Keith Tillotson
School (1922)
Also, that's where I started school, living at my grandmother and grandfather's house. One time I wanted to wear my Dad's socks to school. The work socks in the old days were usually white toes and white heels and some kind of color – like that. I have a pair now like the old type work sock. They were all darned. So, I wanted to wear these to school – I wanted to wear socks like Dad. You had your knickerbockers, you know. So, I wanted to be like Dad. So I put on these socks, and of course the heels of the socks came way up here. So she said, "OK, go ahead to school." Well, the kids were really making fun of me all day long about my Dad's socks – "There he is!" One time was enough for that.
Then another time, that little creek that went by where we went swimming – they had a pool right across the road from the Dixons. They had a place that was kind of deep, so we went over there with Kenneth. They got me to walk into the water, and of course it got deeper and deeper, and I got scared. I thought they was going to let me drown. They finally pulled me out. And, I was afraid of water for years. Couldn't go into the water, cause I just walked off of that – it just got deeper and deeper and deeper, and pretty soon I... I didn't know how to swim. That's one of the big things that stuck with me for a long time.
Eventually, I learned how to swim all by myself back in Iowa. I just went down to the creek, and I found out I could float. When I decided I could float, I was no longer afraid of water. I did it all by myself, but the water wasn't so deep. I could stand up in it. That's how I learned how to swim.
I suppose I started the first grade when I was five 'cause I was born in February. One day in school, we played at lunchtime. You'd play ball – everybody played ball back then. They had a nice ball field right beside the school, but that was over the fence. The younger kids always played right out in the schoolyard. I guess I was probably running, and I came into home base. Fell down, as normal. Or else – I can't remember, maybe I was catchin' the ball. But anyway, I fell down and this girl was at the base – maybe she was the catcher or whatever. And I turned over – I guess I looked up her dress. She told the schoolteacher about I looked up her dress. Next Saturday we had a big school meeting over it. Like I'm, you know, some kind of deviate lookin' up girls' dresses! Yeah, we had a go at that! I think Dad was gonna fight everybody in the school – he was really peed off at that. 'Cause how would I know – he was trying to question me about "Were you spooning with her?" A kid – you know, he didn't know how to handle it – I didn't know what the heck he was talkin' about! I guess that teacher told the mother. So they had this big school meeting. So now I always kid about it, now that I realize probably what went on I say Jeez! – I got charged with rape when I was five years old! That was just the end of that – didn't have any fights over it, but I thought Dad was sure gonna have one. He was really – and he don't hold back any words. He knows all the curse words you could ever think of. And that stood in my mind all my life.
I don't even remember comin' home from school – walkin' home. I don't even remember what Kenneth was doing. 'Course he had to be there, two grades ahead of me.
On the farm there, we had a lot of fun – you ever follow a cow path? You probably never did. On the farm there they had a little creek that went down, and there was a pasture there where we had cows. When they come in to be milked, they always seem like they come in the same path and they wear a hole in the ground. The cow paths are always a little crooked, you know. And they follow that every time they come in 'til they wear a little path. And that was always fun to play in – those cow paths. Run around in 'em.
On the farm I guess they just grew corn or wheat. I remember there was lot of sand-burrs. A sand-burr is a little weed that has a little bitty round burr, like a little mine. You know, it's got a burr and you step on it and it hurts! And I remember I tried to walk barefooted where some of those things were. So I think maybe it was mostly wheat and corn. We didn't have too much tillable land on that farm. I think there was only about probably 20 acres that was tillable. The rest of it was like timber. I just remember that little creek that came down on our farm [draws]. It came down to our house down here, and it went over here and it went around the house, and it went on over here where the Dixons lived. A little creek went down that way. The backhouse was right there. And we had a barn right here, and a shed here. Which blew over one time – I don't know whether it was a hurricane or a cyclone or something.
Then there was another little shed here which Dad made out of wood and mud. He split up the wood, and used mud and clay inside it, you know? And that's the walls of that thing. And that's where – it was kind of a little shop. And Kenneth got hurt out here one day. Dad was sharpening a cross-cut saw. Kenneth had to get up – and he fell on this thing and got a gash about yay long. The scar ended up being as big as my finger – never did heal. Those days, scars – you get your appendix out, you have a big scar. Now, you can't even see where I had mine out.
To get to the doctor it would be five miles to town. So, we had to take him into town with a horse and buggy. That's how we got to town – we didn't have a car.
But we had two steam engines in the front yard that my dad was always playing around with. I remember one time he promised me I could help clean the flues. I got up the next day, and he said they were all clean – and I cried, because I didn't get to help clean them. The flue was about this big around – you'd have to crawl through it. You could crawl through them and clean them out, you know.
Dad didn't teach me about mechanics too much. He was always working with tools. That's the thing he liked to do. He could do anything. Good cement man, carpenter – he could do anything like that. 'Course you've got to remember I was ten years old when my folks got divorced. That was in Iowa.