Waive Junior Remembering
Childhood Days on the Farm

Waive Schwander on the farm (girl in white bonnet)

            My days on the farm were very happy. When I was a small child we lived with our grandmother. Elizabeth Schwander She was always very good to us.  Uncle George and Aunt Ida had two Sons, Glenn and Harold and they lived on a farm next to us. Seeing Glenn and my older sister, Hazel, were the oldest grandchildren, they got me in quite a lot of trouble. One time they broke a beautiful big lamp at Aunt Ida’s and said I did it!  To this day they never have known who to believe.  Seeing I was the youngest, Easel and Glenn thought I wouldn’t get a spanking, but they would! Also, the first time I remember eating spaghetti was at Uncle George’s house. He told me the spaghetti was fish worms and I wouldn’t eat it!  Hazel, Glenn and I liked to play a game called, “Gypsie’s are coming.” Glenn and Hazel would put me in the center of them and they’d get butcher knives (to protect me from the gypsies) and then we’d go marching down the road! We must have looked funny! They moved away after a few years.
 
            I will never forget how we would wall paper the smoke house after the hams, bacon and sausage were smoked and used it for our play house.  One time Glenn put straw in the stove and started a fire; me, being a tattle tale, and before they could say I did it, I ran and told Ma on him.  Boy, did he get it! I also remember the time he knocked the oriole’s nest put of the buckeye tree in the front yard. We all cried for they never came back.
 
            Christmas was always fun; stringing pop corn and cranberries, making paper chains out of red and green tissue paper. This is how we trimmed our tree, and we thought it was beautiful. Dad’s young aunt, his father’s half sister named Agusta Shoemaker, passed away when she was quite young and left three boys, John, Alford and Bill.  They always came over on Christmas day. Another sister, Teena Beaver, died very young and left six children, I believe -- One was a tiny baby.  After her funeral they brought Lottie, the oldest of two girls and Bernice, who was a little younger than me, and the baby Lawrence over to our house.  I loved their dad, Mike Beaver, and always talked about him. This is where I got my nick-name of “Mike” As I was very small and skinny, and Bernice was so fat and cute I thought, I was always biting her!  Boy, did I ever get the spankings. I never could tell anyone I didn’t bite her because I didn’t like her, but only because she was so fat and cute -- I liked her is why I did it!
 
            Hazel loved to fish so we fished for big minnows in the creek which ran near our farm. We also loved to spear frogs. We would watch the red squirrels steal our walnuts, butternuts. and hazelnuts then we would go and steal them back. Boy, how I loved to climb the apple trees.
 
We had horses and buggies in those days and Dad forbid us to ride “ole Bill’ -- our buggy horse, but we would ride him anyway.  Also, we wern’t suppose to play in the creek for Dad thought snakes would bite us.  If he only knew how many hours we did just that
 
            I was four years old when my brother Jack (George Isaac) was born. He was the favorite for years.  Dad wanted a boy so bad and actually wanted me to be a boy, but since I wasn’t, I turned out to be quite a tom—boy. I always wanted rubber boots and a pair of over-alls but in those days, girls never wore them.
 
            Seems as if the calves were always born in the winter time.  I remember we would get bund1ed up real warm and go to the barn to see them. They were like a new born baby to us. Then the butcher came around to buy them, we would cry so that Dad would make the butcher, Mr. Ricksen, kill them some place else so we wouldn’t know! For years I didn’t like that man because he killed calves.
 
            Ben Hinton, our neighbor, raised sheep and one time he gave Jack one, which we called “Daisy”. Daisy was such a nice pet; we raised her on •a bottle, but someone owning a Model T Ford ran over her and killed her.  We had a big funeral for her and picked wild flowers to put on her grave.