From Jodie Scales' Journal

When I asked Granny, who is currently 71 years old, what her first memories were, her immediate response was, "Oh, I don't know." Granny doesn't go in much for sentimental journeys on her own, but I have always been especially close to her and she indulges me even when she'd rather not. After a few minutes I had her recalling childhood memories that she said were very nice times for her. She told me that her family sat around the radio eating popcorn and apples while listening to "Amos and Andy" and "The Shadow". She recalled with a special fondness that her Mama always popped a big bowl of popcorn and gave each of the kids an apple. Not having enjoyed the delight of popcorn and apples togather I ask if she ate them together. "Oh yes, I'd eat a handful of fresh white popcorn and then a bite of my apple," Granny continued. "Mom and Dad would set on the couch and all of us kid set around them and the radio on the floor with our popcorn and apples. The living room was a big long room with a heating stove at one end of the room. The stove burnt coal to warm the house. The radio, a big old Zenith cabinet style, the couch and two chairs filled the room. There were a lot of windows in the room. Mama opened the dark green blinds every morning to let the sun in. She just as faithfully closed the blinds and curtains every evening. Those were fun times for us kids. We sat on the hardwood floor that us girls had to wax every week. Those were good radio programs too, Amos and Andy and The Shadow."

Granny could also recall how much she enjoyed setting around the big oak dinning room table when she was only six or seven years old. Granny recalled that her mother's round oak table was much bigger than the one that I have now. Her Mama, Aunt Mary, and Granny's older sisters would come down to set around the oak table to sip a cup of coffee and talk. It never really matter what they talked about, they just enjoyed being together around the table talking over a hot cup of coffee. Granny remembered slipping in and setting quietly by, listening. "No one ever really paid any attention to me there, but I enjoyed just listening." My younger sister Laura and brother Mike, and I spent a lot of time outside on Granny and Papal's farm. Sometimes just out back of the house, playing in the barn or down at the creek. I can clearly remember climbing two of the trees over to the east side of the house. A small silver trailer that Mamal lived in, set to the east of the house. Mamal, Papal's mother was already an old woman. She was thin and nearly one hundred years old. I remember Mamal, being very particular about us kids playing around the trailer. There was a small hill just to the back of her trailer and the two trees I remember playing in were at each end of the trailer near the edge of the hill. The tree closest to the house wasn't very big, a small apple tree with several branches low enough o get a good start on a climb. The trunk wasn't more than maybe three feet high before it broke into branches angling upward. A big rock stood just close enough to the trunk to use as a step. I was short even then, but I could stand on the rock and wrap my arms around the lowest branch as it curved over and up toward the end of the trailer. I would push off the rock, swing my l egs up and over the tree limb like a trapeze, and sometimes just hang upside down from that branch and let my stringy hair and arms dangle back down toward the rock. I wasn't yet long enough to reach down and touch the rock. I liked the feeling of hanging in mid air. I also liked watching the crickets jump around the edges of the rock from such a different perspective. Sometimes Pap's big yellow dog got into the act. He would wander over slowly and lick my face as I hung in front of him. I had strong legs and could hang from the tree for what seemed like hours if I wanted to, but one sloppy lick in the face from Ol' Yellow was enough to end my trapeze act in a hurry. The only other real problem with the apple tree was that it was in clear sight of the house and the area to the back of the house where most of the family gathered in. We got caught too easily when we tried to climb it. The tree at t he other end of the trailer was much bigger. It was taller and harder to get started in; sometimes I had to turn a big five gallon bucket upside down to tand on, stretch and pull my self up to the lowest branch. It was worth the extra effort, though, because once you got into the tree, the branches were much bigger and you could climb so much higher. It was also harder for anyone over at the house to see you when you climbed the big tree.

