Declared "legally blind" several years before she died because of "tunnel vision". She used a white cane to walk to the store to buy groceries. She used the books for the blind recordings and could play cards with her lady friends by holding her cards out to the sides of her eyes. Was third grade teacher in Benton Co., Missouri on 27 Sept 1912.Contract was for four months at the rate of $25 per month.

From the Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, June 16, 1981
BRITT-Evelyn Jane Britt of 2930 Mill Street, Eugene, passed away June 13,1981, at the age of 86. She was born March 7, 1895, in Warsaw Missouri,and was married November 5 1913, to James Harrison Britt who preceded her in death July 25, 1959. She had lived in this area since 1951, and attended the Unity of the Valley Church. She is survived by 5 children; Ethel Violet Rasumussen of Omaha, Nebraska, June Rose Carle of Eugene, Earl James Britt of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Ardeth May Spalti and Elva Louise Gibbs both of Council Bluffs, Iowa; 1 brother , Alvin Armstrong of Mt. Lake, Minnesota; 4 sisters; Louise Stevens of Denver, Colorado, Kate Richwine of Cole Camp, Missouri Edra McAlexander and Flora Myers, both of Council Bluffs, Iowa ; 20 grandchildren; 34 great grandchildren, 7 great great grandchildren; numerous nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by sons: Robert Harrison Britt and Jon Thomas Britt and Evan Jean Britt. Funeral services will be Wednesday, June 17, 1981, at 11 a.m. in CHAPEL OF MEMOR IES FUNERAL HOME, 3745 West 11th Avenue, Eugene, with Reverend J. Scott Thornton of the Unity of the Valley Church officiating. Entombment at Rest Haven Mausoleum. Visitation this evening until 8:30; Wednesday, 8:30 to 10 a.m. Contributions in her memory may be made to the American Cancer Society.

The crypts to the left of Evelyn (Armstrong) Britt are for her daughter June Rose (Britt) Carle and her husband Harold Edward Carle.

This is an edited version of a tape recording made by Evelyn Britt nee Armstrong in April 1971.

Well, I was born in Benton County, Missouri, March 7, 1895 and the folks had a little log cabin. It was on Grandpa Armstrong's place, and then after we left there they converted it into a chicken house. So when I asked about where I was born they always told me I was born in the hen house. I didn't quite understand that and I didn't like it to well either.

Now I'll tell you about Grandpa Armstrong's house. They had a large, quite a large, log cabin, a house, it was a room a large room and they had two big beds in it and of course they had a fireplace and it was their living quarters as well as the bedroom. My memories of that are that my Grandmother Armstrong used to like to read so much. She took papers, the "Comfort" it was called and "Hearth and Home". She would read them from cover to cover and then as soon as I got oh, learned to read, well, she would pass them on to me and I read them from cover to cover. They usually had some nice poems that I enjoyed and all of the house hold hints and the recipes and the stories they had I thought was terribly good. Continued stories and we just couldn't hardly wait from one time until the next time the magazine come to be able to read that.

Well, I guess I kind of got off the track here. I started to tell you about their living room. The things that I remember, memories that I look back on is my Grandmother Armstrong, she, they didn't have very much so she took little bits of silk and velvet and she made pin cushions. I know she made for all us girls pin cushions. I wish I still had mine, I don't know what became of it but she pieced those little bits of fabric together. Then she went over each seam by hand and made fancy stitches on it. Then she cut it out in the shape of a boot and she filled that and stuffed that, and then made a little hanger of ribbon or some kind of bright string or yarn or maybe she had crocheted a little string. I can remember now seeing those hanging on her wall with pins and needles stuck in them that's where they were kept. Then on her wall she had fashioned out of cardboard a horn of plenty and she had covered that with bits of bright paper and things that way that she had got and maybe little pictures that she'd cut out of magazines and that way were pretty. She pasted over that and she had sewed this together with her bright yarn or bright string and that was hanging on the wall too. That was some of her wall decorations as well as she used to put little things in to keep little things in and I have very fond memories of seeing those homey things that she had.

Then after this here large room that I was telling you about, then there was another one that was used for a bedroom, it was another quite large log room. Then in between these two rooms there was a roof put over that and a floor and that's where she did her cooking and where they had their table set up to eat. They had a porch and we used to have meals out there when we went there. I guess maybe they moved the table out there where there would be little bit more room to open it up for so many of us.

This was set on the hill and there was cedar trees in the yard and oh! the blue jays played around in those trees and there was quite a few red birds around and of course I enjoyed all of these birds so much. In her yard she had so many flowers, she would just get a start from somebody and carry it maybe for miles and plant it there. She must of had a green thumb because it seemed like that every thing she planted always grew so well. One thing that I remember, she had quite a lot of roses but she had a beautiful pink moss rose that I'll never forget how beautiful to me that was. Then she had her garden, it was fenced and had a little picket fence around it. In one corner she had her herb garden, rosemary and sage and all of the herbs that she used for seasoning and she grew garlic. I remember winter onions, so the winter onions of course came up quite early in the spring and they were always a treat. Of course she always had a lot of vegetables and I remember on one side of it there was, she grew hops it was a vine of hops that grew along one side on the fence and she used those hops. They would use those, they cooked them and used them some way in making the hot water and making yeast and putting in bread, I think some of the bread she made. I remember playing under the trees there and the soil was kind of a yellow clay I guess it was, and oh there was so many fossils there of little I guess sea animals, fishes and things and of course I was fascinated by that.

Then my next memories are when we left and everybody was saying a tearful good-by when we left to go to Oklahoma.1 Of course that seemed like, well we figured that maybe we'd never see each other again. You know that isn't so terrible far but to us at that time, and when you went by wagon, it was a long way. Of course we had a covered wagon and I always seemed to hate it. I hated sleeping in that wagon, it seemed like I could remember that something was always poking me somewhere and I was never comfortable sleeping in that wagon and even as a little girl I hated it.

As we went on down the road, every time when we'd come by where Negroes lived well there was Madge and I and I just don't remember our ages, I must not have been more than five. I, Madge and I, we would sing this here song, we was being real naughty, we would sing "Shortening Bread.". "Mammies little babies loves shortening, shortening, mammies little baby love shortening bread. Three little niggers playing in the bed, one was sick and the others was dead. Mammy put on the skillet, put on the lid give those little niggers some shortening bread." Every time we'd come by Negroes shacks we would sing that and the folks didn't hush us up either, I remember that. To me now it seems like that was a pretty naughty thing for us to do but then we thought it was the thing to do at that time, so we did it of course.

