Hayes House in Kingsbury
I believe this was the next place in line. I remember a
photo taken of Nancy in a baby carriage here so I know she was still an infant.
In this photo above Enid looks like a normal little girl, however, shortly after the photo was taken when she thought no one was looking, Enid shoved the carriage with Nancy in it over on the ground dumping Nancy out. She swore it was an accident but those of us who saw it didn't believe her but at the time we didn't say anything. There would have been no point because no one would have believed us.
I just noticed something in this picture. Behind them is a piece of fire wood with a plank on top of it. For years this would be a "toy" we would love to play on. It was like in the circus shows we sometimes saw on TV. You got on it and spread your legs a part a bit to balance just right on it. Then you shifted your weight to make the alternating sides go up or down.
Once, but I think it was at Kingsbury, not here, either Millie or I was doing it with a glass of milk in one hand. Something of course went wrong and whichever one of us it was, ended up wearing the milk.
Anna got a very bad bloody nose here. She didn't do anything to get it. The doctor said she may have just thin skin but she bled an awful lot. It just wouldn't stop and the blood got darker in color so Mom and Dad took her either to Doctor Homer's office or to the Hospital. I don't really remember which, but they packed her nose with gauze until it stopped bleeding. Anna got a lot of nose bleeds in those days.
We sat Nancy on the lawn one day and she reached out and
snatched up a caterpillar and popped it in her mouth before we could stop her.
We had a lot of new territory to explore here. We were on
the line between Fort Ann and Kingsbury. We were at the part where we were given
a choice which school we were to go to. Of course, the decision was not up to
the kids but the parents and it was decided we would go to Hudson Falls schools.
Before school started that year, a lady came around with
a bag of used clothes and if it fit us we got it. It didn't really matter what
we wore because the other kids always picked on us anyway for wearing their old
clothes even if we were wearing somebody else's old clothes. We learned, well
some of us did to accept our lot in life. It was only clothes anyway and we had
to wear something. I don’t ever remember wearing anything second hand that
really fit me. It was usually too small, not that I was too big, I just never
found anything that fit right.
We caught the bus down at the corner by the other Tripp
farm. The bus would turn around in their driveway. I remember in the fall the
huge bright red and pink apples that fell from the tree in their yard. I could
almost taste them. They were so tempting but none of us dared touch them.
While we lived there a guy from the local Veterans place
came around with a girl’s bike and gave it to us. It was for all of us but I
rode it more than any of us. I learned to zip all over those country roads.
Sometimes I'd go down to the younger Tripp lady who had a
new baby. I don't know why but the baby was a fascination for me until one day
Mom told me not to go there anymore because the Tripp lady thought I had a crush
on her husband. If I saw him at all it was when he was on a tractor somewhere
and to me he was a big fat slob. I was too young to get crushes on anyone. So
that was the end of my visits to the lady and her baby. I found other things to
do.
I took to riding that bike down through the corn fields.
There was a smooth path along the side of one of the fields. Oats grew in that
one and they were beautiful when they were still green and a breeze went through
the field making it all wave.
At the end of the path were more fields and a nice yellow
delicious apple tree. How that tree got there so far from any houses must have
been by nature. It had marvelous yellow apples on it. At first I thought they
weren't ripe because they weren't red. I'd never seen a yellow apple before.
I told mom and she sent me back to get some so she could
see them. She got excited and gave me a bag and told me to go back and get the
nicest ones I could find and she'd make us a pie. To this day I still like
yellow apples best.
Once, I got on the bike, road fast down the long drive to
the road and zipped out without looking right into the path of a car. I don't
know who was more surprised. I fell off the bike but the lady stopped in time.
The only thing hurt was my pride and then later my backside after Mom found out.
I tried to be real careful after that.
Grandpa (Gordon) Hayes, we called him that, owned the
house we lived in and most of the fields and barns around there except for the
houses owned by the Tripp clan. We got along better with the Hayes clan. The
younger ones had 2 girls, Linda and Donna and a boy, Gordon JR who really was
Gordon the third. Some of them we drop over now and then but not a lot. Linda
was about my age but she was odd. Donna was funny and daring. Gordie, I did not
like then and really hated him years later when we owned the schoolhouse and he
ran over our dog and killed him.
For the most part, we girls just stuck together and
really didn't try to make friends. We knew it wouldn't be long and we'd be on
the move again.
We cleared out a bit of the overgrown area next to the
house. It was a lot of rock and fault. We didn't go too far though because the
oldest Tripp family lived just beyond that.
