When I was born, we lived in the really tiny town of Portage Des Sioux, Missouri. The town sits near the spot where the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers converge. My maternal grandparents lived there too and I spent a lot of time at their house. That is where my favorite childhood memories are from.
My grandma and I baked cakes and pies all the time. I can still remember sifting the Swans Down cake flour for her, and she always made a little extra pie dough so that we could cut it into strips, brush it with milk, sprinkle a little sugar and cinnamon on it and then bake it. She called it "hard tack", but I'm not sure why. It was a fantastic treat! Every Sunday she made fried chicken and homemade macaroni and cheese. Oh my God, it was so good! It was my job to grate the cheddar and to "dot" the butter onto the layers of macaroni. She always made me feel like I was an indispensable part of the "team" when we cooked together.
My grandmother dropped out of school in the 3rd grade because she had to go to work and help support her family. I can't imagine that. She must have valued education, though we never really talked about it, but she was the one who taught me to "color nicely and stay inside the lines," and she taught me how to read. She taught me my numbers, and by the time I started school, I could count in English and in German. (My great-grandmother was German and it was the only language she knew, and so my grandmother also knew German, though by the time I came to be, she had forgotten much of it) They didn't have kindergarten in Portage Des Sioux, so my grandmother was my kindergarten, I suppose.
I started first grade at the public school in town. It was a one-room school house and the teacher was Mrs. Lazar. I loved her. The first row of desks (about 6 of them) was first grade, the second row was second grade, etc. There were six rows of desks. The hardwood floor was dark and shiny, and the chalkboard filled the entire front wall. Every morning we had a milk break. The milk came in little glass bottles. White cost 1/2 cent (so you paid for two days at one time if you wanted white milk), and chocolate was a penny. I vividly remember one particular morning, during spelling class, I got sick. I threw up all over my spelling book, my desk, the floor, my clothes...I was totally humiliated. I also remember that when it was your grade's turn for reading, you sat in a circle in the front of the room and read from the Dick and Jane series. I don't know what the other grades were doing while your grade was having reading, but Mrs. Lazar always had everyone on task! I remember as a third grader, getting to read with the sixth graders in their circle and telling them the words that they didn't know.
There was also one particular recess that would affect me for the rest of my life...it was kind of wet out and I was wearing red rain boots on the playground. An older boy named Richard had a dead snake hanging from the end of a stick and he was chasing some of the girls with it. He tossed it, and the snake went into my boot! I remember running into the school house and hiding under Mrs. Lazar's desk, where she was sitting grading papers. I was trembling and crying hysterically. She made him throw the snake into a ditch along the road, and I remember taking the long way home so that I didn't have to walk past it. Ever since then I have an awful fear of snakes. Anyone who knows me understands just how traumatic that incident was for me.
Looking back, I realize that we were really poor then, but I sure didn't know it. We were never bored; there was always something to do. We would pull a wagon around town and pick up pecans that had fallen from the many pecan trees and then take them back to Grandma's and shell them. We would go visit my Aunt Lee who lived a few blocks away, and she would always make us ice cream sodas. We walked down to the river with my grandmother or Aunt Marie and fish. We sat out in the swing in the evenings with my grandfather and just talked and talked. He never got tired of listening to the ramblings of 5 and 6 year-olds. We helped do the wash in the wringer washing machine. We helped grow vegetables in a huge garden and learned how to compost...though they didn't call it that. We would walk with Grandpa up to the tavern where there were always a few guys sitting at the bar drinking beer, but we came in for the ice cream cones. My grandfather was blind...he'd been blinded while repairing a car engine when my mom was only a child...so it was my job to read the newspaper to him. He loved that. We also sat and listened to the St. Louis Cardinals on the radio...old Harry Carrey was the announcer. Although he was blind, my grandfather could do almost anything. When the time came for them to put indoor plumbing in their house, he and I did it together. I was only 5 and he was blind, but we did it. He was the most amazing man.
We left Portage when I was in fourth grade. I've been back a few times just to revisit and to remember. It never fails to bring a flood of happy memories, especially of the people who continue to live in my heart today.