Then I remember on the way we would camp, usually we would try to camp near some farm house. My dad would go over and offer to buy some milk for us children but it seemed like that they never, oh I don't think they ever took any money for it, they always gave it to us. My dad had some kind of a little stove, it had a little oven and they put over the fire some way, and they cooked on that. My mother baked biscuits, course, we couldn't afford to buy bread very much of the time, store bought bread. So she would make up biscuits, camped by the side of the road, now can you imagine it, and make up biscuits and bake potatoes in the fire. Then they had a what we called a skillet and lid some way and sometime I know she would make up biscuits and put it in that. They it seemed like it was some kind of iron, a heavy iron skillet that was kind of deep and I guess that they would get it hot and then she would put her little biscuits in that and then put the lid on and they would just bake in a little while. It must have been quite a chore to do and then she would maybe if she had time wash out a few clothes just by hand if we was where we had plenty of water and dry them because it must have been quite a job to keep, well Kate evidently was the baby, to keep things washed for the baby. Then we camped in a, well, the water wasn't very good. There was so much after we got down into Oklahoma there was so much alkali water and I remember that we just couldn't hardly stand the taste of it.

Then this one time we camped in a, I don't know how long we stayed there, it was a few days it seemed like. There was some people that lived close by maybe they had this they called it a dugout, it was a place dugout of the soil and a room was made there and we lived in that for awhile. Kate was evidently a year old, not more than a year old. Mother had the coffee pot sitting on the table, she had just made coffee, and Kate reached up and turned that over on her and it all went down on her chest and oh! she had a terrible burn. Of course there you doctored things yourself, you didn't go to a doctor, there wasn't doctors but, any way you mostly doctored your own ills. I know she was terribly bad it must have as much as a third degree burn. They probably did quite a few of the wrong things but they made some kind of a salve out of bittersweet and they kept putting that on. We stayed there until she was pretty well cleared up of this burn before we went on to Oklahoma. Then I remember that we went to, it was Webber Falls, around Webber Falls, Oklahoma and mother's sister, Aunt Nettie2 and her family was there. They seemed to have some kind of a house that they lived in but we camped there, but yet we slept in the covered wagon at night while we stayed there which wasn't I guess too long.

Then we went on to Mounds and this was of course while Oklahoma was a territory. We went through the oil fields and we was at one place where evidently we rented this house and there was some other people that lived in it. Seemed like the house was sort of in two sections as I remember it or maybe we just rented part of it. We lived there for quite a while and dad worked in the oil fields, that is where we got well. We had the neighbors their name was Harkins as I remember and they were nice neighbors and they didn't have any children so they seemed to kind of enjoy us. Anyway Mr. Harkins was sick but he came in our room and sat and held us on his lap and first thing you know he came down with small pox. So we all got small pox and all came out of it for a wonder. I know that there was a cousin of my mother's that was there and he took care of all of us. Anyway we all recovered which was I guess kind of unusual because at that time a great many people didn't get over it.

Then after we got over that we went on to, I guess this was when we went on to Mounds, this was not just at Mounds where we stayed there, but we went on to around Mounds. It was out of the city about oh five or ten miles and we leased land from the Indians. My dad was going to raise cotton, so he set up, leased the land. He set up a tent and they seemed to put a board floor in the tent. Then dad put a frame work up and put a roof over the tent and sides of clapboards. I don't know whether you know what those are but they were these shingles, I would call them shingles. Then he built a lean-to on that and that was where we cooked and ate. We, my dad cleared the land, well I remember we kids helped pile the brush and we had to clear the land before we could plow it up to put in our cotton crop. Then of course the, there the water wasn't very good and I remember that the cattle came to the creeks where we got water. They would come there and stand around in the water and that's were they drank and then we would try to get our drinking water maybe up a little above that. Of course the land that was plowed it was sod and they figured that there was something about maybe the sod I of course don't know but anyway everybody had chills. You would go out and work till your chills came on then you'd have to come in and have your chill and your fever and stay in bed the rest of the day. Seemed like everybody was doing it that way any way.

We rented our land from an Indian by the name of Bighead. Well, he didn't talk too good, at least he pretended like he didn't always understand what you said. I remember after we cleared this land, well my dad had chopped up a lot of wood. So one day he was gone to Mounds, and old Bighead came over and loaded up his wood and hauled it home with him. Of course when dad got back and found it out he was pretty mad and he went over there and tried to get his wood back, but old Bighead just pretended like he didn't know what he was talking about. Dad even got an Indian that could interpret to go with him over there and talk to him about it, but it didn't do any good. I know that they were kind of mad at each other and so every time that dad took the horses down to the creek to water them he always carried his gun along in case he met up with the Indian and had trouble but he never did have to use it, thank goodness.

The Indians were, well of course they if they got liquor which they did sometimes, well they was pretty quarrelsome among themselves. So many times I remember on Saturday night or after the Indians had been in town somebody would sell them liquor and they would fight among themselves. I'd hear the folks talking about an Indian that was found draped over a fence dead, been cut up in a fight, so they did quite a bit of fighting among themselves when they were drunk. I remember one night hearing them go back and forth, Bighead, from his place they went to I guess, some other Indians place, back and forth they made so many trips that night. I guess he and his wife had got into a fight and she had left him and he was trying so hard to get her to come home. I guess she finally did go home.

Some of the Indians were pretty nice people and of course my dad was the kind of a person that made friends with the Indians. They would come over to our house and we would talk to them and show them things that we had. Then they would invite us to come their house and they would show us their bead work and things like that, that were quite nice. So we was always friendly with the Indians that lived around near us. Of course they expected, usually expected you to give them something when they come and they were usually after tobacco for one thing. My dad tried to keep a little extra so that when they come and asked for tobacco he could give them a little bit.

We raised cotton and our neighbors of course none of them could own any land because the land belonged to the Indians so you would lease it. I know that some of our neighbors had houses, of course I guess it didn't cost very much to put up a house on the land even if it didn't belong to you. I know that we finally dug a spring and had water that we could get from the spring which was probably much better than the water out of the creek. The folks also dug a cellar so we could have a place that we could keep our milk and things that we wanted to keep cool in the cellar, so it didn't seem to be too bad.