Anna had a crush on Perry Como. She played pretend that
she was Mrs. Como and the space we cleared with all it’s built up rock ledges
became "Papa Como's". We decorated it with wild flowers and bits of stuff we
found around like broken plate bits we found in the burned trash pile.
Sometimes we stole some flour from the kitchen and mixed
it with mud to make dirt cookies that we decorated with more wild flowers. We'd
leave them on rocks to dry hard in the sun. These too, became decorations for
Papa Como's place.
One of things we did to
decorate it was to take an old plate out of the trash pile in the field nearby.
The people who had lived in the house before us
piled up trash and sometimes burned it in the field. Left behind were a bunch of
piles of broken crockery. Some of the broken glass and pottery shards were
emblazoned with tiny flowers or made of bright colors. We borrowed a hammer and
broke the bigger bits into smaller bits. Using mud we glued the most colorful
into a picture on one of the almost whole white plates.
In one of the fields behind the house grew small bushes
with red berries on them. Mom came to look and gave us yet another of the many
lessons about what was safe to eat. These were wild currants, only she said they
had been planted there and weren't really wild because they grew in a straight
line. Nobody knew they were there so with Mom helping we picked as many as we
could and made pies and jams with what berries didn't find their way to our
mouths.
Mom taught us through the years all she could of what
plants were used for and what we could eat. She said it was important to know if
we were ever shipwrecked on an island. Of course if we were, it's a safe bet
none of these plants in the North Eastern part of the US would be growing on
them.
My favorite TV show at the time was Sheena Queen of the
Jungle, even though I had to sit close to the TV to see it. I used to have to
sit in the front row all the time because I couldn't "see" the chalkboard. That
year the school insisted I get my eyes tested and get fitted with glasses. God
but I hated wearing those ugly things but it did help me to see TV better.
One morning it had rained a lot and I got up early and
went out to climb in my favorite apple tree near the back of Papa Como's. I
reached out and grabbed a limb and swung out and went flying. I had slipped my
grip on the wet limb. I landed on one of those rock ledges breaking a slew of
bones in my left arm, my collar bone and something else I can't remember.
I
was in soooo much pain I thought I was dying. I can't remember if I passed out
our not but when they finally got me out of there I was too scared to even cry.
This happened in the early
hours of morning and yet when night came I was still lying on a gurney in the
hospital hall waiting for a doctor to set my bones. There was an old man there
with a broken finger. He was yelling at the nurses that they should take him in
first because he was hurt worse than me. The nurse just smiled and pushed me
into the x-ray place and then into a cold room.
The doctor moved my arm around and it hurt bad so they
gave me a needle. I don't know which was worse, the pain or the needle. Then
came the most embarrassing thing of all. They swathed my naked upper body with
gauze and cotton rolls and them taped and plastered me. When they were all done
I had a cocoon over my chest from my neck to my waist with only my right arm
free.
I had to wear shirts that were way too big for me for a
long time. Even to school I had to wear them because I was still in the cast
when school started in the fall. We went to Dix Avenue School.
There aren't many school friends I remember from
anywhere. I just didn't make friends that easily. Through Alan Clark, (the
second Clark family) I met a girl named Diane. The three of us got together at
lunch time on the playground usually just because Diane also seemed to be a
loner. We'd play pretend that she was married to this other boy who hung around
with us called Chuckie Catlfamo. Alan and I were the kids. It was dumb and silly
and even at that age, I was embarrassed.
A nasty boy who sat behind me in class was always passing
gas loudly. I think his name was Bobby. Everybody would say, "Yuck!" and look in
his direction. He'd jump up and point at me and yell it wasn't him, it was me. I
hated that so much.
On the weekends at home, most of us kids would wander the
fields rather than stay inside. As soon as our chores were done, we were off. We
hiked for miles over the fields. One place we really liked was hilly and covered
with wild black raspberries. I would swipe a cup, usually, Mom's aluminum
measuring cup, fill it about a third full of sugar, arm it with a spoon and take
off for those bushes.
We played a game I called
"Refugees". We had seen in the news how people had escaped across the border in
Hungary and that sounded like fun to us kids.
We started out on our trek across the imaginary
border, feasting on the berries. Mine I smashed with the spoon into the sugar
and ate it like it was jam.
We
stopped at a spring that bubbled up out of the ground to drink our fill of the
icy cold water. Occasionally, we'd pretend we heard the border guards coming
after us and we'd hide in the rocks and under bushes. Eventually, we got bored of
hiding and someone would give the "all clear" signal. We'd take off again
heading still farther from home. We hiked for miles in those days.
