rinsed in cold water.  The pump house was out the back door and Jake and I were in charge of keeping the stock tank full of water.

But we had better things to do than hang out at home.  Mr. and Mrs. Rumble lived up the road a ways and they sat on thier porch most days in the summer.  Mr. Rumble told me he would give me a whole dime if I would learn the words to "Buttons and Bows" and sing it to them.  I worked very hard, but never quite got it done.  They were wonderful people.

Across the road from us lived the Barthold sisters.  They were spinsters and school teachers.  I never actually spoke with them.  I did like to hide in thier forest and spy on them when they were out in the yard.  Once I even seen them setting in the chairs drinking tea.  And strain my ears as I might I could not hear a word they said.  So I made up lots of conversations.  I do not remember what they were, but I am sure they were wild!

Sometimes Josephine left us unattended and that is when we got our chance at the telephone.  Ah, it was beautiful!  It hung on the wall and  had a speaker that you spoke into and an earpiece on the side that was held to your ear so you could hear the other person.  We were on party lines back then.  This meant several families were all on one circuit.  Say you called Joe Blow.  It would ring his signal which was maybe 2 shorts and a long.  Ours might have been 2 longs and a short.  The point was, you did not pick up someone else's call.  And if you wanted to place a call and picked up the phone and heard a conversation you said "Excuse me, please." and quietly replaced the receiver.  That is unless you were 9 and 7 years old and bored out of your mind.  Then you could do a couple things.  One was to cover the mouth piece and listen in n the conversation.  Or you could act like you did not know they were talking and crank the handle that called the operator.  This would cause a very loud ring in thier ears.  And you could titter and then act like you weren't there.  Ah, but technology caught these damn Bartholomew kids every time.  Then there was trouble.  First Josphine whipped us with a strap for "making it look like"  she was not doing her job of keeping us in line.  Then Mother would follow up with a licking for not listening to Josephine and upsetting the neighbors and now maybe they were going to take our phone out and what would we do when no one could call her to come to work?  Not to worry about dad giving us the punishment because I am not sure he ever knew we were there.

I do not know when dad worked, but a pile of hay appeared in the corner of the yard.  Not the back yard where the cows and horses were, but in the front yard so anyone driving past would know we had hay.  Go figure.  But this gave us a hiding place when we hid and threw rocks at cars going past and "kicking up dust"   which in turn made our work harder.  Damn people from town anyway!  By the way, back then, cars were either black or a dung looking green.  That is how I recall it anyway.  Not sure what color came next.  Think it was white.

After the Rumble house and on the way to town was Bull Creek.  Most of the time it was just a creek bed, but in the Spring, Nickerson and that whole area was prone to flooding and that little creek could  do some damage.  See, the Arkansas is on one side of town and Cow Creek cuts through and intesects with Bull Creek.  When Spring rains come they all get out of thier banks and Nickerson is surrounded by water and travel is not happening.  Or at least that is how it was back then.  But when the water subsided and there was just a small bit of water running through Jake and I could go seine and catch crawdads.  We would get a few inches in the bottom of the wash boiler and then we cleaned them.  This was accomplished by ripping the tail off, pulling the shell off and then dropping them in hot grease and frying them.  A feast for a king.  Or it was back then  Do you know what a crawdad is?  It is like a lobster, but about 4 inches long and it lives in the mud.  I bought some at  Walmarts several years back and they were horrible!

Bull frogs also lived in Bull Creek.  Not for long though because Jake and I got the idea that we would catch them and we would take them home and grow them until they were big and then we could have frog legs.  Josephine did not appreciate our vision at all.  Especially when I showed up with one in my dress tail and opened it to show her.  Damn frog made a leap right at her and then proceeded to try to hide from her.  She stood over me with a broom and every time I missed the frog she smacked me.  The frog was fast, but with a lot of prodding from Josephine, I was faster and our dream crumbled there in that little unpainted house there by Bull creek when she beat it to death in the dust by the door with a shovel.

When I come back next time I will tell you about the cyclone that finished our stay at the Ailmore place.

Still on the Ailmore place.

Just read the last post I made before I wandered off to do my craft shows.  We were on the Ailmore place and had just had our cyclone.  I have a few more memories I need to share there and then I will move on. 
I mentioned Bull Creek being right by our house.  I am going to try to figure out my directions here.  Sorry, I got confused, but if you want to look just click here and you can figure it out.  Just know that the Arkansas river runs on one side of Nickerson, Cow Creek figures in there some where on the other side and Bull Creek is a little furrow you can step across most of the time and has no water in it at all.  But it is, or was at the time, a whole different story in the Spring.  I think it is still the same because I used to make several trips down there every year and some times I like to take 96 Highway just for a change of scenery.  Starting about in Rice County the sheriffs and volunteers would be out to make sure that when cars crossed the flooded parts of the road there were no casualties.  Just one of the hazards of the area.
I recall once leaving our house and walking to check on the Shultz family, which was about 3 blocks away, and wading water all the way.  As quickly as the floods came, they receded and we were left with puddles of water in all the low places.  So we built little boats and sailed them in the puddles.  As I recall, our house was set up off the ground so the water did not get inside.  Most of the houses there were that way.  I do not recall having a pet at the time, but I sure there was an old mangy dog around some where.
Back somewhere in the far recesses of my mind I can recall my father "pulling a prank" on friend of his or at least on his wife.  Her name was Salina.  I think she was married to John Britan, the guy my dad share cropped with for many years.  All I remember is waking up and hearing them laughing and John saying "Just look at the egg my chicken laid!  I am going to take it to the newspaper."  Then they laughed some more.  "Damn, Rueben, where did you get that turkey egg?"  I do not know if anyone ever told Salina Britan that her chicken did not lay that egg, but it was a source of amusement at gatherings for a very long time as it quickly circulated through the town, and I am remembering it over 60 years later.
There are a lot of things I remember on the Ailmore place.  Some one up the road had a car and took the children to school.  They would stop at the end of our drive and let us ride with them if we were out, but if not, then we walked to school.  There was a young man about Jake's age that sometimes hung out at the house, but he preferred to hang with us girls.  Mother, Dad and Josephine would run him off the place.  I did not understand then, but now I think I do.  I thought they were just being mean because he was my "friend", but looking back, that was pretty strange.
The man right across Bull Creek on the way to town raised pigs.  Right now his name escapes me    ( Roy Keating) but some times dad would go do chores when the man left for a few days.  We always went and gathered the eggs.  That was really nice because he had a special little shed built for the eggs to be taken into, cleaned and put in crates.  Our hen house had blown away and our chickens just laid where ever they felt like laying.  Oh, but there is nothing more terrifying than reaching under one of those hens to get the egg.  I lived in mortal terror that I would be pecked.  Still afraid to do it now, so I just don't have chickens.
Jake always wanted to be a mechanic.  I recall once he wanted me to blow in the gas tank while he looked under the hood.  Then he had the bright idea to syphon the gas out of the tank and coerced Donna into sucking on the hose to get it started.  She had no idea what she was doing so she got a big mouth full of gas.  Lordy, mother liked to beat that Jake to death!  And we had to make Donna throw up and maybe there was another trip to the medical place in Hutch.
Lots of gaps in my memory back then, but remember I was very young.  Life back in those days was straight out of a John Stienbeck novel; poverty in it's purest form.  But everyone was in the same boat, the war was just over, and better days lay ahead.  I know cause we heard the adults say so and adults knew every thing!  But we were about to move again.  I had been born on one place, moved to another and was on my way to a third.  I was 7 years old and the world lay before me like an open oyster, and sorry to say, smelled about the same...a little fishy!