Kokomo Kootsie

6/19/2004

When I was a small girl a trip to the park was as thrillingly looked forward to as a trip to Europe would be for me today.

I never knew about the park until I was around nine years old. Jack, my little brother was almost seven
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One day grandma said if we behaved ourselves she would take us out to the park the next day. We behaved by pestering her the rest of the day with a million questions about the park. She really knew as little as we about it, what it had to offer.

We couldn’t wait for the next day. Were they all so long in coming? Like forever! That night we did finally sleep. When we came tumbling down the stairs everyone was still at the early morning breakfast table, hadn’t gone to work yet it was so early.

Out first questions were, "Are we going to the park now, are we?"

Grandma got so fed-up she finally told us if we didn’t stop bothering her we’d not go at all! We kept quiet but we followed her around, stayed close on her heels she could have fallen over us if she had turned suddenly!

After Uncle Bryan and Pete and Auntie had left for work, she began to wash dishes, and then make beds. Were we ever going to get on the way?

She said she would make us a picnic to take. We watched every move she made. The whole idea was a novelty to us. We had never gone to many places with grandma. The carnival and occasionally a tent meeting were about it. In the good old day, they were plentiful.

I stood on one side of her, Jack on the other as we watched her make egg sandwiches and jelly sandwiches, but ruined them for us as she used biscuits in place of the white bought bread we loved but so rarely had. But we didn’t let that spoil our anticipation. We were hopping up and down to go. She made a big jug of lemonade and packed it all in a small box and told Jack to get his little red wagon to put it in. That did it. I was embarrassed to be seen pulling a wagon; we wanted to run, skip, play in our exuberance all the way there!

Finally we were on our way; Jack and I bouncing all around and grandma pulling the little red wagon. What a picture we surely made. Especially as we passed some very well to do homes on our thirty-three blocks trek to the city park.

I’ll never forget my first sight of that park. When we came to it, we faced a small stream with a rustic bridge over it made of tree limbs. That very small stream was really the old Wild Cat Creek that meandered all over Kokomo and was a big fast moving and deep body of water and sported a big scary gravel pit on its journey through Kokomo and a lot of other towns as it finally met and joined up with the other smaller streams on its way to the mighty Ohio River to the south.

We crossed the bridge and walked under huge old trees, some so old they had plates on them telling their age. One had a hollowed out stump, large enough for several to stand in, and the tree still lived all leafed out in the springtime! I stood in it many times when I was older when we teens used to go to the park to swim every day for two or three summers.

Grandma was heading for the play ground but we had no idea what a playground was. On our way we passed a big cage below the path we were on, where we could look down into the cage and see three big brown bears. They’d stand up and spread their large paws with huge nails to us, begging for a treat. The road went on down around to the front of the cages but we stayed on to the playground straight ahead. When we got there we three stopped and looked down into a deep saucer like depression and seemed a hundred running, screaming children were down there among swings, slides, teeter-totters and some things we had no idea what they were! We lost no time breaking away from grandma, hell-bent to the swings. Grandma found a table and seated herself, placed her box on it and let us go, protesting, "Be careful! Can’t you sit a while and rest?

We learned our first lesson of give and take that day. We learned if we didn’t give up a swing or our place, our turn, then there were kids who would take it from us. It took me all summer to not give. To stand up for myself. Jack never learned it. Not until he was ten years old, another time, another place!

How I longed to play on those wonderful slides and swing in peace; be left alone, not picked on by little bullies.

When I got older I swore if I had a kid that acted like some of those in the park, I’d spanked him till he’d have to eat standing up. I meant it. I still do.

We did have a great time that day, and the biscuit sandwiches were more than welcome. We were begging grandma to spread out the picnic long before she planned on doing it. Even the old lemonade which I hated was so good.

When we were ready to leave, the word ready can’t possibly describe how we felt. Jack and I would have stayed at the playground forever, moved there if we could have.

We went by another road to the bridge and there found more wonders. One was a drinking fountain of sulfur water. I loaded up on it, but neither Jack nor grandma would even try it. The rest of the day I breathed sulfur into everyone’s face!

In a large barn-like shed was a monstrous steer, looking so real as to be frightening. Down between his front legs was s tiny misshapen calf. Those two specimens had been born on a farm around Kokomo. Much later on uncle told me the big steer had died or had to be put down, I don’t recall exactly, and he had seen it when it was alive! The calf was a full term one, but deformed, looked like everything but a calf. When the two animals died they were taken to a taxidermist and donated to the city park.