By now we would be in Fort Anne
instead of Kingsbury so I would say we had crossed a real border. Coming out to
the road again, we found an old barn that was about to fall down. All that
remained were the main posts and the upper floor and roof. We were
careful not to go under it because not only did
it sway in the breeze but Mom would smack our butts if she even knew we got as
close to it as we did.
When we got hungry, we'd head for home. Sometimes we were
lucky and Mom would have fresh biscuits and baked chicken for us. Other times we
had nothing but the biscuits and were glad to have them.
One day, Dad had money he got for working somewhere but
we didn't have a running car. He took a pillowcase and walked all the way to
town and got some groceries and lugged them back. Some people might not think
that's a big deal but with dads arthritic back it was painful, I'm sure. After
that he took the bike over into the cornfield and told us all to stay home. He
wanted to learn how to ride it but he didn't want us watching him fall off.
Dad told us once that his little finger was crooked
because a bigger boy ran over his hand while riding a bike. Weirdly, all of my
sisters, but not me, "inherited" that crooked little finger.
Most of our lives we hung our laundry out on clothes
lines. While we lived here Anna had an unfortunate event. She washed her new
panties by hand and hung them on the line to dry.
One of the Tripp men had a big black dog, I think he was
similar to a Rottweiler but we didn't know the name back then. He was huge and a
dark blackish brown color. He stole her panties off the line and took them home
to deposit on his owner's step.
When Anna found out where her
panties were she got real upset and embarrassed.
Of course, we heckled her for weeks about it.
Probably even for years.
While we were in school here, I used to read books on the
bus. I was in the fifth or sixth grade. I read a lot of Earl Stanley Gardner and Reader's
Digest whenever I could get my hands on one. I liked Mickey Spillane too. One
day I got sent in to the office. I needed to have my head examined. They told
Mom there was something wrong with me because a kid my age should not be reading
such books.
I was examined by a "shrink", a
school psychologist.
He asked me a ton of questions. I ignored him
for the most part. I was ticked off that I had to do this crap. He told me, he
didn't ask, he told me that I hated my mother. I didn't answer. He said "You
hate your father", a statement again not a question. I ignored him.
"You hate your sisters." Again, I ignored him.
Finally he said "You hate your brother."
I
gave up and said yep, you got that right. He didn't seem to realize I didn't
have a brother. I wonder if he ever found out. He wrote something in his chart.
He showed me black and white drawings of groups of
people. One showed a girl leaning out on a limb looking down on two other girls.
He asked me what I saw and what was happening. I told him the girl in the tree
was hiding because she wanted to play a trick on the two on the ground. Boy, was
that a mistake. It was another round of who he wanted me to say I hated.
He asked me questions about history and the world
geography. I knew the answer to every question he asked. Why not? I read
everything I could get my hands on. I was addicted to reading. Eventually, he
would write down that I was too smart and that’s why I didn’t fit in with other
children.
I remember one bad day here at this school, more than one
actually. The first one was when I started my period. I knew what it was. It
wasn’t the first time, but I was never prepared and I leaked a little on the
seat in class. When the other kids went out for recess after lunch which kids
were still eating in their seats not in a cafeteria, the teacher kept me in to
clean my seat. I didn’t mind. I did mind having attention drawn to me. Later, I
got to go outside with the other kids. Some girls told me I couldn’t play games
like ball because it was that time of the month and I might pass out. God! How
stupid they were!
The other thing really bad was one night while we were
standing in lines waiting for our bus to pull up to take us home, another girl,
I think she was a Winchell, started to heckle me. She would begin by sticking
out her fake teeth. She had two false ones in the front. She knew it grossed me
out. She continually poked me from
behind and pulled my hair. I gave up and punched her.
All hell broke loose. The teacher grabbed me, of course
it would be all my fault. The principal was called. He grabbed my arm and swung
me around to face him with so much force that he lifted me off the ground. It
was a big mistake. I slugged him. The shock on his face must have matched the
shock on mine. I figured I was done for but our bus had just opened its door and
the driver reached out, grabbed me and hauled me on the bus. Nobody said
anything. The kids filed on and the bus took off. I think I shook most of the
way home.
The driver told Mom what happened and I stayed home for
about two weeks. I finally had to go back but first I had to write about a
thousand times, I WILL NOT START FIGHTS IN SCHOOL.
Before we moved I would go through something similar but
this time no smacking involved. I just stayed home because I didn’t do my
homework. I only had to write it 500 times that time but it was still
excruciating and I hated doing it, almost as much as going back to school.