Lake Texoma fishing party, L to R, Mom, her dad, Oscar Littlefield, her niece, Maxine Tramel, holding a jar of minnows, Wes lookimg over his shoulder, and the family smart-a--, showing off.

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School’s Out
Saved By the Bell

There were only a few occasions that I would finish a grade in school, spend the summer in the same town, and start the next grade in the same school. This was one of those occasions. It was an interesting experience to start school and find familiar faces of kids whose names I already knew. I would still have a new teacher with whom I would have to deal. Could I be fortunate enough to have two good ones in a row? My second grade teacher had been a real sweetheart. I think she was one of those ladies whose “calling” was to care for kids, and truly loved teaching and had a genuine love for children, besides, or in addition to her own. I had seen her perform with grace under fire, a situation that would have had others pulling their hair out. We were closing out the school year with a program to “show off” for the parents who, hopefully, had nothing better to do in their afternoon hours. Talent can be a rare commodity among second-graders, and what there is seems to be in such an undeveloped state, it is difficult to find ways to showcase it in a class presentation. My participation was small and my contribution rather insignificant, consisting only of clacking two colored sticks together to the beat of the rhythm of a melody supplied by the piano in what was known as a “rhythm band”. 

We had a young lady in our class who was advancing nicely in her ballet career, and the teacher had asked for a demonstration for those of us who were not culturally initiated, and the girl graciously acquiesced. The teacher, having spotted actual talent with the benefit of actual training under presumed professional instruction, probably since the age of three, she decided then and there to give the girl center stage during the “band” number. I don’t remember the tune the piano was providing, but it definitely was not “Giselle” or “Swan Lake”. But if we could get away with using for costume-change intermission entertainment, a part-Indian gentleman dressed in feathers and leather, blowing up a truck-tire inner tube, by mouth, while spinning a wild-west yarn, we could do this!

It was taking too long for the Indian to tell his tale and blow up his inner tube. He didn’t say how big he intended to make it and it was already twice normal size, with a big bulge on one side, so he could have told the short version and quit at any time. You had to admire his lungs and his tenacity, but he needed to watch the clock; everyone in the audience was. Finally. He stood, bowed, and exited, stage left: just in time, too, while we had some audience left. My theory of what happened next is that the delay made the pianist a bit impatient, or late for an appointment, and upset her mental metronome, and perhaps she had not been informed the piece had been re-staged as a ballet recital. In any case, our cadence was somehow a bit quicker than the one we were used to, and we may be done in time for the ladies in the audience to listen to the rest of their “soaps” after all. She had our bouncing ballerina hopping around like a grasshopper on a griddle, nothing like the graceful audition she had done before, but as a real trouper, she persevered to the end, apologies to Tchaikovsky. The audience applauded politely, but did not insist upon an encore. The teacher paid tribute to the appreciative audience, let the performers take their bows, and closed out the event with professional aplomb. 

As a final good-bye from my second-grade teacher, she encouraged me to remember to read over the summer, and even gave me some books to add to my library. I didn’t have a library until then. One book had interesting illustrations, actual photographs in color, but a cheap process that made everything appear some shade of red, blue, or orange. I loved that little book and could visualize it as a movie, and could imagine the musical sound track as I read the book over and over again. The plot involved a brother and sister spending their vacation on Grandpa’s farm. The final illustration showed them riding into the distance on his tractor in the fading afternoon light, the perfect ending for my mental movie, as the imaginary final credits came up to an appropriate crescendo in the imaginary sound track; Gone With The Wind, The Sequel ?

