About my previous entry

Mother kept each one of those items I blogged about yesterday for reasons of her own.

She kept the candy bar, I believe, to remind her of the beau who once bought her a Milky Way. I imagine that, in the middle of the depression, five cents for a candy bar was about all any hired farm hand could spare for his sweetie. I'm not sure if my dad was the one who bought it for her; I think she was also sweet on a couple of other fellows before she hooked up with him.

This is the entry Daddy left in Mother's autograph book when they were courting. I'd know his left-handed scrawl anywhere.

Mother kept several of those perfect attendance awards like the one in the picture. After completing the eighth grade, she returned to her one-room schoolhouse and took seventh and eighth grades over again, simply because she loved school and learning. She told me that her dad didn't think high school was a good thing for young ladies... he felt it made them too "worldly". So she didn't have that option. Oh, and the "Cora Smith" who signed the certificate was her teacher. Many years later that same lady was my fourth-grade teacher.

About the sale bill: My Uncle Leo eventually bought that farm and raised his family there. I don't know whether he bought it directly from my parents, though. We only could have lived there for a couple of months during the summer of my birth. I know this because I was born in Iowa in July, and the sale date is October. My parents never tried owning their own home again until 1957, in Kansas City.

This is my Uncle Leo's page from Mother's autograph book.