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I attended Moss from the 3rd
thru the 6th grade. Remember Mr. Webber, Mrs. Busey and Mr. Doughty.
Classmates, Dorothy Cherry, Clarice Adair, Barbara Leewright, Joan
Collins, Johnny Jay, Geneva Shockley, Henry Stelter, Doyle Hardwick and
many more. I also remember the coal burning stoves and the smells. A story
that was told of some of the older boys, putting skunk oil on the engine
of Mr. Webbers new automobile. Every time the engine got hot the smell
would gag you.. There were soft ball games on the school grounds and some
kind of initiation, that we were told to wear our clothes wrong side out
and carry our lunch to school in a pail. Most used an old syrup bucket
with a lid.
We would usually get a new pair of shoes in the fall.
During the summer, chopping corn, watermelons, cucumbers or what ever
crops were planted, we would go barefoot. Usually get the tops of our feet
so sunburned we could not wear shoes, or slicing the end of a big toe with
the freshly sharpened hoe.
We had a pair of red mules, Kit and Kate, so old we had
to have their corn ground for them to eat it. We would find wads of grass
in the pasture, they could not chew, but a harder working pair you would
never find. Dad could not believe what happened one day, he came in
telling how he had started home with a wagon load, come to a steep muddy
clay hill, and he said those mules actually got on their knees and made it
up the hill. We all loved animals dearly and were touched that they were
such a great pair. I would slip down to the barn in the evenings and feed
all the stock nubbins from the corn crib. Oh, so many memories, we had a
barn raising for that barn. Many neighbors came and the men painted the
boards with chewing tobacco spit, said it would bring good luck.
In the winter, the girls (myself included) wore those
horrible long cotton stockings, garters and all. I would walk to the bus
stop at the Smiths house and sit on the wooden seats in the bus, no
springs, to school. As we turned off the road toward Moss, someone had set
a trap for coyotes with a dead chicken hanging from a limb of a tree.
Guess the trap was covered below the chicken.
Mr. and Mrs. Fairbanks lived to the north of our place.
Carmichaels and House were names of other neighbors. Mrs. Smith's mother
lived near the top of a hill to the south, across from my Grandmother
Laura Strickland, who lived on our farm.
Times got tough, my Dad was not able to farm anymore,
so we sold the farm and moved to California. Spent the next 50 years
there.
Lou Anne Allen, Attended Moss Schools from the 3rd. - 6th. Grades. |