I would play with the little Indian children when I got a chance to. I was always, if I saw them down at the creek somewhere, the mother doing the washing. To me she always looked so pretty, with it seemed like she invariably had on some kind of a bright cotton dress with big blue beads. She would do her laundry right in the creek and have her children there. I used to, she had a little boy I used to, I think he must have been around my age. I used to tease him a good deal, we'd sort of play together and chase each other and then when he would get really mad at me I would really run to get away. I think the mother just stood back and laughed as I remember that, she thought it was funny that we would do that.

I enjoyed playing with the kids, and I remember that I would set up a little playhouse under the tree and I would place rocks around my house with, I'd encircle that, make a little rock fence around it and or just a row of rocks around it. I would get broken dishes and make mud pies and I decorated the mud pies with little flowers and things that grew that I thought it was kind of pretty. Some of the neighbors had boys, they would visit and we played together. I can't seem to remember any of them having any girls but we they had these boys that we played with and people visited back and forth quite a bit.

I remember when Uncle Bill Armstrong, my father's brother and Uncle Lish Smith my mother's brother came from Missouri to visit us while we was there. They looked so white when they came there from Missouri and the people in Oklahoma they tanned so much more. My Uncle Bill and my father and Uncle Lish would play for dances. So the neighbors would gather together and they would play and the other neighbors would come in and they would have dances right in their homes. That was their form of recreation, if you went somewhere you just dropped in. We didn't have telephones, you'd just drop in on a neighbor. Well, you would take some food that you had and put it together with theirs and you would have a meal. It wasn't always so much but then nobody expected very much, just so it was food, that was the only thing that seemed to matter that much.

I know that I would always play around in the creeks and catch crawdads and fashion little fishing hook out of a pin and had a twine string for a hook3 and I used to try to fish. I can't ever remember catching anything but crawdads. I would catch the crawdads and skin out their tails and soak 'em in salt water and then mother would fry 'em for us and I thought it was quite a treat.

Then, I didn't seem to be very much afraid of snakes, but there was quite a lot of copperheads in that section of the country. I remember one time one of them came in the house, got in the house. We kids were sleeping on pallets on the floor and the next morning we got up and there momma was cleaning up and she found there was a copper head coiled up in the corner. Anyway that was the way we lived, and no one thought too much about it. We wasn't any worse off than our neighbors.

We would plant the cotton, I remember helping plant it, I even like that a little because we dropped it in by hand. Then when it came up if it was too thick, well you would do what they called chop cotton, and that was to thin it out to the way they wanted it. I remember doing a lot of chopping cotton too when I was a little kid. One year one of our neighbors had raised cotton and of course it was getting in the fall when it was getting a little bit cold to pick cotton so he gave this cotton that had been picked over once or twice. There was still quite a bit of cotton left, so he gave it to Madge and I if we wanted to pick it, so we sure worked like beavers to pick that cotton. I think we got six dollars off of the cotton that we picked and to us that was just quite a lot of money. We surely worked, but then we worked to help our own folks pick their cotton. We'd go out and work until our chill came on, then we'd have to go to bed for the rest of the day but that was the norm, I remember.

We took so much chill tonic. I'll never forget how that awful chill tonic was. It was kind of sweet and awful and it was surely terrible. I think I threw out more than I ever took because if I could get a chance to throw out my dose of chill tonic I always did. We would pick the cotton and pile it up until we got a load. Dad would, they would, cram it down into the wagon. They had side boards and they would wet it a little bit to make it weigh a little heavier, as I remember. They would tromp that cotton down in the wagon. Then he would take it to town and take it to the cotton mill and sell it, I think it sold by the bale. They got so much for a bale and I don't know whether the wagon load was more than a bale or not.

Usually then he would buy the groceries, the stuff that we could afford to buy for food for the rest of the, until we could pick another load of cotton and take it in. I don't know how we often took a load of cotton in but oh sometimes there was a little bit money left. Mother would go along, I know one time Madge and I got coats, the first coat that I ever can remember having bought. We thought they were pretty nice. I wanted some material I saw, it was so beautiful and I wanted a dress off of it so bad but my mother wouldn't let me have it, it didn't cost only five cents a yard or so. As I remember now, they used to make comforters and it was a big wild print like they used to make the comforters. It really wasn't suitable at all for a dress but I oh thought it was the most beautiful thing. I wanted a dress off of that so bad. I can still see it in my memories of what beautiful big red print it was. Mother said later she was always sorry that she didn't let me have a dress off of it even if it was comfort material. I suppose she thought that it wasn't suitable at all and it probably wasn't but I surely thought it was beautiful.

Well, Madge and I we of course kept growing up and we should have been in school but there just wasn't any schools there at all. I don't remember how we got a hold of some books, I suppose they were maybe just some little story books. I was determined that I wanted to learn how to read. So I guess the folks had evidently taught us our ABC's so I would start spelling these words and to find out what they were so the folks would tell me what they were. T.. H.. E.., I remember that I could not remember that word. I asked it so many times of my dad he finally got impatient and he said, "Now this is the last time that I'm going to tell you what that word is. If you don't remember it and ask me again you'll get spanked." Well, any way, I remembered that word and I didn't get the spanking because a spanking to me would have been a terrible thing. I never did get spanked in my life, and even the threat of it sure made me remember that word. I was so hungry to learn to read and after a fashion I guess I did learn to read a little bit. Madge didn't care so much about it but to me it was something I wanted to do. I really worked at it because, you see I was about well, getting close to ten years old4 when we went back to Missouri so that I could go to school.

Anyway I remember that it was the fourth of July and it was a rainy morning and dad hadn't brought the horses in from the pasture yet. We had planned on going to Deep Water was the name of the town, for the fourth of July but no it wasn't Deep Water it was Mounds, for the fourth of July celebration. This Indian friend of my father's he came over and I can remember seeing him and dad sitting out in the yard and he was quibbling and seemed real uneasy. Dad asked him he says, "Bill, what's the matter you don't seem to be yourself?". He said "Well I hear that they are going to kill off a few" and Dad said "a few what" and he said "a few whites" And he said "you're my friend and I don't want you to get hurt" and he said "So I came over to tell you, so that you would go into town where there would be more people" Because we had expected that they would just come around to our places and kill us and burn us out. So dad got the horses then and we went to town.

I know in the meantime my dad had given me a quarter to spend and I thought I would buy some beautiful red ribbon for my black hair 'cause I had the long black braids. I heard them talking about how hard times would be and everything so I took my quarter and offered it back to my dad so that he would have it to help buy the flour and stuff that we would need in case this uprising of the Indians turned into a real Indian war. We knew we would need what little money we had, which never was very much.

