Excerpts...

Click here to read excerpts from THE FIRST BOY I LOVED and from the bonus book, THE MARINE. (Comments welcome. Generally speaking.)

Taking Notes -- Badly (More Memory Keeping)

I found a legal pad like this one -- except the one I found "has some age on it" as we like to say in the South. In it are several pages of notes written in pencil. They're in my handwriting so I know I took them, likely in an interview situation.

My memory of doing this is very vague, however. Well, all right, I don't really remember it at all. Nevertheless, here we go:

The heading is "Remembrances MGF"

1. Bale of cotton in front of every store in Salisbury (Now, I would ask "why." Then, it apparently didn't occur to me.)

2. Christmas
8 -- 2 Boxes stick candy 3 boxes horehound candy (2-25¢) 4¢ cap pistol 1¢ caps

Russell's store
10¢
No oranges

Clothes mother made
Jeans cloth--pants--hand
Mother's machine
came to knee

Cards -- spin own yarn
Knitted all socks, wool clothes, dyed ring (?)

1912/11-10
Farm Rothrock -- mill pond -- killed timber -- pond sourced (?) -- chills
quinine capsules -- above 104 degrees (fever?)
Dr. Choate
Dr. Chalmer

Jacob Fisher --
"Rubbing" doctor --
pains, bowels move (That's what I wrote so somebody must have said it.)
Hands like a woman
six foot
--clean shaven

Uncle "used" for bleeding (This means he could stop blood flow with a verse from the Bible.)
-- Peter Wagner --

Grandmother -- Juliann Plyler Wagner
"Liver growed"
Kid squall for life
Horse collar off (horse?) Hot collar
pass child through
said some things
rub under ribs
People came to get her (I assume this meant when they needed help with an inconsolable child and not when they had tarring and feathering in mind.)

"Granny Woman" Liz Palmer
4 miles Whitley -- never delivered no babies
50¢? Cooked breakfast
Jack Palmer made baskets
Slave

Fort Jackson -- 2 P?
Slept in street
13th Depot Brigade

9AM before --
shots, vaccines, uniforms
Greenville/Gun Springfield Enfield

Long Island New York
Camp Upton

Docks
Boat to Camp
No Holland Tunnel -- Sabotage

Infantry 321 81 Division Company D
Trenches Volga Mountains
Verdun
Argonne
Machine Gun
Plyler

Armistice 13 days --
11 months
90 days

-- Lewis Lyerly --
Maggots (This I do know about. He was wounded on the battlefield, medics couldn't get to him, his wound became infested with maggots -- which saved his life.)

Southern Division
81st
42 Rainbow
1st Btn 6-8-10 boys
muster out

Feed you?
Box White
Stanback
Bunked together
Rowed on river

(During the) Depression:
Worked 3 days/short week
$1.00
Velna stayed
Lived at store


No place sacred

Railroad -- creek
road Rt --
Up hill
Rt
Old German tombstones
("Here Lies My Man") ?


Henry Davis Plyler -- Civil War
Petersburg
Captured
barn -- pick up corn, grain fed to horses to eat
counted in German
made horse collars
Doff (Dolph?) Lentz

Juliann (?)
Matton's Grove Methodist Church -- Below Gold Hill


Alabama:
--Davis Plyler's son
--moved down there -- couple months -- 1914-1915


Work in mines --
--Woodard Mine
--Tennessee Mine (boilers)
--Gallon 20¢ beer
--5¢ qt. pitcher

Cotton Mill -- 11 or 12 years old
babies put in boxes while mothers worked
went home to nurse baby
10 hour shifts
Hardest job -- spinning
Swept -- oil/band/twisters
75¢ a day
$9.00 a payday
didn't get to keep any of the money

School:
cut wood
Ern (Ernest), Murray, Norman, Rob (Robert), Erv (Erving), Loran ("Lorn"), Emma (moved to Michigan), Laila ("Lail")

Julianne Plyler
W/Rockwell
Virginia
Petersburg -- Camp Lee
Battlefield
Gun lock

Ship: Walmer Castle
Sea Sickness advice. Old sailor 50 years old: Don't look at anything for very long. Keep your eyes moving.


-----------------------------------------

That's it. And the moral here? Transcribe your notes while they're still "warm," because 30 years or so later, you won't remember.

Many Assorted Woes

It's been a long time since I've been this distressed, but since I can't do anything about any of it -- crying, pouting and cussing hasn't worked -- I'm going to think (and post) about something else:

Children's Drawings

What I've learned is that you can ask the child years and years later what their drawings were about, and they can tell you. When my son was a little boy, for example, used to draw pictures of our front yard. The disconcerting part was that it was always full of sharks. (Yes, sharks.) I had no idea why, and at the time, he really couldn't say. But not long ago, I asked him why he always put sharks in the yard. He had no problem explaining. When it rained really hard, he said, and the leaves rushed by in the ditch in front of the house, they would sometimes turn up on their edges --at which point they looked just like a shark's dorsal fin. Later, I happened to witness this phenomena, and guess what? My front yard was full of sharks!

Now let me show you this drawing:




This was done by the senior member of my very talented Art Department when he was three or four. (He's a teenager now.) "What is this about?" I asked recently, and sure enough, he remembered immediately. It's a picture of the two of us, he said -- I'm the lovely creature on the right with the killer eyelashes. On this particular day, we are going searching for bugs -- a green one and a red one. The sun is shining. "And those string things in the sky are what?" I wondered. Not "string things" at all, I found out. Those were raindrops falling from the clouds. Because we like them.

So. The bottom line here is that children always have a reason for what they think and do. It may not make sense to us, but it's very logical to them.

If you have any drawings stashed somewhere at your house and the artist is available, ask for an interpretation of the subject matter. You may be amazed.