Applying rules to living can save a lot of time, trouble and heartache. The rules I apply to my living are rooted in the Judo-Christian faith. They come easy to me as I learned them from the knee of my mother and the patience of my father. When there are six children before you and one after you, you are planted in place number seven. You have the older ones to lead you and the younger to grow up along side of you.
When you fall asleep in worship with your head on your mother's lap and drift off with the sweet scent of ivory flakes in the air it gives you a sense of cleanliness and sweetness. When you are praised for going to the pump outside and drawing water for your sick brother, it gives you a sense of being worthy of your place as number seven.
I cannot imagine what it would be like to grow up in a family where contention rules the day, and the night. So, I was blessed to be in this family and in this time in history. I was too young to remember the great depression of the twenties and early thirties. I only learned that I had lived through it much later. I do remember parents who worked hard and loved much.
My father worked six days a week in an office in the southeastern mountains of Kentucky. He was a frail, tall thin man with dignified carriage and presence. Never to enjoy robust health, I never heard him complain about his limitations regarding health issues. I did hear him rail against corruption and small mindedness. What he lacked in strength of body my mother made up for in steady good health. She was never confined to a hospital until six months before her death when she experienced a heart attack. Recovering from that she died six months later during the night in her sleep after an evening with her family. She had fairly danced across the floor in a new red dress that one of her daughters had made for her. She was eighty two years old and slowed down a bit due to inoperable cataracts.
Getting back to rules, we had them of course. Otherwise how could a family of ten mesh smoothly and cooperatively. There were plenty of bumps along the way. One rule I learned the hard way. When you return home from worship you remove your Sunday shoes when you first get home. New shoes for a five year old were a big temptation. Dancing along the pathway in shiny new shoes is just a natural thing to do, or so I thought. When I felt the sting of a switch on my legs I learned a valuable lesson. Obey your mother. To this day I remove my shoes when I return from worship. New shoes were not easily come by in the year 1931 and were meant to be tended carefully.
There were plenty of opportunities for play in those years in spite of lean financial situations. In the dead of winter a new tricycle at Christmas can be ridden all about the house with one's younger brother. And if no indoor transportation were available, a row of chairs make a very satisfactory train for make believe travel. On other days when it is very, very cold it can be quite entertaining to write on the frosty windows from the inside-with your fingers ! Apparently there were no rules for that sort of thing. Rules mostly applied to behavior and interacting with others both your peers and adults.
There were many ways to help pass the time in my early childhood of learning rules. Helping out with chores in my family, even for a young child was mandatory. I well remember how itchy my hands became when it was my job to cut okra from the garden. And oh, the excitement of running from the barn to the house to find my mother and tell her that my father needed the bill book. Since he had a hobby of keeping milk cows and selling milk he had to write bills. Being his helper was a great honor.
Having cows around in the fields could be a problem, as I learned one day. My older siblings had a tennis court out near a pasture where the cows were kept. I had been out to watch the players and on my way back to the house I was ambling along unaware that Mickey, a cow with horns and a dislike for children came bearing down on me. My oldest brother however, had been keeping an eye out for me and he dashed out and used his tennis racket to render a hefty swing onto the rump of Mickey. had he not noticed, I am not sure what would have happened, but I do not think it would have been pleasant. Looking out for the younger ones was expected of the older children when when they were at play.
Sometimes sad and regrettable things can occur when you have animals around. One of my brothers was not at all happy with a rule for him which was to milk the cows on Sunday morning before departing to church. He had acquired a little puppy which was in a playful mood on that fateful day. The puppy was running and nipping at my brother's heels. My brother, not being in a playful mood lifted his boot to scoot the puppy away. At that point the puppy just dropped over dead. Acting in anger can have tragic results and can be a hard lesson to learn.
Living in the country with neighbors all along the road we were allowed to go rather freely to our neighbors to visit. My favorite thing was to visit a lady who had a wood burning stove and she had fresh sweet butter (possibly from my father's dairy). She would butter a slice of white bread and put it in the over to toast. Oh, what a wonderful treat. I named this treat "milky way" as it was so delicious.
Another neighbor who was a friend of all of us was an extremely tall, thin man who was nick named "high pockets". I suppose he did not mind for we were never told not to refer to him by this name.
Having free range in this rural mountainous area had many benefits. We could go about freely in the woods and play or explore. Playing could be pretending to be Tarzan and swinging on large wild grape vines. Natural wonders were to be seen in the woods too. Once I stumbled upon a rabbit's nest and saw the tiny hairless rabbits with their eyes still closed. I squatted down and watched in wonder as they slept and wiggled about in their nest of leaves. I instinctively knew not to disturb them so I left them as I saw them for their mother to return and care for them.
Many years later I was privileged to observe a similar scene. In summer here I keep my front south windows covered with honeycomb blinds. It keeps the house cooler on hot summer days. One day I raised them a bit and left them there not realizing a mother rabbit had her nest there under the branches of a cottoneaster shrub. Later when I returned I witnessed her standing over the nest while the babies nursed. That was as priceless as the time I saw younger babies when I was only five or six years old in the mountains of Kentucky.
At another time I hope to share some of my experiences with rules for living.
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