We went into town and we warned everybody that we came by and everybody that we met on the road and we told one man and he got on his horse and went in town to notify the sheriff. We warned everybody to be on the alert and to get into town so that there would be more of us together to protect ourselves. Sure enough when we got in town there was an awful lot of Indians around, a lot of Indian activity and everything. They had of course the officers had got some of the Indian leaders there. I believe it was an Indian by the name of Crazy Horse and this Bighead was one of the Indians that were mixed into this here deal. I guess they had been getting quite a bit of liquor and was all set to have war against the whites but they went to them and I guess with their probably threats and such they got them settled down. We stayed in town for several days because they was all alerted for trouble. It was an awful lot of Indians traveling around and it seemed like they were gathering, so many of them gathering around in that, I guess the folks really expected trouble. So we stayed in Mounds for oh quite a long while, a week or ten days I should say, until we felt that things were settled down enough so that we could go back home.

Then after we got back home at nights we would, these people by the name of Harkins, they had a large house, so all of the people around there would gather at that one house at night so that they would be protected with the more men around to fight in case there was trouble. Of course the women and children would usually try to go to bed and get some rest and the men would stay up and be on guard in case the Indians come. We were fortunate that they never did come but I remember sometimes in the evening when we would go over to these people's house. Our cotton fields were up oh I would say about waist high so we would just crawl down through the rows of cotton from our place to go to the neighbors. So that we thought we maybe would not be seen by the Indians doing that and could get over there a little more safely. We seemed to stay at home during the day time mostly, but we would gather over there at night. Well, anyway we never did have to protect ourselves from the Indians.

I do remember this one time that was while the Indian scare was still on, Dad, he seemed not to be right at home at the time, I don't know where he was, I don't remember. I was down playing at the creek and I saw this Indian man coming along. I didn't know him so I thought well maybe he was coming to kill all of us. I thought that maybe if I could attract him to me and away from the house where my mother and the rest of the children were that maybe he would just get me and they wouldn't be hurt. So I was trying my best to lead him away from our house, but I guess he didn't mean any harm after all. I was sure thankful when he went on away without molesting me or the family. Because I thought surely that was what would happen but I guess that kids are kind of funny.

I guess I didn't exactly think I liked Oklahoma very well at the time, although I remember that we had a lot of good times. I know this one time we went to a fourth of July picnic at Mounds. The Indians were having their dances around and this we was standing there watching them. This little, he was a kind of short Indian he was dancing around and I was standing close to the edge watching. Of course there was my long black braids and everything, so he just reached over and picked me up and danced around the ring with me and then brought me back and set me down. (Laughter) I don't remember, I guess I was kind of scared, but he thought it was a funny thing to do because after all he was just friendly and didn't mean any harm. It was a little bit frightening after having heard all of the tales about that the things that they might do to us. It was a nice picnic and we'd see some of our friends there and all have picnic lunches together and they had music and some fun things to do, so it was a pretty a nice time after all.

I don't know whether I told you that when we left Missouri to go to Oklahoma, it wasn't Oklahoma at all then it was called Indian Territory and it wasn't a state as long as we lived, there it was still a territory. I don't remember that I told you that. I know that while we lived in Oklahoma we lived in this tent and Flora was born there. They sent for momma's mother, Grandma Cox, and she came from Missouri to Mounds on the train We brought her home there and she was there when Flora was born5. I remember they thought it was so amazing that Flora's hair was so thick that they could put one of these what they call side combs in her hair and it would stay because her hair was so thick and long.

Of course I was just a little girl and one of our neighbors Mrs. Aldrich wanted me to help her. She had three or four children and she had well diggers there that was going to dig a well, so she wanted me to come over and help her. Well, of course dish washing chores and minding the babies and stuff was mostly what I did. I would get so homesick, I had to stay overnight, I would get so homesick and try not to let them see that I was crying. When they would catch me with tears in my eyes I always said well I'd got something in my eye, so they wouldn't know that I was crying. I stayed there for three or four days. I'd have to wash dishes quite late at night and I know sometimes one of the well diggers would feel sorry for me I guess because I was such a little girl doing that work, that he would help me with the dishes so I could get through and go to bed. I was going over there one time and I had to go down through a field. There was quite a lot of those Texas Longhorns that people had or drove through there and I happened to be going over to Aldrich's and I didn't see all of these cattle coming so I had got right out to where they were and they was pretty wild and mean. Of course I was scared when I saw where I was, but a cowboy come running up on his horse and he scooped me up off the ground and took me back home then because they were really pretty dangerous to be around. Oh I don't know it just seemed like there were a lot of little incidents. Sometime we would go on Sunday's so many times the cowboys had got together and have rodeos. I remember we went this one time to town where they was having the rodeo and balloon ascension which was really quite a thing at that time. They put gas in this balloon and it went up and two or three men went up in the balloon. It was really quite something to see them getting ready and then see it take off from the ground and go up. At that time Will Rogers was just a young man and he participated in quite a lot of those rodeos at that time, so we remembered his name after he became famous. I think I forgot to tell you that this young Indian that carried me around when they were dancing around a ring where they was dancing, his name was Bullfrog.

I don't believe that I mentioned that when we was around the oil fields that there was so much oil on the top of the streams and it would get on fire. When we would try to cross these streams the horses would get so frightened that it was just kind of difficult to try to get across sometimes.

When my Uncle Bill, that was my father's brother, came from Missouri to Oklahoma and Uncle Lish, that was mother's brother came well, my dad played the violin and Uncle Bill played the violin. Uncle Lish played the guitar, he had some kind of a frame that he'd put around his neck and it would hold the mouth harp. He would play the mouth harp and the guitar and sing. The other two fellows would play their violins and they played quite a lot for dances. The kind of dances that they had mostly was where a bunch of people would gather at one home and if they had a house and it had a room big enough why they would just clear out the furniture and the fellows would play and they have quite a nice dance. Quite a lot of people would come. Sometimes if they didn't have room inside and the weather was nice well they would just have sort of a platform outside and dance on the platform. That was some of the things that they did for fun. They would also gather at the homes and maybe somebody would have an organ and they would, the fellows, would all play and they would sing or maybe just have an evening of music. That is was mostly their entertainment when they had time to get together or could get together. Of course people were not so close together and it was it took quite a little while to travel from one place to another and I don't remember anybody at all having any telephones, so they couldn't plan anything very much.

