Keith Tillotson
The Girl Across the Road (1922)
Across the road was a girl – Alice Dixon. Her brothers were older than Kenneth. On the way to school they picked up some poison ivy and put it on the side of my face. I'll never forget that – the whole side of my face was just one big scab. But their little sister was about six months younger than me. We'll say I was five or six – I can't remember exactly. She was four and a half, and I was in love with her. She'd holler at me across the road "Keithy, come over and play with me." 'Course I always liked to be a showoff, so one time I crawled up on top of the clothesline pole. I don't know how I got up there, but I had to go to the bathroom. I'm in a hell of a position – I mean number two! I can't remember – she couldn't help me get down, and I was afraid to get down. And it was a mess – I'm telling you.
As far as playing with toys went mostly it was like playing little farm things, like you would rig up little stakes like a little road or something going along. Pretend this is a building here, and drive little toys through it. Things like that. I never had too many toys. But a lot of kids I'd play with had some. You'd pretend this was a farmer, this was a place over here, a place over there – just little stupid stuff.
But I remember playing mumblety-peg. This was the thing my brother and I would play. Everybody has a knife – even when you were four years old you had a knife. Everything that dad had, we had to have. Playing mumblety-peg [demonstrates].
I did play with my brother Kenneth then when we were at home, but other than that he probably played with the bigger boys. He was two years older than me.
I remember one time we had a cousin come in from Washington. Leland – I can't remember now. Anyway, he came to visit, and he was older than either one of us. And he had all the little things – he would make us little boats and things to paint them with, you know. He was probably 12 years old. We were out making mud pies. That's a little thing that we liked. Pretend you're a cook. I did that with Alice, my girl across the road. Leland, my cousin – we decided we were going to make a mud pie. We had a little hole in the ground, and put a little water in it. Now we're getting eggs out of the hen house. We're breaking these eggs in the hole and stirring them up. I remember my grandmother caught us doing that – then it stopped. Can you imagine breaking eggs and putting them down in that hole?
Another thing that impressed me about that time is they were putting telephone poles along the road about a half a mile from us. You could just see those big poles – that was something. 'Cause they didn't have any telephones. No electricity, no telephones – no lines at all. To see those poles goin' up – that was fascinating. Big tall poles – telephone poles. They probably weren't very tall as today's poles. They didn't come to our place. They turned this way – turned over towards Dad's friend Cleve Batton. He probably had a phone, I'm not sure. That was the first line that came through – when I was four or five years old.
We went to a neighbor visiting, I guess, and Kenneth and I decided to go out in the pasture. Has a bunch of cows out there. And also a bull, protecting his little herd – he didn't like Kenneth and I. This bull took after us. Boy, I'm tellin' you! We ran to an open ditch – there was no water in it. Near the road, it had a little sling gate that was probably to keep little animals from goin' in and out. But it was for a flash flood. This gate swung under the fence that went across this ditch. It went into a culvert or something. We went under that to get away from that bull. But you know, I had dreams about bulls for the next three or four, five years. That's how I learned how to fly when I was asleep – had to get above this bull, try to get off of the ground! Bull will chase you – I had nightmares about that for years! Bull, you know, they're protecting their herd – they don't want anybody around. Bulls are that way. That was one thing that really scared me.