I didn't mind being outside if I could get away from the bugs and hot sun by climbing high up into the tree. I would position myself on a large sturdy branch that grew up and out away from the main trunk of the tree. I wasn't scared of climbing high like Laura was. She never wanted to climb the big tree. I lay backwards on the branch with only my legs holding me to the tree. I could look up into the sky through the higher branches and feel the breeze as the wind rustled through the leaves. I was always better at climbing trees than Laura or Mike. I could sometimes escape from them by climbing higher than they would go, until they got mad and told on me for being up in the tree.

Only a few feet behind the hill set a small shed. When I think back on it, I remember more of a shack than what I would really call a shed. The wood was unpainted and gray with age, but still intact. The shed was divided into two parts. The largest area was open on the front that faced the house. Papal kept tractor or farm equipment like disks and plows in that section. There was a smaller portion, completely closed on all four sides, to the end near the corn field. I can't remember what purpose that area served. It was dark and home to the biggest Granddaddy Long Leg spiders I ever remember seeing, but other than that, it was empty. I can't even imagine what it could have been good for. The sides of the shed were so low that the only animals that could have been housed in it would have been pigs or chickens.

A rusty colored tin roof covered the shed from both sides up a slight incline to the center peak. The roof was where we spent our time; even Laura climbed up to our perch on the roof. It was a pretty safe play area with the highest point not being over seven feet off the ground and the gradual slant of the roof rendering the sides no more than four feet high. A small tree grew along the back side of the shed and worked as our taircase onto the roof. On hot sunny days the roof was scorching on bare skin so we stayed in the shaded area near the tree. We could sit on t he roof and watch the men in the fields as they moved south away from the woods toward our little kingdom upon the shed.

Between the side yard where the shed stood and the house lay the back yard. Between the drive and the house three big trees, too tall to climb, shaded the back yard area. Family and animals rested under their shade daily. It was the gathering place at Granny and Papal's. A long straight bench was moved around under the shade. Sometimes we had to set on the bench when we had gotten in trouble for something. Usually, if we had gotten in trouble it was for something pretty minor, like fighting with each other or just being a nuisance. If we were really in trouble Granny would send us down to the edge of the field to get a green switch off one of the trees. Now that was real punishment, to have to get the switch that was going to be used across our own bottoms. It never resulted in more than a swat or two but those thin green switches really stung.

Sometimes one of the littler girls would have their baby doll stroller and trunk of cloths set up under the shade trees. My little cousin Kelly pushed a pretty blue reclined stroller around the yard whenever she could get someone to help her. There was also a smaller doll stroller where the baby sat upright. The boys, Mike and Steve or Kevin, loved to grab the stroller from the little girls and race through the yard. Kelly just screamed as her baby doll bounced out of the stroller as it was pushed at top speeds over the bumpy back yard. In the afternoon, when he came home from work at the factory, Papal stopped to visit with all of us kids and pet the dogs. He was normally on his way in to get a cup of coffee before heading out to the fields to begin his farm work. No matter what he had to do he stopped in the back yard to see the grand kids. He knelt down and rested in a crouched position to let Kelly show him her baby doll and laughed a little when she told him how mean the boys had been.

The back yard at Granny and Papal's was also grounds on more than one occasion for me to demonstrate my adventurous nature. Papal liked bringing horses or ponies home for us kids. One of the ponies was an ornery little black and white Shetland. Another time it was a slightly larger black pony with a white star on his forehead. Laura liked to be around the ponies but she was a little bit afraid of them. As she held the black pony still for a picture, her little body slanted to give her completely out-stretched arm enough support to hold the pony still. Where I stood as close to the ponies as I could get. I nestled their heads against my chest and wrapped my arms around their necks. Because I wasn't the slightest bit afraid Papal loved putting me on them first. On more than one occasion I ended up on the grassy earth only to get up and jump back onto the pony. I think Papal was always a little proud of how fearless I seemed to be around the ponies. Either that or he just enjoyed watching to see who was going to be more stubborn, his oldest granddaughter or the new animal he had brought home. A gravel and dirt drive circled from the gravel road along one side of the house toward the barn and then back between the house and the trailer to the same gravel road. On the opposite side of the house from the trailer the drive separated the yard from the pasture. The house sat up higher than the pasture and a hill led down to the drive. On the pasture side of the drive there was still a little bit of a hill before the fence that enclosed the pasture. One of my favorite spots as a kid was in the playhouse that we created with our imaginations and a big lilac bush that grew nestled up against the fence. It seemed as if the lilac bush was hollow on the inside and we had plenty of room to slide in from one side and play for hours inside the cover of the branches of the lilac bush. After an electric fence was put on the inside of the old rusty fence, we used the sagging older fence as a chair in our playhouse. The only real problem that I can remember with that special retreat was that when the purple lilac flowers were in bloom, bees loved our playhouse almost as much as we did. Getting stung by a little sweat bee was one thing, but we pretty much had to give up our special playhouse when the big yellow jackets began swarming around the lilacs.

