Off to Texas

We were leaving Wendling.  Mom and I were to drive the Hudson Terraplane to Denton, Texas, where he had found us an apartment.  Mom's sister, Carldene, had returned from Georgia, where her husband David had been training as an infantryman and had shipped off to Europe.  Carldene was a jovial aunt, barely out of high school, who had locked me in the closet, had told me the barber was going to cut off my ears, and otherwise amused herself at my expense.  Now she had a little girl not yet two years old.
Grandad said Carldene should accompany us to Texas.
I was leaving GD.  No more games in the woods or meadow, no more walks across the mill pond to town to watch the loggers with their big suspenders, their stagged pants, fit to length by chopping the cuffs off with an axe, their high laced spiked boots, their muscular strutting walk.
Not knowing what to expect I stared out of the back seat window as we drove down the valley.  We stopped in Glenwood to fill up with gas and we took 99 south.
The Hudson Terraplane lasted until we got to Stockton, California.  I wandered big eyed around the hotel while telegrams passed back and forth and soon the four of us boarded a train.  Along the way we were joined by a Captain's wife, who also had a daughter, named Kim.
My little cousin began showing spots, and the two sisters told everyone she just had  a rash, but it turned out to be measles. (Nicky, you mustn't tell) they were afraid we would be put off the train.  The wife was quite vexed when Kim came down with measles soon after we arrived.
Denton,Texas turned out to be a wonderful place.
Our apartment was four rooms on the second floor of a large house owned by a lady from Arkansas who chewed tobacco and carried with her a tin can to spit in.  She had two children, both a couple of years older than I.  Kim and her mother briefly resisted in an adjoining apartment until officers ousting became available

Logging town schools

In 1944 I was six and began the first grade.  Mom would drop me off at the cousins on her way to work in the mill.  N and C walked with me down to the main road then, keeping our eyes open for the log trucks that came barreling down the road with two or three huge newly cut logs on the way to Springfield, we hurried through the covered bridge that crossed Mill Creek.  The school was about half a mile on down the road.
The school had a small room for kindergarten and four classrooms for the eight grades, two classes to a room.  There were not always two teachers to a room so a teacher might be forced to move from one side of the room to the other.  We were taught to read by looking at cards held up in the front of the class showing a letter or group of letters making a sound which we would all repeat in unison. Similarly we were shown cards with 1+1:2 etc which we would all repeat in unison.  I had already begun to pick up on reading at home so I spent a lot of my study time listening to the second grade lessons.
Both classes would listen as the teacher read a story.
For recess we would go out back of the school and mill around.  There was a large shed where we would go on rainy days.
We had indoor plumbing and there was central heating.
When I was in kindergarten an older boy named Albert got angry with me and smashed my head against the wall in the bathroom, dashing away all my memories prior to that moment.  In the first grade I kept an eye out for him but I never saw him, or else I did not recognize him.
When school was out my cousins would walk with me back to their house then I ws on my own walking on the plank road up the hill to the grandparents house.  There Grandma and GD would greet me and he and I would play war or cowoys till dinner.  On rainy days I would read to him.  Horton Hatches An Egg was a big favorite.
Then dad came back from New Guinea and after Christmas we moved to Denton, Texas.