(February 21, 1985, 10:00 PM): My shuttle is out of yarn and instead of winding it, I'm going to start some writing. My mind isn't on weaving, but way way back, wondering about things as they were when I was born. My mother often told me she had been cured by X-rays of cancer of uterus and suffered child birth pains for most of time she carried me because the walls of uterus were hardened by effects of X-ray.
I wasn't expected to amount to much and probably be just a bunch of sores. Well somewhere I gained strength and have lived a long life - by Grace of God.
Now to go back to beginning the thing I have wondered about so much - where did Mr. and Mrs. Barry Alexander live! She has told me she was with my mother the night I was born. Later at church, The Old McCabe Community Church, she told people that Mary Young had a baby girl, they didn't believe her. Old Dr. McCluggage took care of Mamma and me. I was born on his birthday and for many years we exchanged birthday cards.
At that time my parents lived on the old Bailey place, across the road from Dollie and Gus Rhinesmith, parents of Ella, later to become wife of Everett Glaves. The Bally place was north of Victory school. The house was north and a little beyond the road that divided the sections. I suppose my brother and sister got most of their schooling at Victory. George Faler, his daughter Abbie and son Charley had a lovely home south of Victory and on west side of road. My parents bought 160 acres east of Waverly School, built a four room house and moved to that place when I was six months old. I dimly remember the old parlor with its hanging lamp (coal oil), My sister's organ and hearing my parents, brother Cy and Sister Anna sing as she played old songs, "There's Power in the Blood", "Sunshine in my Soul", "Higher Ground". My sister Anna and Charley Faler were married when I was less then three years old, 24th of May 1905. She was 15 years old when I was born so was 18 when married. Cy was 12 years older then I and I know he went to school at Waverly.
The day my sister was married, for some reason my parents moved the big range from its place where the stairs turned, and set it across the north door of the kitchen. A family by name of Bailey lived 3/4 mile east of us and figured something unusual was going on at our house. Mr. Bailey got very thirsty driving from their house to ours on his way to Douglass 9 miles away. So stopped for a drink. He went to back door and when he knocked my Mother told him to go to the pump, out north of house, so he didn't see into the house or find out anything.
A short year later Mrs. Bailey saved my life when I had Croup so bad and my Mother was away taking care of her sister who had become paralyzed, after giving birth to baby girl who was given my Middle Name Viola. I do remember the little house in grove West of Mr. Faler's big house, where my sister and Charley lived. Where Berenice was born and when she was older I remember playing and crawling around on floor with her.
I don't remember when I was given the China Headed doll I call Hazel. Named for Mrs. Alexander's youngest daughter. Mamma made her first body, a big soft body and this is not the first head. Think I broke at least two heads. I remember once when Mamma went to a Dr. in Atlanta, he looked at my doll and said she had a fever as her cheeks were so flushed.
I think when Mamma's Aunt Lizzie Coppell and her daughter Cousin Ella Glaves came from Missouri to visit Grandma Parry and Aunt Magdelina Ketch, they brought me the beautiful China Tea set, the little Water Pitcher, six tiny glasses, the Butter dish, Cream and Sugar and spoon holder set or some of my many dolls. Such nice things which I was very careful not to break. Papa made me little cupboards out of orange crates or 30 lb. cracker boxes which were nice wooden boxes about the size of a 30 dozen egg crate.
I remember when Tom Smiley would come with a big wagon load of groceries from the "Cisco" store in Augusta and Mamma would sell him eggs and chickens, and buy little yellow boxes of Grapenut, Coffee Beans, tea leaves and flour and sugar of him. She had a small Coffee grinder and I would grind the Coffee for her. One of the sorrows of my life is that we didn't keep the little coffee grinder. So glad Cousin Marjorie has her Grandma Parry's little Coffee grinder.
I saw a bedroom set in furniture store window which I thought so beautiful, a creamy enamel set. Guess I talked about it so much that Mamma got some yellow enamel and said I could paint my bed and dresser so they would be the color I wanted. I painted and didn't realize until the day of our sale years later when I overheard some ladies wondering what wood was under that yellow enamel, that the Walnut dresser with marble top between two little drawers, three big drawers with tear drop pulls was worth many times as much as the enamel set I had wanted so much. Don't know what wood was in the bed - was sort of a reddish color. But the dresser, how often I have wished we had kept it, and I had cleaned off the enamel, when I realized it was a treasure.
I was about ten years old when my father's brother George who had TB and had lived in an open air tent city in Arizona wrote that he wanted to come live with us, so my Mother said I would have to give up my room. We packed dishes and dolls away and she gave my Doll Buggy, little cupboards, and other play things to the Ed Doyle Children. Uncle George spent one night in my room, then moved out onto front porch, so Papa got screen wire and screened in the front porch and put up canvas at west end to protect from the wind and Uncle George slept there until Fall. Papa built him a nice little house with a stove to keep him warm, but Uncle George couldn't stand being closed in and when cold weather came, he soon died. Mamma used formaldehyde on dishes and everything he touched - and I was kept away from him, only talking to him through windows of the little house.