It was nice to be within driving distance of the grandparents, about 340 miles, and with the improvements to the highways and automobiles since the war ended, a trip of less than a day’s drive was not the ordeal that it used to be. We intended to take advantage of being closer and would make our trips as frequently as was practical. At the end of one of these trips, Wes and I presented our case for staying a while longer, and Grandma took up our cause which made it a lot harder to refuse. Dad just had to have a solid reason to say “no” to his Mom. It was settled; we would stay for a while!  We would not be privileged guests, but we would have chores and “earn our keep”. We helped with drawing bucket after bucket of water from the well which took the two of us, holding the rope and “walking it back” until the tubular bucket cleared the top of the well casing. We watered the stock, all of two milk cows and one mule, gathered eggs, sorted buckets of nails, bolts, and nuts, harvested berries, a great way to get exposed to chiggers, poison ivy, and wasps. We had one serious encounter with yellow jackets that had nested in the hollowed top of a gate post that had to be negotiated bringing the cows back in from the pasture. Grandpa made quick work of them with a little kerosene and a match. 

We still had time for fun. Grandpa took the car to town on Saturdays for gossip and a few groceries, and would drop us off at Uncle Earl’s movie house for the matinee. Our cousin, Doris, would not take our money at the ticket booth. Inside, Aunt Edna would not let us pay for any concession goodies, but insisted we be well supplied. It was difficult to self-impose a limit! Grandpa had a sweet tooth so we had to have ice cream cones for the ride back to the house.  

                                                                                                                                            There was the bb gun, the fishing pond, and just spending time with Grandma and Grandpa. They both had lots of good stories to tell, and I especially liked to watch Grandpa working with his wood. He spent his evenings carving or whittling  by the radio and the fireplace, which provided heat and light in winter. In warm weather, it provided a convenient place to dispose of the wood shavings. Wes and I would busy ourselves cracking and shelling the previous years pecans or black walnuts at the hearth. We had to “put down papers” because just one tiny speck of kernel would make an oily spot on the hearthstone. The hearth, fireplace, and in fact, the entire exterior of the house, was a source of pride to Grandma; Grandpa, among other things was a competent stone cutter and stone mason and had built the house for her soon after J.B. was big enough to help. 

Grandpa didn’t eat fish because of the trouble he had separating the bones, which were not compatible with his dentures, but he loved frog legs. I had seen a huge bullfrog at the pond, and we were going to go back because it was windy, and nothing had been biting. The morning we went back to the pond they were biting on grasshoppers. I saw the frog sitting at the water’s edge and lowered my grasshopper and let the wind swing it in front of his face. He grabbed it and the tussle was on. We took our fish and the frog to Grandma, and she prepared them for supper. We surprised Grandpa, and when he heard the story, I had never had such a look of admiration from him! The frog legs may have been special, but still, only a meal, but the approval, to me, was priceless.

My other Grand-dad did like fish and the only thing better than eating them was catching them. He came for an extended visit during which we were frequent visitors to nearby Lake Texoma. Also, he enjoyed the baseball games at Locke Field in the cool of the evening. We could never get him to stay very long, because he was an expert and prolific gardener, and he enjoyed sharing it with many admirers as they passed down the street along his garden fence. The neighbor he enlisted to “look after” things was a potential no-show because he was afraid of Grand-dad’s colonies of honey bees which were hived in the garden. If it didn’t rain, he needed to be there to do the watering.

Standard summer fare was the Saturday matinee, with a cowboy movie and a serialized thriller. Ours was augmented by a live stage performance preceding one of his movies, by “The Cheyenne Kid“, Lash LaRue. The theatre was filled, but we managed front row seats, and got to see him up close. I was a bit disappointed in how badly tobacco-stained were his fingers and teeth. He looked better in his movies, and there’s no doubt; he’s good with that 18-foot whip! He schooled Harrison Ford for his Indiana Jones roles. He converted to Christianity in Shreveport, Louisiana, while visiting a daughter, and spent some time as an evangelist, working with alcoholics, and died of emphysema: RIP. 

We dreaded to see summer vacation end, but starting the third grade sounded exciting. Just getting a new Big Chief tablet and new pencils with the erasers still intact was exciting enough, but our good shoes had been demoted to school shoes, and a few items of new or newly-made clothing had us feeling “spiffy” whether we looked the part or not. A few days into the session, I remember sitting on the steps next to the front door of the school and telling our second-grader neighbor girl that third grade was my favorite grade so far. I just wish I could remember why.