The barn was a short distance north of the lilac bush. It was a big old barn with a hay loft that covered all but the front center part of the barn. I never really noticed just how delapidated the old barn was until I looked at some old pictures. It was the same gray weathered, and unpainted wood that made up the sheds. I remember two doors in the upper part of the barn leading to the hay loft. One was on the fr ont of the ba rn and looked out towards the house. The other door was on the east side and faced the woods. When it was time to store newly bailed hay or straw in the barn Pap would pull an old elivator up in the barn yard. The men pushed the elivator up so that the top end ran inside the door on the front of the barn. The wagons stacked full of hay were pulled from the fields, up next to the elivator. The boys loaded the bails on the elivator to be carried up to the hay loft. One or two of the boys had the hot sticky job of catching the bails as they came off the elivator inside the barn. It was like an assembly line and the hay was stacked from one side to the other in the loft. The sun shinning through the door opening where the bails rolled up into the barn gave the air visability as particles of hay, straw and dust floated around our heads. The air smelled musty and of the dried dust and hay, but we loved to play in the hay loft. When the men weren't working to put up the hay we were sometimes allowed to build forts with the bails.

There were holes where the wood had been pulled away or just rotted and broken away around the corner of the east side where the animals came in and out of the barn. Sometimes we had cows or horses that wandered in and out of the barn from the pasture. At other times the barn and pasture were empty. There was a small rectangular corn crib on the back of the barn. We didn't play in that area because of the rats. Between t he rotten wooden floor and the old corn that layed in the corn crib the rats seemed to thrive. Jay, Granny's youngest, was in FFA (Future Farmers of America), and he use to shoot the rats and certain kinds of birds each year for some kind of pest control project. They had to collect and freeze the pests they shot and turn it in as some kind of contest. I think Jay always did pretty well and there were still bunches of rats in the back part of the barn.

If you followed the pasture on down and away from the house you could find yourself at the creek. In fact, right at the end of the pasture where the creek bent was the snake tree. It wasn't really some rare tree species, named after serpents. We called it the snake tree because it was a dead t ree that had gathered a lot of wood and stuff around its roots in the creek. What seemed like thousands of snakes lived in the nest. It was kind of odd that one dead tree could be a home to two such contrasting residents. The snakes lived at the roots and the most beautiful wild yellow canaries lived up high in the branches of the tree. As attractive as the singing wild canaries were, we didn't play around the snake tree very often. Normally, we spent our time in and around the creek just a little north of the snake tree. The water was very shallow and clear at that part of the creek. It was too wide to cross without getting into the water, but then we didn't really mind getting wet. My brother and I were sent to that part of the creek with our older uncle Jay on Friday afternoons to sain for crawdads in preparation for our weekend fishing trips up to Michigan. We carried big plastic buckets and a sain down to the crick and fought over who got to do the saining. Sometimes we wore big rubber boots, but more often than not we just waded in, in out tennis shoes. We didn't wade into the creek bare footed very often. The sharp rocks on the creek bed made it dangerous not to wear shoes. The shoes didn't protect our feet and ankles from the other dangers, however . Many times we would remove our protective covering of canvas only to find that a small black leach had found its way between our toes. We always checked for the unwanted leaches or ticks as soon as we returned to the ouse from an outing in the woods or trip to the creek. After all, we couldn't let minor little unwanted annoyances such as those creatures keep us from the work at hand.