When we would pick cotton, so many times, I guess my dad must have planted water melons in the cotton patch and oh they had great big water melons. We'd get tired so they would cut a water melon and we would eat water melon while we was out in the cotton patch. We had, it was, a canvas bag and it had a strap that went over our shoulders and then it was just about right so that we could pick the cotton off and poke it down in the sack. That sack kind of hung open then we would drag it along behind us and usually we would drag it until it got so heavy we couldn't handle it much anymore. Then we would take it in to where the big pile was, they poured it up in a pile. Then as I told you I believe before, they'd put it in the wagon and take it in to the cotton gin. I don't know whether they weighed it to for the bale, after, I don't know whether they got paid for it after the seed were removed and it was baled that way or whether it was just baled with the seed and all in. I do know that they used the cotton seed, they made an oil out of it and It was very cheap to use for cooking. I know mother used some but they didn't like it too well. I remember that it, it had a very peculiar smell when it got hot, so they just used it when they couldn't afford anything else. As I say we never had much money I don't (Blank Spot on tape).

(starts again mid sentence).....used to go up into the mountains and they would hunt wild turkey. There was a lot of wild game and turkeys and deer and squirrels and such. There wasn't any game laws so they didn't have to worry about how they could kill and bring home just as much as we could use. Of course we didn't have any refrigeration of any kind and it didn't, you couldn't use too much. I know that they usually seemed to go oh, maybe once every two weeks or so up into the mountains to get the wild meat because well I guess that was our main source of meat. We used to use quite a lot of beans I know and my dad always told us that if we put a lot of Cayenne pepper on the beans that when we died the wolves wouldn't dig us out of our graves. Because we children knew that when somebody died and was buried of course they just put them in a pine box. Usually somebody in the neighborhood made the box. They buried them in that and if they didn't put rocks over the top of the soil well, sometimes the wolves would dig clear down to the box. We remember hearing them howling so much, the wolves when they was trying to get at these graves. Of course that was a little bit frightening but I just couldn't eat the Cayenne pepper, it was just too much for me, but my dad liked it and he always used a lot on his food. Even if I was afraid of the wolves digging me up I still couldn't use the Cayenne pepper. When one time it was one of our neighbors brought me home a little baby wolf, just a small young wolf and I tried to tame it. It got so vicious and would bite so bad that dad was afraid to have it around so he got rid of it, so I didn't have my pet wolf very long.

During the dry spell when it would be dry and hot well it seemed like the ground would have big cracks in it. They seemed terribly big to me and I know that the folks told me that if I wasn't good that when I was around those cracks the devil would reach up and grab me and pull me down. So whenever I crossed a crack, believe you me, I crossed with a flying leap. I wasn't taking no chances of the devil reaching up and grabbing me.

I, it seemed to me like it must be about time now to be on our way back to Missouri. I guess the thing that influenced the folks to go back was the fact that there wasn't any school for us to go to there in Oklahoma. We were getting to be such big girls that I guess they thought like that we needed to have a little bit of schooling anyway. So as we went back we had two wagons and Uncle Bill Smith drove one and my dad drove one. At night they would run the tongues up together and then they had this little platform in between at the boards some way a little board that they put there so that you could go from one wagon to the other. Usually the men slept out under the wagon because the Indians stole horses so bad. As we went back well, dad had of course the two teams and pulled the wagons and then he had some extra horses. I guess that's the way he invested his money, in the horses so that when he got back to Missouri he could sell them and have a little cash. So we went back, I remember going through the prairie in Kansas and when we would camp at night we'd have to pick up cow chips and use that to burn for cooking. It was a job I didn't like very well but then even if we were small we all had to do something to help out.

When we got to Coffeyville, Kansas I remember, Dad went into town and got some baker's bread and we just thought that was the most delicious bread that we ever ate. Baker's bread was so good. I do remember hearing them talk about well, this is where Jesse James and his gang and the Dalton Boys did a lot of robbing and things of that type right in through that section of the country.

When we got back to Missouri of course we went back to Grandpa Armstrong's and we stayed there for oh, a few days until dad found a place to buy. He sold some of his horses and got the money and he bought 40 acres of land. Well, of course there wasn't any house on it but there was an old kind of a log barn. Well, they cleaned that out and sort of filled up the cracks and we moved in that to, camped in that until he could build a house. He and a friend of ours they went in together and got a saw mill. They sawed the lumber that went into the building of the house. We kids had a nice big saw dust pile there to play in.

It was built on the hill and we had to carry water from springs, oh about a quarter of a mile. All the water that we used for cooking and bathing, and washing and everything we had to carry it. Of course there well, I remember that we had to clear some land there too before we could do any farming. Of course dad just raised some corn and we had our garden and it really wasn't very much produced on the place, it was in the beginning. Of course we had some chickens. We had to sell the eggs regardless of how cheap they were to get a little cash to buy a little sugar and coffee and stuff that way. We didn't have eggs very often and when we did it was a real treat.

Dad tried to work for some of the other people. He did a little carpenter work and I guess just about any kind of a job that he could get. I don't think that he ever got more than maybe a dollar a day or something like that and so we surely didn't get rich off of that.

Then I, it was in the summer time when it seemed to be, we got there in the spring, got back to Missouri in the Spring. Of course there wasn't any school but there was a girl that, well I guess she was a pretty good student, so she was teaching a few pupils. The folks paid a dollar a month, it was called a subscription school and she used the school house that they had there, so I had my first experience, Madge and I, of going to school. There I was, a girl of about ten years old, and was in the chart class which would be equivalent I suppose to kindergarten or first grade now. I was so ashamed that I had to be with those little children. Well, it didn't take me long to get out of that and it wasn't very long until I caught up with the other children of my age. Of course we didn't have, the most the longest term of school we ever had was six months. It seemed like they just didn't have enough money to pay the teachers and sometimes it would be four months in the year. I know I liked school and I got so that I was pretty good. Every time that we a ciphering match with other schools or a spelling match I was always the one chosen to represent our school and we usually won too, of course I liked that. I always read every book that I could get my hand on. We had a little library in the school and I think I read and re-read every book that was in that library. Every book that I could ever get my hands on and every magazine and I was always reading because I just loved to read.

