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Show So many neighbor children wished to play in our yard that Lama made the rule that they come only onThursday alter school. One day They formed a ring,with 8 mo. Margie in the middle,each begging her to come. If I were there she woul^ome only to me;and I was very proud of the fact that ah e wo'ild leave anyone, except Mama to come to me if I "asked her to come, I called her my baby and one day Etta Lawrence asked if ahe was really mine and I had to tell that it was only because I took care of her. When Hester" was able to walk she was into everything.: The sewing machine drawers were especial favorites. One day, the spring or summer before she was Z years old, she disappeared. We searched all onrer the and yards and I was looking throughcthe rasberries, when Myrtle Lyman, (one of my schoolmates) came across the lawn and sale}, "Have you lost a baby?" She had gotten almost to the stores, dragging an old shade we had taken from the kitchen window. About this time Mama had aeplant in the flower border that stood higher than my head and opened toward evening. The golden yellow blossoms were over two inches across, and filled with stamens. We used to watch the buds open, they did it so rapidly. For years I hatre wondered what it could have been. The Great St. Jonswort, found rarely along the rivers near Oberlin Ohio l^oks as I remember it, but it isn't supposed to ppen that way. It is difficult to tell about the tornado of June 17, 1882, but this family account wouldn't be comlete without it... -Uncle Albert lived one block west of our house (one the lot Paoa bought first and intended to build on) Perhaps I'd better mention that near our house, at the head of Main Street, on Eighth Avenue, was a saloon - just soutside the corporation line. When Papa couldn't persuade Mr. Preston ..to move, he bought him out so that we children wouldn't have to pass a saloon on the way to school. An unfinished kitchen was added and a couple of years -* later, and addition to the west for a "Study" with a bedroqnf above. As long as we lived there, we could see the curved ridge of paint"on the ~ dining room floor where the bar had stood. Grandpa^Carhart moved to Grinell the same year we did, and stayed at our house until his house was built. We moved in as soon as he moved omit.* the last part of August, 1876. Grandpa lived a block east, and a half-block south. They had been there long enough, so the trees were getting large, and grandma Amanda had a nice garden on the north side of the house, a whole city lot, with among oth r things - beds of tulips, and grass pinks and a row of flowering shrubs between. Papa and George were up at the Franklin Go. farm and Papa came home for over Sunday. It had been raining for a couple of days; so after I finished milking Hitfra and Bonny, I left them tied in the barn, (they were so wet.) though Papa had advise&d turning them our, at night to save work. When I was ready to go in it was raining torrents, and one of the little girls brought me a welcomed umbrella, and told me that Papa had come. Mama made a fire in the dining room to heat flatirons and iron Papa's white shirt for Sunday. While I stood by the north kitchen window:washing milk things, papa went out onto the front porch to look at the weather, and the little folks begged him to get them some hailstones. He rolled in a white door nob, saving, "Here's a big one". As I looked out the window, a young crabapple tree was blowing so hard that it whipped one side of the ground, and then the other. Just then papa came in and as he forced the door shut, he cried, "Get into the dellar, quick:T It's a tornado!" Most of the children were near, and he herded us down stairs into the cellar. As we paused there, hearing bangs aha^bumps above us, I said thro sh chattering teeth, "Those must be-big hail stones!" And papa said - "Bricks from the chimney. Wrhen he got one group down, he went back to look for Ma ia. She had gone to the bedroom for one year-old Glover, and John had followed her. Her fear was that the hot stove might set fire to things, and so she stayed as far from it as possible, but papa brought them down with the rest of us. |