The Junior’s settled into their house by fall when school started for the girls, Gary being too young for school at the time. Barbara started sixth grade at the Clark Howell School and found it a very different from the schools she attended in the north.  One thing she had trouble with was the southern hospitality of saying “yes mam or yes sir”, her mother and father never having taught their kids to do so.   On more than one occasion, got reprimanded for answering with yes mam or sir.  Barbara soon found it was easier not to talk in class at all, and not having any friends in the new school, she didn’t join in the recess games and sat off to herself usually reading a book.  With little social life school, Barbara focused on her studies and did quite well academically. 

Not liking school, at home Barbara found escape in the imaginary world that she and her sister Sue created with their paper dolls. Barbara and her sister would make up endless stories and act them out with the paper dolls as the characters, changing their cloths to go with the story.  They had several boxes of the dolls and cloths.  On weekend, Barbara and Sue would take the trolley several blocks into town and go the Dime store where they would spend their 10¢ allowance on the latest paper doll and their clothes.  Sometimes their mother would give them an extra 25¢ and they would get a coke float or ice cream.

The school year came to an end the following June and Barbara, in the sixth-grade school chorus, a sang a song in the graduation ceremony which she remembered her whole life:

Pussy Willow had a secret
That the snow drops whispered her
And she told it to the south wind
As it stroked her velvet fur
And the south wind hummed it softly
To the busy honeybee
And the bee told it to the wood brook
Brimming full of melted snow
And the snow told Robin Red Breast
Who babbled it too and fro
Spring is here, Spring is here, Spring is here.

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In Florida, Wilbur bought 44 acres land from Mary Armstrong which adjoined the back of their property.  Mary Armstrong, a widow, had moved to Texas after her husband died and had no use for the land and Wilbur negotiated a deal in which he would sell the timber on the land to pay for it.   Mary, living in Texas which oil had been found, retained rights “oil, gas or other minerals, on and under said land”.  The mineral rights did not concern Wilbur for no oil had ever been found in Florida while the old growth oak, hickory and pine trees on the land were worth much more.  

Morris was in his Junior year at Reddick High School which he finished in the summer of 1944 just before he turned eighteen in August. 

Updated: 11-27-2021

1944