I did have a handicap with my eyes because I could see, I had double vision. When I was five years old, that was while we was in Oklahoma still, I had a fever, I was sick, I don't know what was wrong. Madge was sick too so we was laying on the bed and she could look cross eyed and so I was trying to do it too. I must have pulled a muscle or strained a muscle some way in my eye that caused my eyes to cross. I still remember the first time that I saw double. The first person was Uncle Bill Armstrong, he was going over to the mirror to comb his hair and then that was my first experience of seeing double. Of course it was a long time before the folks actually could understand what I was talking about when I told them that I saw two of everybody. Well, of course as I say we always did our own doctoring. The folks always did their own doctoring, they didn't have a doctor so my eyes were not corrected. I suppose it wouldn't have been hard to have corrected them probably at that time if I'd have been able to see an eye doctor, although they probably didn't know a great deal.

Then when I was seventeen I took teacher's examination and I taught school for one year. That was a sixth months term that I had and I taught school for that one year. I didn't like it too well because well I felt like that I needed more education. If I had been able to have went to high school and you see you could get a teacher's certificate if you could pass the examination, it was called a third grade certificate so that was what I had.

I'm kind of getting a little bit ahead of myself here. There was a little growing up period here in our lives. I guess I just don't know or remember now whether there was anything well we was always doing some little thing. I remember one time mother made our vinegar. She had this gallon jug of vinegar and it was just about finished, ready to use. She was all upset about something, I don't know what it was and she told me to get that jug of vinegar and pour it out. Well, she didn't mean to tell me to do that. I thought at the time I couldn't understand why she would want me to throw that vinegar out after all the time it took to make it. She was not in a very good mood, so I was afraid to question her about it, so I heaved it out. Well, she was surely upset when she found what I had done., she just told me the wrong thing. She didn't mean to say what she did so there went the good old homemade vinegar. I never could say vinegar very good when I was a little girl. So I know one time the folks were sending me to the store after vinegar. I was afraid to go to the store and call for vinegar because I was afraid that they would laugh at the way I said it but I had to go any way. So I just thought and thought all the way to the store we, I had to go up hill to go to the store and I couldn't think of any way I could get out of saying vinegar until I got in the store. I took hold of the jug that I had and opened it and I said "well, smell of this and give me some." I think I got laughed at and teased more about that than if I had just said vinegar the way I did.

Well, dad made our sorghum molasses. So he grew the cane, the sugar cane or molasses or I guess you call it sugar cane. When it got ready to, that was usually in the fall when it was ready to harvest and make the molasses. So I had to have a kind of a sharp, well it was sort of a knife made of wood, and go along each stalk and strip the leaves off with that. After I got the leaves stripped off well then I would have to take well usually dad cut the cane and piled it up in a pile after it was the leaves were stripped off. Then I would have to cut the cane heads off. They used those seeds to feed the chickens with. Then I would have to stay out of school and get up early, everything would be frosty and cold outside. We had one of these oh cane mills where you had a horse was turning the mill, and it would go around in circles. So I would have to get out there real early of a morning and feed the cane into that mill until we got the big vat that he cooked this liquid in full. You know enough to so that dad could have the fire under it and start it boiling. It would take then just about all day long to boil the molasses. Usually he had two vats, and had bricks fixed up some way and had the fire underneath it, kind of a oh I don't know what you call it, was just a place where they made the fire. He would, the first batch of course that's why I had to get up early was to get that run through so that he could start cooking it. After it got cooked down 'til it was starting to get kind of thick, thickening up. Well then he would have to stand and stir it all the time. So he would change the pans around and he would have this that was getting thick in one pan and we would have another batch of the juice, the cane juice, in the other pan and have the two going all at once and it was quite a job. It took him and mother both all day long tending to that because it would if it got too much heat it would boil over or scorch and it was continually stirring it. I didn't like that because I didn't like to have to stay out of school to help make the molasses. Well, it was I guess it was a part of our living so that's what we had to do.

When our corn was harvested dad used to take the corn to the mill and he would have it ground so we had our own corn that we raised, ground into corn meal. It was much better than anything you can buy out of the store. Before it got ripe, when it was just about in the roasting ear stage, I remember mother used to have a big grater and they would pick some corn and she would grate that. It wasn't quite hard yet, it was a little more than roasting ears it was but it wasn't thoroughly cured yet, it was soft enough that she could grate it. She grated that and made bread that way because, I suppose that by that time we was getting down to where we just had to do it to get along. I remember that they used to raise turnips and I hated turnips. I like them now, but then I hated those old cooked turnips. So much of the time it was corn bread and molasses and cooked turnips and usually we made sauerkraut and raised some potatoes. So that was I guess just mostly our main diet we did have some milk and butter. Usually dad would have one or two hogs that he would butcher and so that was the way we ate.

I remember I used to have to help get in the wood. Madge and I would have to saw wood sometimes. We used a cross cut saw, I guess you know what that is. Anyway it was a kind of long saw and it had a handle on each end of it. That's the way we would saw the wood. Of course, we carried it in, there wasn't any boys big enough to do anything, of course we just had at that time my brother Alvin. He wasn't old enough to do too much and he was spoiled anyway because he was the only boy at that time. He was kind of spoiled, he didn't do very much to help.

Sometime in the summer time the there would be a group of people get together they would go down on the Osage river. The men would catch these big catfish and they'd have a fish fry. I remember that Grandma Armstrong made cinnamon rolls. It was the first cinnamon rolls I ever tasted and oh we thought they were so good. She made the cinnamon rolls and took some of them to this picnic. The first cream of tomato soup I remember that I had at her house, she didn't have Campbell's soup like we do, she made her own tomato soup. She got the recipe out of one her magazines and we would dip it over big slices of the of the homemade bread we didn't, crackers were not that available, but we thought it was so good. I always of course thought that anything that Grandma Armstrong cooked was just the best ever. Anyway I guess that most children feel that way about their grandma's cooking. We raised black eyed peas that sort of was a southern dish anyway. If you eat black eyed peas on New Years day you are supposed to have good luck the whole year long. My dad also raised I don't know it was some kind of little speckled bean or pea too and so with the rest of our diet we had some beans too which was one of the best proteins. So it was all right but well we didn't know about any other kind of food anyway. So I always hated to eat molasses because I would invariably drip some on me and get sticky somewhere. I never could stand to be sticky or dirty.