Each end of the sain was a wooden stick that we held tightly as we poked it along the bottom of the rocky creek bed, splashing water as we kicked and stumbled along. One part of the creek bed was more sand than rocks and it was easy to get the end of the stick stuck in the sand. That area of the creek was shaded almost entirely and the water was normally very cold. After moving along the creek bed with the sain for several feet we would lift the net to see how many crawdads we had trapped.

The real trick was to shake the net of the sain and empty the crawdads into the plastic buckets. After being ripped from their homes in the bottom of the crick they were usually holding tightly onto the net. If shaking didn't loosen their someone had to pick them off the net. Even though I knew how to grab the body of the little crawfish just behind the claws to avoid being pinched, I preferred to leave that task to Jay. Jay wasn't that much older than I, but he always did the tough jobs.

When we returned to the house with our catch, the crawdads were transferred again into a big metal wash pan with water or ice to keep them alive and in good condition for the trip to the cottage in Michigan. They would be used over the next two or three days as live bait.

Weekend fishing trips to the St. Joseph River just outside of Constantine, Michigan were family events to remember. Granny has told me that Pap started going to the St. Joe River in 1947. Papal's father, Papal, and his brother Ed took Uncle Jimmy to Constantine, Michigan to camp and fish. There was a small hotel next to the Mill that Papal's father always rented a room in. Erastus took Jimmy, who couldn't have been more than 8 or 9, nd spend the nights in the room while Pap and his brother camped behind the Mill. They first fished off the bank or out of a small boat right there in town . Constantine was a small little town and the St. Joseph River cut right hrough the middle of it. One day they were going down the river and spotted a cluster of little cabins. Pap stopped the boat and went up to talk to the old couple that owned the cabins. The couples' name was Mr. and Mrs . Beaver. After a short exchange Pap made arrangements to rent one of the cabins for the following weekend.

"We all went up the next weekend, and had a real good time, " Granny wrote in a recent letter to me. She also told me that as they continued to make weekend trips to the river they became friendly with the elderly couple next door to the Beaver's property. They were the Arnolds and they had a lot with a trailer and a cottage. After Mr. Beaver died, his widow sold the property with the small cabins so Papal, and Granny started renting the Arnolds' trailer for their weekend trips to the river. I can remember trips to the trailer. It was small and we used the outhouse set to one end of the Arnold's property. There was hardly room inside the small trailer to sit around the even smaller table for breakfast. We slept sprawled out from one end of the trailer to the other. Some of the family would sleep in tents or even in the back of the station wagon. It didn't matter that it was cramped and had no modern conveniences. The Arnolds were nice people and Granny and Papal loved the weekend outing to the river.

When Mr. Arnold died, Mrs. Arnold decided to sell her place, the cottage and the trailer. She gave Granny and Papal the first chance at the cottage so they bought it. "All of the gang was up there almost every weekend," Granny wrote. At first we lived in the cottage as it was left by the Arnolds. It seemed like a mansion in comparison to the small trailer. As you walked into the front door there were two bedrooms off to the right at one end of the cottage. They weren't big, but they were private and Granny and Papal always took the front bedroom, the largest of the two. Just inside the door you would be standing on the cool cement floor of one large room. Both the living room and a kitchen at the opposite end to the bedrooms made up one big open area. Even with the whole gang at the river the cottage seemed so roomy and grand. We used to have army type cots that were sent up nightly for us kids. With the cots and the couch folded out to make a bed we had wall to wall beds.

