I could never have predicted the cataclysmic changes that would impact our town and our family in the next few years,or how they would change life forever, often in ways I didn't like.
I would have been content if the eight of us lived happily ever after like all the fairy tales suggested you should. Other people could come in to laugh and visit, then leave after a reasonable amount of time. I'd like to limit John Henry's visits, but that didn't seem possible. The weather was the only thing that helped in that regard, so I prayed for rain sometimes.
The talk started at school just before Christmas break, some kids saying the school was going to close. Most of the time I wouldn't have believed them, but it was the way they said it, just sadly like they were thinking about it out loud, trying to understand.
One of them was Jimmy Addison whose father was the superintendent. He said he wasn't supposed to tell - at least the first time he talked about it. By the second time he mentioned it at recess, there were three or four other kids who seemed to know a lot about the subject.
"We're going to Dawson," Brenda Hall said.
"Who is?" I asked.
"All of us," she said self-importantly.
"Me too?" I asked.
"Yeah, all of us."
That afternoon, I asked Mother if we were all going to Dawson to school next year. She hesitated.
"What have you heard?" she asked, not waiting for an answer. "There's talk of the school closing, but let's not think about it right now. Christmas is just around the corner," she said, smiling sincerely.
New Year's Eve 1959 was celebrated as usual by the whole clan, with several other families invited over to play "Spoons" and 42 and munch their way into the new year. "Spoons" provided the requisite noise: squeals, yells about cheating, metal spoons clattering, and dull thumps, when someone goodnaturedly slugged another person in the back with a hand or fist.
The twenty-five people inside stayed revved up till midnight when everyone sang Auld Lang Syne sadly, screamed "Happy New Year", and ran outside to set off fireworks, Roman candles, sparklers, and bottle rockets in a flurry of activity and noise that would unnerve a seasoned Marine under fire.
Roman candles shot up into the velvet night, colored orbs streaking into the inky sky, dissolving among the stars to the "oohs" and "ahs" of children watching the spectacle, shadows playing on the light reflected on their upturned faces. Jan and some of the smaller kids held sparklers, mesmerized by the flecks of light spitting out in every direction from the sharp iron rods grasped rigidly in their tiny hands.
I was allowed to hold a Roman candle, but it scared me, so I usually ended up handing it off to Susan, who already had one of her own. She looked like Annie Oakley holding her two six shooters as the tiny explosions worked their way out the end of the hollow cylinders, streaming toward the stars.
The older boys and some of the girls lit strings of firecrackers and tossed them away quickly before they exploded, inciting childish screams. Meanwhile my brother set up glass coke bottles, put bottle rockets inside, and watched them shoot into the sky, their pops anemic compared to the firecrackers.
It was an exciting way to welcome the last year of the 50s decade: fun, friends, family, fireworks.
In March, my mother suddenly talked of getting people to sign a petition. For weeks, every evening after supper, she dutifully set out and talked with our neighbors, friends, and others in the community.
"What's the petition for?" Susan asked one day during supper.
"Well," she said with a hint of resignation, "Our school is going to close. The state has decided it's too small. All the kids will have to go to school somewhere else."
Susan just stared at Mother like she was unable to process what she had just heard. I felt a sense of panic rise, starting immediately to worry how I would be accepted in a new school. Jan asked if Mrs. Hagle would still be her teacher. "I sincerely doubt it," Mother answered with a certainty that made us wonder what else she knew that we didn't.
This year, in my third grade class, there were only three kids. Two boys, Doug and Dwayne, and me. Sometimes we went over and did fourth grade work when we got through with the third grade work. Mrs. Poteet taught both grades in one room as did each of the elementary teachers.
Mother had decided to carry the petition to go to Corsicana schools. It was the largest district of the three being considered. Mrs. Cary was simultaneously trying to get a petition for all of us to go to Blooming Grove, and Mr. Daniels was lobbying for Dawson, all locations about 20 miles from Purdon. The petitions would allow a vote on where the people in Purdon wanted their kids to go to school. Or at least that's the way I understood it.
On the day the petitions were due, Mother went early to the county judge's office, but he was not in yet. Instead of waiting, she ran an errand like she always did because she had so much to do, and when she returned two other people had gotten there, and he could only take two petitions. Mother was heartbroken even though I think she was the only one who really wanted her kids to go to the Corsicana schools anyway.
Dawson was the preferred district, and that was the school chosen. The day after the vote, our parents started talking about moving to the ranch at Corbet, some land my grandfather had bought in the 1940s that was in the Corsicana school district.
Their talking made me nervous. "I don't really want to move," I offered one night while they pored over houseplans. No one even looked up. "I don't really want to move," I said louder.
"This is what's best for our family," Mother said. "You'll like going to school in Corsicana."
"How do you know?" I asked plaintively, picturing myself rolled into the fetal position on the bus, riding to the new school, unable to make myself leave the security of the seat.
They seemed unconcerned with me, and were talking about creating a house beginning with a small structure already located on the land, formerly used by a caretaker.
They planned to move another house to the site, and it would become the kids' bedroom wing. That house had also been owned by my grandfather and was the first house my parents had lived in when they married. It sat on Farm to Market Road 2452, leading from Highway 31 to Corbet.
Finally, they would attach the two with a master bedrooom and living room, which my dad and some gin hands would build connecting them.
"Everybody will have to help," Daddy said, ignoring my last plea. That would prove to be an understatement.
I could smell fudge cooking in the kitchen and hoped Neila would hurry and tell us it was ready, so I could console myself. Eating it on a spoon offered the most appealing way, but often, unable to wait for it to cool, I burned my tongue and had to run for an ice cube to freeze the pain.
Susan liked to make fudge too, and once when she was taking the heavy iron pan off the flame to beat the fudge, she suddenly was overpowered by the weight of the pan and had to make an emergency landing on the yellow vinyl chair in the kitchen. It melted the plastic in a perfect circle, exposing the cotton padding.
Mother laughed when she saw it; Daddy didn't. He opened his mouth to say something, and the words seemed to race right back down his throat after Mother issued a wordless scolding. She just about always took our side against Daddy. He wasn't much of a match for her. It was usually Mother and all of us kids against him, an unequal team division, but it suited us.
Stephen was already attending high school in Corsicana per his own request and was living with Nettie during the week. Neila was attending the local junior college, Navarro, and would be moving to the dormitory there in September.
But within weeks, talk turned to activity. We were leaving Purdon, moving from a small town to the country, but a much larger school district.
Maybe there would be some girls in my grade to be friends with.
I had outgrown playing with Boy, and Gary and I were getting too tall to duck under the house and play anymore. I used to be invited out to spend the night at the Mills' house and play with their son, Jack. Helen Mills was beautiful and kind, and she always made me feel special.
She couldn't have children and they had adopted their son.
"Why don't you just stay and be my little girl?" she said wistfully one day as we walked outside. She squeezed my shoulder warmly. I didn't know what to say and stammered, but she laughed. "Your mama wouldn't let go of you!"
It seemed like the boys I had always played with after Marie moved away didn't want to play what I did anymore, so it was beginning to be hard to find anyone to spend spare time with whose company I enjoyed.
The life I had known was changing quickly. I wanted to rear up in protest even if I hit my head on the trailer like Pet did that day, knocking myself cuckoo and rolling around on the ground in protest. But none of that did Pet any good. She still had to leave Purdon and her safe life. I silently thanked Pet for teaching me at least one lesson before the trailer moved her on to a new family.
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