My Aunt Lelia lived not too far from my Grandma Armstrong, that was my fathers' sister, the only girl they had in the family. She had two or three children, small children, so she would have me come over to her house and pull weeds out of her garden and I would oh just work and work to help weed the garden. Really do an awful lot and hard work and then she would give me an old hen in payment for it. Then I had to lug that old hen to the grocery store and sell it and maybe I'd get a quarter out of it or something like that. I was always trying to do something to make a little money to help my self. I would help one of the neighbors do cleaning and do washing and all of that kind of work. I know that it was one children's day and all of my friends were getting a new dress to wear to church and in the children's day programs. I wanted one so bad so I went out and picked wild strawberries and sold them and got enough money to buy material so that I could have a new dress too. So I was always doing something like that to help myself. In the summer time I would work for some of the neighbors that was when I was say twelve or so I would go and work by the whole week and maybe get three dollars a week and it was real hard work. I used to have to carry water for about a quarter mile and scrub chicken coops every morning. Then later into the day it was still hot and dry and if they decided to plant sweet potato plants or something like that, well then I had to carry water and go along and water those sweet potato plants. I would, we'd always get up early and I was supposed to get my meals there and I did after a fashion but it was surely skimpy eating. They had plenty too but then they were so stingy about cooking it that I seemed to always be hungry. I did her cleaning and just what ever was the washing and we made soap and of course I helped do that, and so I learned to do all those things.

At home we had a big, oh it was, I don't know what you would call it, it was sort of a bin I guess and we would put the wood ashes out of the stove in that. Then when we wanted lye to use to make soap well they put water on that, on those ashes, then catch the water that dripped down from the ashes and that was lye and they used that to make soap. Then we made our hominy and when you make hominy you use, cook the corn in lye water, or water with lye in it for a little while so the outside skin will slip off. Well, we used to do that. Instead of having cleansers like we do now well we used the wood ashes for scouring our pans and things. So it was really quite a different life from the way people live it today. Of course we had just the coal oil lamps and one of the nice things when I was growing up I remember about my family is that my dad liked to read. So after supper we would get busy and get our dishes washed and things. Dad would have a novel or something that way and he would read aloud. The rest of us would sit around and listen and then when I got so that I could read too and read well enough well we would take turns reading. I would read awhile until my throat got kind of hoarse and then he would take it again. That seems to me like it was one of the nice family things that I remember that the family did enjoy together.

Well, I'll tell you a little bit about the house that dad built. When we came back to Missouri and bought this place I was telling you about, but it was just the rough boards like they sawed them out at the mill. He built, it was a large living room bedroom combination and a large kitchen and of course it was the oak boards for the floor in it. Of course we never had any rugs unless mother maybe had took rags and crocheted a few little rugs to have by the bed so that they wouldn't have to step out of the bed on the cold floor. Then in this large room of course they had two beds and that was where we had our chairs and our heating stove, it was a wood stove. I do remember that it seemed like when we was sitting we always sit around the stove in the winter time to try to keep warm. While the front side got warm the back side would be freezing and then after the front side got a little bit warm we'd turn around and try to warm up the rear but then the front side would be getting cold again. It just seemed like that I remember it seemed like that we always had cold feet in the winter time. Then we had a room, just the upstairs part with just one big room and as I say it didn't have the walls were not sealed or plastered or anything like that. It was just like the 2 x 4's with the outside on it and it was also that way downstairs. We kids used to sleep up there and oh so many times in the winter time when it would snow and blow a little bit well the snow would sift in on our beds. We never did have too much. We never did have enough lets say blankets, quilts, comforts and stuff like that to really keep us warm. I know a lot of people in oh down in that section of country they'd have well I guess you called it light weight feather ticks. Some of them would use that over the top, to because it kept you warmer they'd have a feather, a feather bed on the bottom and you would sort of between those two feather ticks I guess you'd call them but the top one would be lighter.

Oh we had to wear long underwear and of course in the winter time which I always hated because I felt like it always showed around you'd have to pull it down and kind of lap it over when you pulled your stockings on. It was always a lump that showed in spite of the best way I could fix it, it seemed like there was always a lump that showed and I guess I had pride even as a child. I just didn't like the way it looked so invariably if I could manage it I would pull them up above my knees so that it didn't show. It must have looked terrible up above my knee too, but of course my skirt came down over that and if it didn't show well I guess it didn't bother me so bad.

I'll tell you about, well, this house it was well the upper side of it was set right on kind of on a hillside and the upper side it well it don't seem to me that it was much of a foundation. The upper side just was not very high off the ground and then it seemed like there was this kind of post that supported the down hill side of it. Of course there was a lot of room underneath that it was quite high off the ground and I used to play under that a lot. I don't know why dad never did close that in because it would have made the house so much warmer but he never did. With these 2 x 4's I guess, you could see them on the inside of the house and so we got newspapers, we couldn't afford wall paper and I guess wall paper wouldn't have gone on very good. We papered the inside of the house with newspaper and every time the walls got oh pretty dirty well, then we'd get fresh newspaper and put another layer of paper over that. I remember that the mice could get in behind this paper and when I hear a mouse behind the paper well I used to have a sharp fork and I would stick it with a fork right through the paper. Then of course I'd have to tear a hole in the paper to get the dead mouse out but I sure got a lot of mice that way. I didn't used to be so afraid of snakes, I know that I used to, I wasn't afraid to try to kill any kind of snake and I really wasn't afraid of them like I sure don't like them now. I'm afraid of them cause the other day a garter snake ran in front of me and about scared the wits out of me.

I'll have to tell you this little incident that happened when I was in school oh I wasn't oh probably twelve, eleven or twelve, something like that and in those days little girls were very careful about showing their panties. Mother used to make our panties out of flour sacks because they bought flour, fifty pound bag or forty nine pound bag at a time and I guess mother didn't know how to get the lettering out or maybe she didn't think the lettering on it was too important, I don't know. Anyway she made our panties out of these flour sacks. One day I was at school and I'd been to the old outside toilet, we called them privies in those days. I had got my, the back of my dress caught up in my panties when I fastened the band, we didn't have rubber bands then in our panties we had a band and we had to button it. Well anyway I got my dress caught up in the back and I started to run across the school yard. Seemed somebody was always chasing me or I guess it was just kids that would just like to run. I was going like mad across the school yard and here came Kate, she was hollering at me to stop and she wanted to tell me something and the more she tried to catch me the faster I run. Then when I finally did stop she told me there that my dress was up in the back and my panties were showing and of course there was Gouches Best Flour right across the seat of my pants. I was so embarrassed because little girls just didn't a show their panties. They was very careful not to and that was quite an embarrassing moment so I guess that's why I never did forget that. After we got a little older in of course in this school room there was all of the grades from first grade or a well they had one lower grade than the first grade it was called a chart class. It was where the children would be learning their ABC's and learning to spell words and learning what words were. We older kids of course, we sat more in the back of the school room. Of course we had to carry our water from that we used at the school house for drinking up a hill. It probably was about a quarter of a mile from the school and we had to go down hill then up so the bigger pupils always went after a pail of water. Usually a girl and a boy that was maybe kind of liked each other would if they did their school work real good so they could spare a little time. We got to do that when school was in session take a little time away from the books and of course that we worked real hard so that we'd get our school work and have time so that we could go get a pail of water. Oh that was quite a big thing, and we always took our own sweet time about it. We walked pretty slow both ways. So that's the way we got our water for the school house. I don't know, they usually they had maybe around forty pupils and the teacher to handle all of those grades that was really quite an accomplishment. I know a teacher probably wouldn't undertake it now. We did, I think we did have good teachers and she did see that we did our school work and I think we probably learned much more in that little country school house than the children do to go to their classes now.