In a small wooden shed just off the kitchen end of the cottage, we used to ake our baths. It had an old time tub that we filled with buckets of water. We had also moved up to a two hole outhouse at the opposite end of the Arnolds' property from the smaller version we had used while staying in the trailer. I didn't care very much for the outhouse. One day Granny was out using the outhouse and saw a big gray river rat running out of the corner. Granny didn't even yank up her pants before she came out of the outhouse screaming. Uncle Jay still laughs as he says, "I can still see Mom come running out with her pants dropped down, screaming about that rat." That was when it was decided to build a bathroom onto the cottage.

Of course the trips to the cottage were supposed to be fishing trips and the men did plenty of fishing. There was also a lot of laughing, drinking from time to time and family togetherness. I was never aware of how much time Dad and uncle Jimmy were out in the boat fishing and how much time was spent drinking. They would sometimes leave in the boat only to go up river to the tavern in Constantine. Papal claimed to find 52 beer cans in the boat after one of their outings.

After the nearly three hour drive from home to Constentine, Dad would always stop at the bait shop in town to buy fresh night crawlers, just in case the fish weren't hitting on the crawdads. Constantine was small and peaceful with only one main street. There was a restaurant where I never remember eating, a barber shop, antique store, and place to pick up groceries. Mom picked up lunch meats, fresh eggs and milk while Dad went into the bait shop . For me the dime store was the most important stop. I couldn't wait to get to town because it usually meant a new paint by numbers for me. If not a paint by numbers, then something else to keep us kids occupied was normally a part of the deal. Mom wanted to enjoy her weekend and hearing kids say, "I'm bored" every other hours wasn't very relaxing. My favorite pastime was paint by numbers One weekend I got a really difficult paint by numbers horse picture. It was the most difficult one I had ever had. The picture on the cardboard box was beautiful. Golden brown and chestnut colors made up the tender faces of two of the most stately quarter horses I had ever seen. Standing on the bare wood floor of the dime store I looked at the box intensely. The first horse held its head up high with its delicate ears pointed forward in an alert position as if it had just heard something. The lower picture showed a darker thoroughbred. The darker horse held its head tilted forward and turned just enough to highlight it's big brown eye and perfectly rounded jaw bone. As we left the dime store with my prize, I could hardly wait to get the few more miles down the rusty colored dirt roads to the cottage to open it and begin.

The turn off to the cottage was marked by a long row of five or six mailboxes. I always watched for those mailboxes as my clue that we were arriving. The remaining trip was along a dirt road of fine reddish sand leading to the beautifully bordered lot of our cottage. Along the road edge of our property, fragrant lilac bushes, a tulip tree and full green fur trees lined the entrance. There were flowers blooming all around the front side of the cottage most of the summer. They were left over gifts from Mrs. Arnold who years earlier had planted perennials of almost every variety.

When we finally made it, and the supplies were unloaded, Granny gave me permission to set up my studio on the outside table. Just like at home, we spent most of our time at the river outside. There were picnic tables just for us kids to spend our time coloring or painting if we were especially lucky that weekend. As I opened one end of the colorful cardboard box that held my new paint by numbers, and tipped it to reveal the contents I found two 8 x 10 gray white cardboard pictures covered with the smallest little blue outlined areas I had ever seen. The paints were in small clear plastic containers all attached to a center strip of plastic. Each container had one number printed on the attached plastic lid. The number was the key. It was very impotent to make sure that you only opened one number at a time. The plastic lids snapped so securely to the paint container that if you opened more than one container at a time you were almost sure to spill some of your paint trying to open the next color.

I spread out old newspaper on the table outside the cottage to begin my painting. Both of the pictures were detailed close up pictures of the heads and faces of two beautiful chestnut horses. I had never tried such a detailed picture and as I looked at how tiny some of the areas were, I began to realize how difficult my task would be. I set up under the shade of the big trees and began to examine which number I should begin with. I wasn't a novice at paint for numbers and I knew that choosing which order to paint the numbers n was very important. I needed to pick the number that had the largest concentration near the center of the painting and then work my way outward.

