GRANDMA LEE

Grandma Lee came from a small town in Missouri. It was
larger than Hazelton, but no mountains. She didn't see
mountains until she came west. Grandma Lee lived near Hannibal
Missouri, which is where the story of Tom Sawyer and Becky
Thatcher took place. She used to play in the same caves. tt
was rather dangerous to go into the caves, because you could
get lost like Huckleberry Finn did. These caves were formed by
water.
When she was a little girl the whole family would go on
picnics. They would hitch the horses up to the wagon and go to
the country to have a picnic. They would play and go swimming
in the creeks and fishing in the lakes. They'd make their own
fishing poles. They also went nut and berry picking combined
with their picnics. They'd pick blackberries and take the nuts
home for winter.
In winter they stayed indoors a lot and played games and
a2Z
cards and ~ the nuts with apples. One of the many chores they
had to do around the farm in winter was to gather coal and wood.
They'd gather eggs and feed chickens and had pet goats and
rabbits. Her Dad made little wagons and he'd have the goats
pull them around the yard.
Mrs. Lee recalls her school days: "I went to a very small
school. There were two schools in the town I grew up in. One
was a public school and the other was a religious school. I
went to the religious school. All the grades were in the one
school; kindergarten up to high school. There were four
grades in one room and only five rooms in the whole school. One
thing I can remember is our teacher. She was old and had taught
my mother, also. She kept the kids in line. They were always
very good. It might have been because she always carried a big
ruler around with her wherever she went. The kids were scared
of the ruler. We'd play baseball, softball and basketball. "
Of her growing up on the farm, she has fond memories.
"My grandma lived on a farm and had lots of horses. Everyone had
horses and cattle and grew their own wheat, corn and oats. The
plows were all pulled by horses. This was another thing the
children helped with - harvesting the wheat, corn and oats and

2

helping with the garden. The boys were let out of school early
to help with this.
"My dad and grandpa used to go hunting, mostly for skins
as they could sell these. They got opossum, rabbits, squirrels,
gophers, skunks, foxes and badgers. We did not have bears
where I lived. There were lots of birds, too. Really beautiful
ones. My dad used to make little birdhouses and we could watch
the little birds in the nests.
"We didn't have a car for a long time. We lived within
walking distance of town and school. If we went on long trips
we rode in a buggy pulled by a horse. It was called a surrey.
Our first car was an old Model T. It didn't have any glass or
heater, so was very cold on long trips. Had to bundle up really
good to keep from freezing. The roads were mostly mud. Only
the main streets in the towns were paved. We used to get stuck
a lot on trips."
People dressed differently in those days, too. "Older
women wore their dresses down to their ankles. My mother
wore hers between her knees and ankles. The little girls always
wore dresses and cotton stockings. The little boys wore short
pants, knickers they were called, with stockings. When the
boys were older they would go into long pants and always looked
forward to being old enough to wear them.
"My grandparents always lived in Missouri, but my greatgrandparents came from Ireland in 1850. They came from the East
Coast in covered wagons to Missouri. They came from Ireland in a
big ship because Ireland was very poor. My grandparents built
a big house and we lived next door to them.
"I took a trip out west and really loved the sea and the
mountains. There are no big mountains in Missouri. We had some
relatives who moved to Seattle and always talked about it so
much so we moved out to Seattle. The water is so clear and the
air is so much cleaner on the west coast. I liked living in
Seattle at first, but now would prefer a smaller town. You can
get to know people a lot better in a small place. Seattle has
a lot of nice things like the space needle. It's about 600 feet
high and you can go up in a small elevator and look out over
the whole city and see the mountains and water altogether.
But it's a lot nicer being in a smaller place like Hazelton.