There was a grocery store that was kind of a general store that was a short distance from the school house. Some of the kids instead of taking lunch if they had a little bit of money would go to the store and buy some cheese and crackers for their lunch. We never had money to do that with so we kind of envied the children that could do that. We sort of I think, we sort of envied the children that had apples so that they could bring an apple in their lunch. So much of the time we just had corn bread and, I don't know, maybe a little butter on it or something. We just didn't have very much and we were not the only people that was like that but I guess that was just part of our life there at that time.

I had cousins that lived well I guess it was maybe eight miles or so from where we did, eight or ten, but at that time it took quite a while to drive there with, drive in a wagon or if we decided to walk and go and stay all night with our cousin that was quite a little walk. I remember that we used to go, and the whole family went, a lot of the time and we would stay all night at my Uncle Dick's6 my mother's half-brother. They had a girl that was almost the same age that I was, I think there was three days difference in our ages, and then there was another cousin that was around Madge's age. We would go down there and of course I was I guess always wanting to do things maybe that I guess I wasn't supposed to do. Anyway my cousin, I had an older cousin, I guess Frank Richwine7 was over there and he was about in our age group and they had a gun and they was shooting it and I thought that if they could do it I could too so I finally persuaded the boys to let me shoot the gun. Well, they thought it might be kind of funny to let me shoot the gun. So they did and that thing kicked so bad that I had the oh awfulest bruised shoulder from that. I never let them know that it really hurt me, but I think they was a little bit ashamed after they saw what a jolt I got from that gun that they had let me shoot it.

I was always wanting to mess around and do things that way but I guess maybe I shouldn't have done but it just seemed a good thing at the time to do it so I did it. I know one time when I was at my cousins, that was after we were a little bigger, the cousin that was my age, she was working for the neighbor and doing some of the cooking because the mother was sick. She had done cooking and could do it quite well, but I had never. Mother had never allowed me to make biscuits so I persuaded my cousin May to let me make biscuits. Of course I said well "how much do you put of this and that" and she kept telling me. When it come to shortening well she'd say "put a little bit more in" and I guess those biscuits were about like pie crust. They had hired hands there that ate and so they teased me a lot about the biscuits that I made. Because I guess, I didn't eat any of them because they had to go on over to my cousins. I guess they must have been just about like pie crust and I don't know whether they'd raise up good or whether they was flat or what. I know I got a lot of teasing from the hired hands and people about the biscuits that I made. I always figured that if the other fellow could do it so could I.

I never could milk, I know one time the folks went away and left Madge and I at home and I thought, well I'll see if I can't do the milking. It just didn't look that hard so I thought well maybe if I'd fool the old cow that maybe she would stand still and I could milk her. So I put some of dad's clothes on and tried to dress up like to make her think that it was dad and tried to milk. Well, as much as I would squeeze I never could get much milk. I didn't know that they had made arrangements for one of our neighbors to come over and milk the cow or maybe if I did I just thought I would do it and have it done when he got there, I don't remember about that. I was trying so hard to milk the old cow and she wouldn't stand very still and I tried to have Madge kind of keep her still for me so I could milk. Madge was never quite so full of mischief I guess as I was but here I was trying so hard to milk the cow and the neighbor came (laughter) and saw me all dressed up in my dad's clothes and how I was trying to milk that cow so I, they didn't let me forget that too quick.

I don't know and it seemed like when they went away and left us if there was an old pony that they thought I couldn't ride well I tried to ride it anyway. I got throwed off but then I still tried to ride it. I remember that I used to fool around an awful lot with my dad's gun. It's a wonder I hadn't got myself in trouble, but it happens I never did. Well, I guess I was kind of adventuresome in a way. Well, I think maybe this tape is getting about finished it looks to me like it is.8 I hope that you get some amusement out of some of these little incidents that happened when I was growing up. I probably haven't told you everything but you do forget quite a bit and but I guess it was just because I was embarrassed or was teased a lot about some of the things that I did how I remember so many of these little incidents.

I do know that March, March the seventh, my birthday but my neighbor, our neighbor, he was a real nice man and his he had a daughter near my age and we was always such good friends. So he would always try to find a March flower on my birthday because they came out just about that time. They were scarce enough that you had to sort of look to find them and invariably he wouldn't forget my birthday. He would come bringing me a few March flowers that he had found. I always felt like of course they was really blooming in honor of my birthday. I'll never forget those little March flowers and enjoyed them a great deal.

Well maybe I do have a just tiny bit of tape left here so I had a little bit left I guess. So I will tell you about oh the first time I guess I went away from home to work. I was fourteen at the time and my aunt9 in Kansas City wanted me to come there and work for her. I remember the preparations of getting ready. Of course I didn't have many clothes but at this time I had a little light blue skirt that we had made and it was real cheap material and it was pleated real full and I had a white blouse and a red patent leather belt. Of course I was small, I weighed only about a hundred pounds or something like that, and of course the folks helped me to get ready to go. I wanted to be dressed real nice so I saw this hat in the general store and I know now to look back, it must have been a hat for a woman but it had a lot of flowers on and I thought it was awfully pretty so they bought that for me. I think it probably cost a dollar so I felt like I was really dressed up to go to Kansas City. My dad took me to Brownington, Missouri to take the train to Kansas City. Of course that was my first train ride and my aunt had sent money for my fare to Kansas City. So that was quite an adventure to ride on, it was about 90 miles, to ride on the train to Kansas City. When I got off there she was waiting for me and I know she must have thought I looked terrible funny in kind of the way I was dressed. Of course I thought I was looking pretty good because I know it wasn't long after I got to Kansas City until she had ......(End of Tape)