That was about all our City Park had to offer. A few years later the Wild Cat was dammed up and far around to the left of that bridge as one went into the park, was the only place to swim and loaded all summer with all ages who loved the water.

High up on the hill above the pool was where we all went to sun ourselves and play, flirt. At the very top of that hill was a road, and there was the Country Club.

That day when we left the park reluctantly two tired little kids were ready to eat a real meal and go to bed early for once.

Years later when I was sixteen, my best friend and I ventured down to the playground and very very few children were there. It didn’t look as large as it had that day Jack and I had stood at the top of the hill and looked down into it.

We went down and both of us climbed to the top of the largest slide and she refused to go down, looked too scary and she went back down the steps. I got on it and slid fast half way down screaming all the way and was so afraid, I braced my legs against the sides to stop my self and had to inch my way to the bottom where I fell in the sand there, when I reached the end of it! I burned the back of my legs too. How could that be fun for children I was left to wonder.

We stayed in the pool part of the park from then on and never saw the playground again and the bears were long gone, but the steer and calf were there for years and the old hollowed out tree may still be there.
That was long ago in the Good Old Days.

Today everyone goes to fancy theme parks and Disneyland, big city zoos, but I bet children do not get the wonderful thrill we got, when it was a real treat, an outing, to go to the City Park.

That was so long ago, it is not possible so many years have passed!

It was truly then, The Good Old Days

Kokomo Kootsie

6/19/2004

In the good old days of the twenties and thirties the only charge account our family had or ever heard of was at the Mom and Pop store a half block from our house. They sold everything from a match to steamships as granddad used to say.

What we bought was groceries, and only groceries needed to feed the family; no frills or fancy things. At least that was grandma’s rule and she followed it to the letter.

I had some different ideas about what we could use a charge account for! Anything but food was on my mind; at least not food to cook! I wanted all the penny candies; ice cream cones; and by the pint when I could out talk grandpa. I could never out talk grandma; I didn’t dare try. That came later when I was in my teens and learned to be a good debater.

That was one bone of contention between my grandparents; granddad letting me charge whatever I wanted. Just as she sent him down town to shop for sales, bargains from her scanning the weekly adds, she would also send him to get whatever was needed day by day at the corner store and have it put on the ‘bill’ as it was called.

Every Friday or two we paid the bill, settled up the account! I always went with granddad and the first time I recall, the old fellow who owned the store gave me a small, very small brown bag of candies! I was thrilled to pieces. An unheard of treat!! Grandpa explained to me it was called a treat. Sometime when a bill was paid you got a treat by way of saying thank you. You can bet I never missed a trip to settle up; but I had to share it with my little brother, Jack!

Before we could make that Friday trip to pay up, grandma would get out all her receipts for groceries bought and charged, and go over each item slowly, moving her lips as she read, saying often, "What’s this? Now I know I didn’t send for that!" And the argument began!

Granddad tried to explain, and try to cover his tracks when most were my tracks where I had talked him into letting me charge candy or ice cream! And his Beech-Nut Tobacco! Granddad chewed tobacco. Grandma hated his chewing habit and never provided for him to buy it. He had a very hard time getting a bag of it. Anyone who smokes knows it’s a must have, when you have a monkey on your back, with a habit of tobacco, or drugs or strong drink!

Granddad had been long retired so had no income of his own. Grandma’s came from the grown children who lived at home, worked and supported the household. So poor granddaddy would so many times get a bag of Beech Nut Tobacco, put it on the bill and try to disguise it by writing over it, or trying to erase it and putting it down as a quart of milk or loaf of bread! But it was worth the battle it provoked with grandma, as she always knew he was falsifying the grocery bill, when her gimlet eyes scanned over it.

By today’s standards it was so pathetically harmless the length granddad went to for a bag of chewing tobacco. Today an addict will kill for a fix. Beech Nut chewing tobacco cost a mere ten cents in 1927 and earlier.

One summer morning I got up late and granddad was home alone as grandma had taken Jack and gone on one of her rare shopping trips to town. Granddad asked what I wanted to eat; tried to get me to agree to something we had, but I wanted an ice cream cone! I thought grandma not being home a perfect opportunity to get what I wanted. He tried to talk me out of it; but when I knew I was going to get the cone, I raised the ante and demanded a pint! A pint of strawberry ice cream! I finally got my way and poor worried granddad, and I happy, went down to the store and I got my pint of strawberry ice cream. He had been saying over and over I could not eat a pint and I’d answer, 'Uh huh!'

