In sixth grade, the teachers in this rural elementary school decided to have an assembly to celebrate the principal’s birthday. I would staple the pages together, write my words at the top and draw pictures at the bottom. When I began making “books” in fourth and fifth grades, they were drawn on the backs of “scratch” paper– discarded paper that had one side blank. Like most other people during the Depression, our family had very little money. Today, however, John, an architect, is one of my favorite people, and although we live across the country from each other, we are very close in our beliefs and politics, and are in frequent contact with each other. Five years after I came along, we had a little brother, John, the son my dad always wanted, and I was very jealous. My mother finished college about the time my older sister Norma was born. It was just something my family did– The Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, The Bible Story Book, Grimms’ Fairy Tales… Mom and Dad read with great feeling and drama, and it was wonderful to snuggle up against Mom on the sofa, or sprawled out on the rug listening to Dad read Mark Twain’s books, my favorite, aloud.īecause I was born during the Great Depression, my Dad left college, studying to be a minister, and became a salesman for H.J. I’m sure that my parents were the inspiration for my loving to write, because they read aloud to us every night, almost until we were teenagers. Then she put her brother in her boyfriend’s house. She sneaked out and pasted his head back on with magic paste. One day the little boy said, “Mother, I want an apple.” The mother said, “Okay.” The boy reached into the box, and the mother closed the lid on him, and cut off his head, and set him out in the yard and tied a rag around his neck to keep his head on. Once upon a time, a little boy and a little girl lived in the woods with their mother. Let someone else have a chance.”īut my mom saved the first story I made up, and here it is:
I only remember one of those stories I made up, but I do remember her saying, “Phyllis, you’ve had enough turns for one day. She said she would write it down so we could take it home and show it to our parents. In kindergarten, there was a wonderful teacher who sat down in the middle of the floor each afternoon and invited us to come to her and make up a story.
I guess I was making up stories, not from the time I was born, but certainly as far back as I can remember. It was still there, the last time I visited. I was born in Anderson, Indiana, in a tiny house on Chestnut Street that my dad and my grandfather helped build.
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