A Story From My Teaching Days

I taught school for 32 years and I loved my job most of the time. I was a tough teacher who had really high expectations for myself and for my students. Students started out being a little afraid of me because they knew I didn't put up with any disrespect toward me or other students. They knew I wasn't going to tolerate bad behavior in my classroom. They knew I wouldn't compromise on this. Every year, it seems, we all worked hard, learned a lot, had fun, and ended up really liking each other. Though I don't know where it came from, I had a knack for connecting to the "problem" kids. One of those kids was Raymond.
Raymond was in my 5th grade class. He spent most of the year with his desk pushed up against mine so I could keep an eye on him and so the other students would be safe. He was not allowed to have scissors, even the round-tipped ones, unless I was standing right next to him. He was constantly getting into trouble on the playground for playing too rough and sometimes fighting. He struggled with his school work and was in a remedial reading class which had a specially trained teacher to help with reading issues. Raymond was really full of energy...all the time...and when I could tell that he just couldn't possibly stay in his seat for one more second, I would create an errand for him to run, like taking a note to another teacher in the building, just so he could spend some of that energy. He and I had an understanding that if he ever got into trouble while running those errands (we called it being my special helper), he'd never get to do it again. Guess what? He stayed my helper through the whole year. At some point in the year I learned that on most days, Raymond left school at the end of the day and walked up to the VFW Hall. That's where his dad was sitting at the bar drinking. Raymond stayed up there until the place closed each night, unsupervised, undisciplined, and certainly not practicing his reading, math facts, or doing any kind of homework assignments. Sigh.
Anyway, back to the good part of my story. Each year I read Where the Red Fern Grows to my 5th grade classes. It's the story of a boy, who lived in the Ozark mountains, who struggled and saved for years to finally get two hunting dogs, their adventures of hunting raccoons, dealing with the local bullies, winning a hunting contest, and loving those dogs as much as he loved his family. I liked reading this book to my 5th graders because it was about "stuff" in which the boys in my class would be interested and could identify with, and the girls liked it as well. Finding books that 10 year old boys liked was not always easy. I read a little of it every day right after recess, and the kids loved it. Well, near the end of the book, there is a really really sad part. As I was getting to that part, I began to tear up and my voice cracked, and the students could tell that I was starting to cry. Just then, Raymond, the kid with reading and behavior issues, jumped up, took the book right out of my hands, and said, "Don't worry, Mrs. Westhoff (that was my name back then), I'll read it for you." So, I gave him my reading chair, sat at his desk, and he started to read to the class. He finished the chapter for me...I helped him with a few of the words he couldn't read, but HE READ TO THE CLASS in spite of his struggle with reading, in spite of the possibility that he might be embarrassed reading in front of his peers, and in spite of the fact that he was the class bully and tough guy...all because he felt badly for me because I had started to cry.
Wow, that happened probably 30 years ago, and just thinking about Raymond and that day never fails to make me start crying all over again. I can't count how many students I had in those 32 years of teaching, and I loved so many of them, but there were always some special ones, the ones who found their way into my heart, and taught me how to be a good teacher.

Sisters

My sister has cancer...again. This is the third time. She's scared, and so am I, even though in our conversations I try to be light-hearted in an attempt to cheer her up. It's probably not working. I mean how can you cheer somebody up who is waiting to have more tests and to find out just what is going on this time? We wasted a lot of time while growing up actually hating each other. We're thirteen months apart in age. She was always the pretty one and the spunky one. I was always the smart one and the shy one. Each of us was jealous of the other because we thought our parents liked the traits of the other more than our own. The truth is that our family was so totally dysfunctional, and any positive attention given by either of our parents was so rare, that my sister and I hated each other when a scrap resembling love was tossed toward one and not the other. Abuse (I'll not elaborate right now) tends to bring out the survival mode in kids. That sounds horrible, doesn't it? It was; it is. Thankfully, we survived. We're maybe not the most well-adjusted adults out there, but we've figured out what love really is...though it did take quite a while and lots of mistakes. We've bonded. Now in our fifties, and not too far away from entering our sixties, we're happy; even Connie who has been diagnosed with her third cancer. Could things be better for her? Hell yes! But things could be a whole lot worse. And the best thing that came out of all our trials is that we've become sisters who love each other. I'm still jealous of her, though. She is still the pretty one and she's the kindest, most generous person anyone could ever hope to meet. She's funny and thoughtful, and one of the best cooks around! Also she's scared, and so am I.