Salt Rock

 I am still looking for a Christmas.  I don't know if there wasn't any or that we didn't have money to have Christmas. Or if there was some reason for me to forget.  Well, I will just keep on looking.

We moved again.  We must have lived in the little house in Salt Rock all winter, because I started to school there.  I must have been about four and a half years old because my little baby brother is just four years younger than me.  I remember that there was some discussion about my being old enough to go to school.  The school house was not very far away from our house although we had to cross the railroad tracks to get there. The schoolhouse was a very small little building with one room.  I can't remember the teacher, except that  she was very kind to me.  I did not have a desk in front of me because I was excess and there was no real desk.  I can remember having to hold my tablet on my lap and trying to write on it.  This was very hard to do and I did a lot of drawing of stick people.  I did learn to read from watching the other kids writing on the blackboard.  The teacher gave me a book.  I wish I could find it again.  It was full of  pictures of animals and the pages were split so that you could make them half of one kind and half another.  I loved that book.  I can't remember where it went.  I do very well remember the BOOK.

Another very distinct memory of this little house is very sad and has given me very distinct reasons for certain ways of thinking.  I think this was about four years after the peace was signed that ended World War I.  One Sunday morning it was a very sunny day and we were all out, I think going to go to Sunday school.  Anyway we were all outside when a big Wagon came down the road and pulled up at the house across the road.  There was a big wooden box on the wagon and the men who were driving it got off and very quietly went up ot the door of my friend Edith.  When her mother and father came out to the wagon, they began to cry and then all the children began to cry.  I didn't understand till later in the day.  My Mama told me later that the box was from the War House, she called it.  It was the box carrying one of Edith's brothers who had been killed in the War.  I didn't know what war.  What was a war? I heard the work Germans many times in the next few days.  The things I heard made me think the Germans were very bad.  On day I understood what a funeral was and that they were going to bury this boy's body in the ground and that was what the funeral was.  We were standing on the porch beside the big box and one of the Gill twins threw a big handful of dirt onto the box.  I don't remember why or what made me do it, but I had to give the Gill twins another of my fits of kicking, hitting and I even made them run home again.

Later that day they took the box away and I never did forget what the Germans had done.  They had killed my friend's brother.  I still feel a great anger when I think of that day.  I think very early happenings stay with a child forever most of the time.  After seventy five years mine is very clear in my mind.

Another memory of this house is because of my Sister's illness.  The only thing I remember is that she was shut into a room and she screamed and yelled and Mama said she was "out of her head".  I never understood how she could get out of her head until many years later.  She had been very sick from a fever.  She recovered.  I don't have many memories of my sister.  I think she would be gone working away from home.