In addition to teaching me scraps of literature and the marvels of Michigan, Mother taught me rules. Her rules, if followed, would turn me into a little lady.
First of all, I must not swear. Just because Bob Perry, the town carpenter, swore did not mean I could. Harvest and sheep-shearing crews also swore but usually stopped when they saw me. I could not understand why. I loved to listen to them swear.
When we walked uptown on errands, Mother sprinkled her talk with rules, gently, more out of habit than any real desire to reprimand.
I must not swing on gates. I might break the hinges, and swinging on gates was not ladylike.
When we turned the corner by the Masonic Hall, we stopped to exchange a few words with “Old” John A. Simmons. In Yamhill, “Old” was an honorary title, for many very old, hardy men and women were part of its population of about three hundred. Old John A., as everyone called him, was the town undertaker. Some keeper of vital statistics once wrote reprimanding Old John A. for not reporting Yamhill’s deaths. He replied that he was doing the best he could, but no one in Yamhill had died that year. English daisies, like flat, pink buttons, grew in front of Old John A.’s house. Bored with the grown-ups’ conversation, I started to pick some.
“Never pick other people’s flowers,” Mother said. “They don’t belong to us.” This was puzzling. Our farm was abloom with flowers, most of them wild, which anyone was free to pick. I longed to pick town flowers—Canterbury bells, peonies, delphiniums, and those little daisies.
We crossed Maple Street, the main street, to avoid walking in front of men who hung around the livery stable. This also was hard to understand, because I liked to watch the men spit arcs of tobacco juice, and to look inside at the hearse and the hack.
Crossing the street meant we got to pass the saloon with its swinging doors. I was curious about that saloon, which Mother so disapproved of, but Mother always seized me by the hand and pulled me along, chiding, “Never look under saloon doors. It isn’t nice.” I could not understand. Many daily activities on the farm could not be called “nice.” Why was town different?
Safely past the livery stable, we crossed back over Maple Street. We usually met a relative or two. Sometimes it was Uncle Fred, my father’s oldest brother, who had a fascinating bald head. After we passed him, Mother said, “You mustn’t stare at Uncle Fred’s bald head. You might hurt his feelings.” How could I hurt his feelings when I so admired his bald head? I once tried to cut off my own hair so I could be bald, too.
We usually stopped at the drugstore for a few words with Uncle Ray, my one uncle who had been sent to college, because Grandfather Bunn felt he was too fat to ever become a farmer. My father had wanted to become a pharmacist, too, but his father said no, he was cut out to farm.
Uncle Ray generously handed an ice cream cone across the counter to his niece. “Say thank you and sit down to eat it so you won’t spill” were Mother’s rules.
“Thank you, Uncle Ray,” I said before I sat at a round table at the back of the store near the mysterious little room filled with apothecary jars, beakers, and mortars and pestles where Uncle Ray mixed medicines. I licked my cone, swung my feet, and stared at Great grandfather Hawn’s ox yoke that hung on the wall.
At Trullinger-Eustice, the general merchandise store, Mother made a small purchase or two, a spool of thread or a can of baking powder, and paused to chat with Lottie Allen, a saleswoman of strong opinions who pounded the dry goods counter with her fist and frequently said “absolutely, positively”—fascinating words.
As soon as we left the store, I began to sprinkle my conversation with the new words. “Little girls don’t say ‘absolutely, positively,’” said Mother, amused even as she made her new rule.
Sometimes we stopped at “Aunt” Fannie McKern’s house. “Aunt” Fannie was not my aunt. The whole town, except Mother, called her Aunt Fannie. Mother said calling people not related to one Aunt or Grandma was a very small-town custom. I must call Aunt Fannie Mrs. McKern. “It’s good manners.”
Mrs. McKern fascinated all of Yamhill’s children because she was “Central,” which meant she operated the town’s telephone switchboard from her living room. We loved to watch her plug cords carrying telephone calls into little holes that connected callers to the person called, and unplug them when the conversation ended. She also had a bearskin rug, which I admired. I got down on the floor and lay nose to nose with the bear with his open mouth full of big teeth.
“Beverly, get up off the floor,” said Mother. “We don’t lie on other people’s floors.”
Mother dragged me past the barbershop, where I wanted to see whose face emerged from the lather the barber was scraping away with a straight-edge razor. Pressing my nose against the barbershop window, it turned out, was unladylike.
We did, however, stop at the post office with its wall of little bronze boxes with dials that had to be turned a certain way before the box could be opened. Our box usually held The Oregonian and sometimes a magazine. In front of the post office, Mother, starved for grown-up conversation, paused to visit with other women. “Remember,” she whispered, “little girls should be seen and not heard.” This was one rule I loved.