After his death the little house became our wash house and later on Papa got our first cream separator, a Mellote, which he had read about in his farm papers. As Uncle George could not breathe in my room and moved to porch - Mamma washed everything with formaldehyde and I had my room again. Papa made me more little cupboards for my doll dishes. Mamma made curtains for front of cupboards out of flour sacks and I chainstiched them in red.
I liked to read and my first books were Bible story books. When a little older I read all the Elsie Dinsmore books, some Mary J. Holmes books which my Mother had. One book I have often wished we had kept was St. Elmo. Remember many things about book but not the author. Mamma's cousin, Mollie Kitch, was a teacher in El Dorado, the county seat of Butler County - the first woman to be county school superintendent, told Mamma she should get better books for me to read. Zane Gray, Ralph Connor's and General Lew Wallace were some she recommended. I remember I was reading Ben Hur and was to the very exciting Chariot Race when Mamma said, "Nellie it is time to feed the chickens". Oh how I hated to put down that book to go feed chickens.
Cousin Mollie also showed me how to tie mats. I still have the first little mats made on little cardboard frames. Then Papa made me some nice wooden frames, two sizes and I made several sets of hot dish mats and gave them for Christmas presents. One nice white set tied with Turkey red, I entered in County fair which was held in Douglass, and I received a blue ribbon on them. After the fair, I proudly showed them to the druggist (Dr. Wilson's brother). He asked what I got, I told him a Blue Ribbon. He thought they deserved more and he gave me a bottle of perfume. My first bottle of perfume.
Papa bought me a piano, a Hackley made in Muskegon, Michigan. I took lessons in summer but in winter the parlor wasn't heated and I couldn't practice, so I never learned to play very well. I loved my sister's organ and played that whenever we visited my sister who now lived on a farm North of Rock and across the line into Cowley County. My niece Berenice was a very fine musician and soon her Mother and Father traded the old Story and Clark Organ in on a piano and soon Berenice was playing for the church in Rock.
Grandpa Parry's sister, Aunt Sarah Francis, came to visit him often and she taught Berenice, Cousin Viola and I to crochet. Aunt Sarah said once that Viola would learn fast and do well at crocheting. Berenice also would learn but didn't think Nellie would ever learn. How wrong she was, Viola doesn't crochet at all. Berenice does beautiful crocheting and knitting.
Soon after that I rode my horse to Douglass and spent the day with Dollie Rhinesmith who at that time had a nice home across the street from Grandpa Parry. She helped start a pattern of crocheting with natural color carpet warp and I made enough to go around the new dining room table Mamma had recently bought. Mamma fixed a linen cloth the exact size of table top and my crocheted lace, about eight inches deep hung down around the table.
Sometime before this, two rooms and a pantry and small kitchen had been built at the back of my parent's four room house. My Mother was a good cook and a fast worker. Sometimes 25 or 30 people would come for meals. However, I still marvel at how she was able to cook for oil field workers and all on that four burner stove and in the tiny kitchen. Several men were regular boarders and Mamma fixed lunches for them as well as their meals and on Sundays a number of people would come from Wichita to see the new well, the first drilling for what later became the Fox-Bush oil field - but this is another story. Now back to my memories.
I remember one time Papa's cousin Fred Kaiser from over by Conway Springs and his family was coming for a visit. Mamma had the table all set, nice white tablecloth. She cooked some mulberries and put them in a nice glass dish. Carried them in and set them on white tablecloth. A cool breeze struck the hot dish and it broke - spilling purple berries and juice all over. How we all hurried to clean up that mess. Mamma stretched the stained cloth over a basin and poured boiling water onto it, from a height, and all the stain came out. We had a good chicken dinner but no mulberries that day.
Mr. Tom Smiley who drove the grocery wagon - built a store and opened a cream station and nice general store at center of Rock Creek township, a mile and 3/4 from where we lived. I worked there one summer for the magnificent sum of $4.00 a week. I bought a nice locket and chain. The locket had a nice red ruby center; it opened and for years I had my favorite school teacher's picture in it. My little niece, Opal, cut her teeth on that locket and it has some tiny nicks made by her teeth. Also bought a bracelet with green sets in it. [Editors' note: This is probably glass meant to represent jewels.] My Uncle Oscar told me I should have bought pigs instead, had my father feed them, then I could have sold them for a good deal of money. Barney Berg had a blacksmith shop near the store so Smileyberg became the name of that little station.