After selecting the first color, I lifted the cheap plastic brush that had come with the paint by number package. How could the manufactures of such beautiful pictures put such contrastingly inadequate tools in their kits. As I examined the tip of the brush, I wished I had remembered to ask for a better brush while we were in the dime store in Constantine. The red plastic handle of the brush was too short to hold and move the way a real artist would have. And the course black bristles of the brush were too thick and uneven. I pulled out a couple of what seemed to be wild hairs in the brush and decided I would just have to make do. If I rolled the tip of the brush in a small pool of the paint on one edge of the newspaper, I could probably keep it inside even the tiniest of spots.

While I concentrated on producing a masterpiece Mom and Granny planned a dinner that would also be eaten on the outside tables. The tables set under big strong hickory trees between the cottage and the river. Besides providing cooling shade,those particular hickories served as home to the prettiest big black Michigan squirrels. I am sure the squirrels preferred the freedom of roaming the grounds in peace during the week when there were rarely people around to the busy weekends. Still if we were quiet we could watch them scamper from one tree to another collecting hickory nuts. The boys didn't care too much about watching squirrels or painting a masterpiece. Instead they rushed down the small hill to the bank in an effort to climb into the boat with Papal and Dad to see how the fish were biting. The evening fishing trips weren't usually as rewarding as the early morning trips. The boys looked so forward to those outings that there was never any trouble getting the boys to go to sleep at night. They all wanted to wake up early and be included in the first trip out with Dad and Papal.

Sometimes the men would sneak off early in the morning without any of the kids. The river was still and quite as the sun began to rise and the boat headed up or down river with the men. I can remember getting up to go to the outhouse one morning as Dad was pushing the silvery aluminum boat away from the pier. Papal sat in the back of the boat holding one hand on the motor and the other on the side. Fog rose from the water of the river and the sun was just beginning to peek through the trees on the other side . There was n't any wind but the early morning air was cool. In the morning quiet, Dad's whisper echoed as he softly told me to be quiet not to wake anyone as I went back into the cottage. The ground was cold and wet on my bare feet, but I didn't scamper off quickly as I normally would have. Instead I stood and watched the boat turn around the bend. The voices of my uncle Jimmy and Papal seemed to linger in the thick morning air as they moved out of sight. I knew they would be back in a few hours with big fish stories, ready for a big breakfast. I wasn't a big fisherman myself but I did like going out in the boat with Papal. He took us kids out more for rides or sightseeing trips than to do any real fishing. I loved riding in the boat when he took us down the river. I liked going down river more that up river. As the boat moved down the river we would pass other cottages and cabins. There were even a couple of long piers that looked like other families swam from them. I remember one that went way out in the river. One of us kids would always ask Papal to point out the smaller little white cabins trimmed in red that had once been owned by the Beavers. We liked to tell each other that we remembered coming up to the river when we were still staying in the small cabins, but in truth I think all of us kids were too young to remember those early years. Up river, heading back toward Constantine, there were more bends and hidden little coves, but no more cottages. Going up river was more like going on an adventure into the wilderness. At one point tall grassy reeds grew up from the river and you had to maneuver the boat around them to one side or the other. The river was less populated and better for fishing upriver, but I preferred the boat rides in the other direction.

I did fish once in a while when we were at the cottage. One morning we were just across the river from the cottage fishing. There were some tree branches that hung out from the shoreline into the water. We positioned the boat up close enough into the branches to be able to drop our lines down into the waters under the branch cover. We caught pretty little fish called sun fish fairly quickly. The blue gills and sun fish would bite on the worms or night crawlers, which I didn't mind putting on the hook myself. I wasn't about to fish for anything that required using the crawdads for bait. It took a little while to learn how to thread the hook in and out of the warm so that just enough of the worm hung off on both ends to wiggle around and attract the fish. I don't think we even kept any of the small fish we caught that morning, but we could catch them without having to sit still too awfully long.