When we got home he tried to rush me through eating it before grandma got home. He was right. I couldn’t eat it all. He had to eat the rest and took the empty carton down to the alley and tossed it across to a neighbor’s trash heap by their back gate! Knowing he’d catch a scolding when pay-up time came, still he let me get that ice cream. He’d tell her he craved it on such a hot day if need be!

There was no greater love than my beloved granddad had for his two grand kids.

The day of reckoning came and that one bill was a scribbled up mess. Granddaddy surely had a hard time placing an item on the bill that made sense price wise, trying to replace the ice cream listed. So he had erased, scribbled and erased more than once and was unreadable!

Grandma would go over and over the grocery bills, quarreling all the while. Grandpa would hover around and when he could stand it no longer, go out on the front porch, lean against a pillar, and swear, cursing everything in Indiana from the weather on up or down! I’d stand beside him and listen as he directed all of it to me, never talked down to me, and never reminded me I was to blame for any of it. I was barely nine years old. Too young to think about blame, but I do recall a twinge of guilt for the pounding granddad was taking!

When grandma was finished adding it had better be exactly what she had ordered that the grocer had charged for. After she was satisfied that she could do no more, she would call granddad and give his the exact amount needed. If she had to give more than called for, she reminded him several times before he could leave the house, to be sure and bring the change back not spend it! Warned him to be sure and get each bill marked paid!

The problem was, it was never a simple task to settle up the grocery bill. She made real work of it and had both of them mad and Jack and I very upset. Not only did she see our purchases, even if she couldn’t tell what for, she would swear she hadn’t gotten many items that she just had forgotten about. We all hated that settle up time.

Granddad has a stroke in 1927, couldn’t really talk and his mind was cloudy, not always able to know what was going on. He often spoke of wanting his bags packed, he was going to Nicholasville (Ky)! He would try to get out of bed but could not. When some former neighbors came to visit him, he knew exactly who they were, but was never able to recognize his wife, grandma. He’d tell me to go get his wife and when she stood beside his bed, he would ask where his wife was and to go get his wife!

One of the last things I remember, he asked me to get him a chew of tobacco; said it was in his trouser pocket. It was exactly where he remembered. I put a big wad in his mouth. He began to choke, trying to fight for air, and I ran and got Auntie and told her he was choking. We ran back to him and I told her I gave him a chew of tobacco! She pulled his mouth open and scrapped the wad of tobacco out. She scolded me the worst I’d ever been taken over the coals. I began to cry I was so scared, and say he asked for the tobacco. She said, "He cannot eat or swallow, barely able to get some water down him!"

He died eleven days later. In his old pants pocket, the same old pants he’d wiped his hand down a few years before when he and I shared the secret of the lard bucket incident, I found one third pack of his beloved Beech Nut Chewing tobacco, and two old pennies, in his snap shut little money pouch he always carried and I had gotten many a treat from it’s contents all my young life.

I was always glad he had that. He had some Beech Nut left and he was not broke; he did have two pennies. He wasn’t a pauper!

The two pennies were ear marked for two chocolate covered suckers for me and my little brother Jack, I knew, if he had lived!

I kept that bag of tobacco and the little worn leather purse and two pennies for years, taking them with me when I moved away to his beloved Nicholasville and married there. I would take them out and look at them and drift back to grandpa and my wonderful days when he was the best part of my life in the good old days. When my biggest problem was more candy and ice cream and his chewing tobacco!

His dearest wish I heard many time was to live until we both grew up and married. I’d hold the pennies which were all green with mold and I’d count the years he had been gone, and it was hard to realize it was only about five years ago yet it seemed he’d been gone forever.

I would wish he had been allowed to see me and Jack, married, had been given about ten more years. I knew he would not have to beg for a dime to get tobacco, or take a little bucket to town to put lard in as he had to do for grandma, though never had it put in the bucket! Never have to explain a grocery bill or anything to me.
It would have been payback time for all his kindness, all he gave us, how wonderful and magical he made our lives when we were growing up.

I knew he would have left all in Indiana and moved right back to Kentucky, lived with me and my husband in his beloved Kentucky, and been so happy. So would I have been happy, sweet grandpa, so would I have been so happy.

To your memory, beloved granddaddy, I’m so glad you were in my life for a while.

