Recounted Memories - 1st of ?

In the past several days, I have had occasion to use my "memory bank" for certain things. I am discovering that it might be necessary for me to write down a few things (not that I am getting forgetful) lol.

Now before I get into my memories, I want to share something funny that happened prior to my birth. In those days, there were no pampers so you used cloth diapers. There were also no washers and dryers so you did laundry by hand. Okay on to the story, my Mom had hung out my sibling's diapers on the clothes line and Dad's dogs had been pulling at the bottom of them. My Mom gave my Dad a fair warning and assured him that if they did it again she would shoot them. Well, they did and then she did. The only problem she put the shotgun up to her face like a rifle so she had a very black and blue face.

So, with that in mind, I am starting at my earliest memories which was about age 3. I was the second born daughter to this Christian hard working (poor materially) couple. We lived out in the country on a small farm /ranch. We had cows, pigs, chickens, horses and dogs.

It was about this time that the infamous saying originated. My Dad called out to me to bring him the milk bucket so he could milk the cows. I was never very far from his heels when he was at home. It was just about dark as I started out with the bucket and since I was so short the bucket hit the ground often. On the way, I heard this owl hooting. To my young ears it was saying, "Whooo are you?" To this I answered, "I Barba Ann and I goin to the house as fast as I can". With that, I threw the bucket down and ran like a quail. I can still hear my Dad laughing and no matter how hard he tried, I would not come back out. This saying has followed me through my entire life.

Dad took me with him everywhere he could and one day we were going into town in the wagon to get some feed for the animals. He always found a penny or two for candy and this day was no different. That day, the candy he bought me was a green, yellow and pink striped coconut square. As I was savoring each tiny nibble, I saw something shiny and sure enough there was a little ring in the candy. What a treat!! As you can see from some early pictures, I have always loved jewelry.

In that day and age, the men all got together when the weather turned cold and killed hogs. They would go from one house to the other helping each other. Well, I had one of the pigs named and was very distraught when the slaughter took place. Afterwards when Mom cooked the pork, I would ask if it was my pig and each time Dad would say no. It never occurred to me that when the pork was all gone so was my pig.

I don't know if we went every Saturday night or not but I remember many times that on Saturday afternoon Mom would give us baths, curl our hair and put us down for a nap. That night we would go into the next big town and go to Gene Bell's cafe. We would get hamburgers and then go to the Okla Theatre and watch a movie. The movies were mostly all westerns. First they showed the cartoons, then the serial, each week they had what we now call soaps so they would show an episode and leave you hanging until the next week. Then came the main feature. Those were the days of Roy Rogers, Lash Larue, etc. Those were clear times, the good guys always won. You could tell the good from the bad as the good ones wore white hats while the bad ones wore black.