Being seen and not heard, I gleaned all sorts of interesting information. A bride scraped burned toast on the back porch every morning; someone could hear it across a field. The ladies shook their heads and wondered what kind of meals her husband was eating. A woman had been heard to say, “I just love to knead bread. It cleans the hands so.” The ladies clucked like hens and vowed they would never eat any of her bread. A minister’s dog stole a neighbor’s butter; someone suggested the minister had trained him to steal because the minister was going hungry in Yamhill. The ladies laughed, but Mother whispered to me, “They’re just joking. They know he didn’t train his dog to steal.”
Sometimes the most interesting and mysterious conversations ended when Mother shot a glance at me and said, “Little pitchers have big ears.” The ladies’ sudden silence was insulting. I was not a pitcher, and I did not have big ears.
On the way home, we might meet Aunt Maud, my real aunt, who was famous for once riding a bicycle downhill over a cow lying in the road because she was too insecure to steer around it. Or “Grandma” Russell, who climbed up on her roof and repaired her shingles, even though she was well into her eighties. “That’s a pioneer for you,” Yamhill said. Or Quong Hop, who had come from China to build railroads and had stayed on. Now he owned a confectionery store and lived in a little house near us where I was never allowed to swing on the gate.
Sometimes we made a detour to pay a call on a very old man Mother said I must never forget. Why, Mamma?
“Because he is your Great-uncle Jasper, who crossed the Plains in a covered wagon when he was three years old.”
Oh, was that all? I thought he was interesting because he always wore a white nightcap.
Everything and everybody in Yamhill was interesting. The trouble was I wanted to swear, peek under the saloon door, stare a bear in the eye, and swing on gates. I “absolutely, positively” wanted to do these things. Mother never seriously scolded on these outings and always returned refreshed and full of amusing stories for Father.
In addition to all her rules for deportment, Mother gave me guidelines for life. “Never be afraid,” she often said.
So I was not afraid. When a cat had a fit and began to climb the wall, Mother did not know what to do. I plucked the animal off the wall, dumped it out the back door, and could not understand why Mother was first amazed at my courage and then frightened “half to death.” The cat might have clawed or bit me. “But it didn’t,” I pointed out. Mother sighed.
When Father was going to slaughter a hog for our ham and bacon, Mother said I had better not watch. Naturally, this made me want to watch. As soon as Mother went out to the barnyard, I climbed the stairs to try to watch from an upstairs bedroom window. Because the window was too high, I pulled up a chair so I could look out. What I saw was much more interesting than a squealing hog. Below the mansard roof was a ledge about a foot wide, just right for me to walk on. I climbed out the window onto the ledge. Higher than the woodshed, almost as high as the horse chestnut tree, I began to walk around the house. I had not gone far before Mother saw me and came running until she stood directly below me. “Beverly!” she said quietly and urgently. “Stand perfectly still. Don’t move.” Then she shouted for my father.
Puzzled, I obeyed, as I always obeyed on the farm. Father also came running, saw me, disappeared into the house, and was heard taking the stairs two at a time before he leaned out the window. “Hang on to the shingles and back up slowly, one step at a time,” he directed as Mother stood frozen beneath me. I couldn’t see what all the to-do was about, but I did as he directed until Father reached out, grabbed me, and hauled me in through the window.
“What the Sam Hill did you think you were doing?” he demanded.
“Walking around the house,” I said.
“Next time do it on the ground.” Father never wasted words.
Mother, white and shaken, had rushed in to join us. “Beverly, you must never, never go out there again. You could have fallen and killed yourself.”
“I wasn’t going to fall,” I said, and I was sure I wasn’t.
One day we took the train to Salem, where Father was going to play his baritone horn in the Yamhill band at the state fair. The gentle tyrants, the cows my father loved so much, usually prevented us from going far from home.
I was not interested in the exhibits of farm animals, but I was interested in the Ferris wheel. Mother agreed to take me for a ride and paid for tickets; then we climbed into the gently swaying seat and fastened a bar across our waists to keep us from falling out. The wheels began to turn, and slowly we rose. Mother clutched the bar until her knuckles were white. When our rocking seat reached the top, the wheel’s motor broke down and we were stranded. I had never been so high or seen such a view: neatly laid-out farms, automobiles crawling along roads, and in the distance, a train breathing out a plume of smoke. I wanted an even better view. I slipped out from behind the bar, happy and free, and stood up on the tilting seat. Mother gasped and grabbed my skirt. I held out my arms and made the seat tilt more.
“Beverly, sit down this minute,” Mother said through clenched teeth.
“But, Mamma, I want to see.” I was on top of the world and had only begun to look.
“Sit down!” Mother dragged at my skirt, forcing me to sit, spoiling my fun. I sat scowling until the Ferris wheel was repaired and we reached the bottom, where Mother demanded that we be let off.
I objected. “But, Mamma, our ride isn’t over,” I told her. “Nobody else is getting off.”
Mother did not answer. She had to sit down awhile. When she recovered, she scolded me. “Don’t you know you might have fallen?”
I could not understand why Mother was such a scaredy-cat. After all, she had taught me never to be afraid.