John Hillary Overstreet

Gone but not forgotten ever.

Kokomo Kootsie

6/19/2004

Poor Granddaddy! He dreaded and hated with a passion to see grandma pour over the ads every Friday in the Kokomo Tribune. When she got up and tore off a square of white wrapping paper from a store she saved, and sat back down, wet her pencil on her tongue tip and began to write, looking at the ads and back to the paper as she wrote, he knew it meant trouble for him; a trip down town to grocery shop for specials for her!

She gave him very specific directions what she wanted, how much, how much it cost and exactly where to get it! If he came home and failed to follow her directions, woe be unto him!

One direction he could not make himself follow, no matter what the consequences were. He was surely not afraid of her. She was about 5’2" and weighed 105 lbs soaking wet probably, and he was over 6’ tall and about 200 lbs. But her size didn’t effect the cutting power of her tongue, and that was what he was afraid of! He was an easy going peace loving man, and he disliked any friction in his life.

In those good old days everyone used lard, there was no Crisco or other cooking fats available for practical use. The lard did not come in small cans or buckets evidently, but in huge lard cans to the grocer who weighed it out to the customer. He would put a white paper tray on the scales and paddle the amount of lard wanted into it and wrap it up in the white paper like grandma saved for writing on and tie a string around it which she also saved, winding it around a spool until she had a huge ball of it, and kept in a kitchen drawer.

Grandma very much objected to that mode of selling lard. So she had a small lard bucket she always insisted Granddaddy take with him and have the butcher put her lard in the bucket! She didn’t like any of it to be wasted, coming off on the paper or sticking and soaking into the tray!

Granddaddy would take the little bucket, looking like a small boy going off to his sand box to play at building sand castles; except he was more like a giant, who has stolen the little boys sand bucket, lost in his huge hands.

I always went with him shopping and most everywhere he went. He grumbled all the way, about Grandma, her mother, both quarrelsome women according to him, hard to please and so on. I remember once he said, "Your Grandmammy is just like her mammy; quarrel at anything! She used to go out to the hen-house and fuss at the hens for not laying enough!"

When we got to the store he had me take the little tin lard bucket, saying he needed his hands free to read her list, shop! He just was embarrassed to be seen carrying it.

So he’d order the 3 or 4 pounds of lard grandma wanted, making sure it was on sale, which he also hated to ask, and watched while they put the little white tray on the scale and scooped the lard into it, wrap it and string tie it.

When we left the store, on the way home I heard grumbles of what would happen when he returned with the lard wrapped up, wasting a teaspoonful or less, and "Why didn’t you have it put in the bucket, like I said?"

The minute we got in the door and grandma saw no swinging bucket and granddaddy holding the white package, she cut loose at him. They’d argue back and forth, trade insults and wind-up with him telling her to go get it herself next time!

But he always went the next time himself. Her hearing was bad and she avoided contact with anyone because of that.

One time granddaddy decided we’d fool grandma; we stopped in a corner lot and he proceeded to transfer the lard to the bucket! I can see him yet. He knelt down and took the lid off the bucket and carefully untied the lard. He held it over the bucket, and dropped it down in, by a bit of shaking. Some missed and went over the side and hit the grass! Granddaddy let loose with some of his fancy cuss-words, and tried to scoop it up with the tray and did get most of it. It was speckled with grass! He kept up his on brand of language as he picked all the grass out and finally scraped the tray down side of the bucket, getting the rest of the lard in it; then he wiped the paper down it and got a bit of it off too.

Now his hands were all greasy and he had no place to wipe them! So he rubbed them down his pants and got hold of the tail of my dress and finished the job saying, "Your gradmammy will never notice it on you or my pants." Then he laughed his wonderful laugh and I smiled, sharing the joke with him.

Grandma never knew about that; if she had she would have never trusted either of us; anything we said would have been suspect. She did say it was a messy job putting it in the bucket, which made granddaddy’s eyes look pained and bemused and caused me to have a fit of giggles, which I broke off quickly when grandma looked sharply at me, and turned it into a cough.

Even though what he did was a solution to keep grandma quiet and satisfied, it was never tried again. There was no where to clean up his hands and his pants would not absorb so much grease and I was not going to have all my dresses greased-up in the back!

So the bucket of lard controversy went on as long as sweet granddaddy lived and he left us when I was eleven years old. Gone as the Good Old Days are gone forever.

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