Hobo, wipe my butt, a horse in the back yard and banana penis

Hobo, wipe my butt, a horse in the back yard and banana penis

When we moved to Kingman about 1946 or 47 we rented a house from ‘ol Doc Ratcliff.’ This house was a two story home a couple of blocks from town. (about any house in town was a couple of blocks from town) It was the second house from the corner. There was an old garage and a small backyard with a garden. From the front you entered an open porch and went into the entry way. The staircase was in the entry way. Turning to the left from the front and then left again was a room that was the living room. Going straight after the left turn at the entry took you into the dining room. Turning right after entering the dining took you into the kitchen. I don’t remember a bathroom downstairs but there was one upstairs. I don’t remember the bedrooms.

The stairs went up half way to a landing then switched back and on to the top. At the top of the stairs and to the left was a room that was just storage for us. Mom had some curtain stretchers in this room and when she washed the curtains she stretched them so they would not shrink. In this room were some other things that I liked to visit. There was a thick book of World War II that I thought was interesting. Mom would let me look at it when she was doing something in this room. In a can was some kind of wallpaper cleaner that was like a ball of clay. I liked to crack open the lid of this can and smell that cleaner. It probably melted my brain but I didn’t know any better.

Across the street lived Ted Deverter. He had a son named Jack but he was much older than me. He was an adult. Down the street lived another old man named Scott something. He was a very nice old man. He had a grandson that visited during the summer and we played together. Next door were the Ratcliffs. Larry was about 2-3 years older and Sharon was a year older than me. Next door on the corner was an old woman. I think she died shortly after we moved in. That house was not much more than a shack. There was a catalpa tree with its long seed pods and large worms.

We had a Dalmatian dog that was just very gentle. He got hit by a car and Dad had to put him to sleep. We didn’t get another dog for a while.

We had a garden in the back yard. Dad would have the ground plowed by an old man who lived at the edge of town. He would bring a horse and a plow and turn the soil. This was quite a site to see this huge animal in the back yard pulling a plow. When the old man brought the horse up the road you could hear it for a long way. The harness and chains rattling. I don’t know if the plow was on wheels or if it was on a wagon. It didn’t take long for him to plow the garden. That didn’t happen to many times. I don’t know if the old man died or what but later the garden was plowed by a tractor.

In the spring we would get some hobos coming by. Today these men would be called the homeless. They would want to do some work for food. Mom would usually find something for them to do and then give them a sandwich or some other food. If they came by at the right time Mom would have them spade up the garden. We would get 2 or 3 different hobos. After a few years Mom would only give food to one hobo who was her favorite. She would tell the others she didn’t have anything. One year Mom’s favorite hobo didn’t come around. She said that he might have found a job or something.

I had the measles when we lived here. I was so sick. I can still see myself lying on a little bed and being so miserable that I could hardly stand it. As I started to get better the measles settled in my ears and I had such painful earaches it is hard to describe. I don’t know how long my sickness lasted but it seemed like forever. Pa came and stayed with me for some reason. He would move his rough hands over my head.

This house had a coal furnace in the basement. That furnace was in the basement and was huge and it burned a lot of coal. We would have coal delivered and dumped in the coal room in the basement. It would then be necessary to shovel the coal into the furnace every day. The furnace would need to be loaded in the morning and in the evening. The ashes would have to be taken out every day too. You would have to shake the burnt residue into the ash collector. This was done by grabbing a big handle connected to the grate of the furnace. You would shake the handle back and forth and the ashes would fall into the ash pit and then you would shovel them into coal bucket and take them outside and dump them. Mom usually did this and Dad shoveled the coal. Sometimes the coal would not be of good quality and big lumps would be left after burning. These big lumps were called clinkers. Any clinkers too big to fall through the grate had to be dragged out of the furnace into the coal bucket. They were usually hot. You had some remote control of the heat with this furnace by means of a lever located upstairs. The lever was connected to the damper of the furnace by means of a small chain. The damper controlled the amount of air entering the burning chamber. The more air entering the chamber the hotter and bigger the flame and the warmer the heated area.

We would occasionally have relatives visit. Mother and Pa would come by. They lived in Rockville. Uncle Frank would come by. Sometimes we would be gone when someone came by. We didn’t have a phone at this house so they couldn’t call ahead to see if we were home. Billy Sneddon, Dad’s cousin, would come by and if we weren’t home he would always design something to let us know that he had been there. One time he took some pants and a shirt and hung them on the wall of the back porch. He poked something in the neck of the shirt to make a head and put a hat on it. Some boots stuck out of the legs of the pants to make feet. He unzipped the fly of the pants and stuck a banana in there to make a penis. We all laughed when we saw that. I was a little embarrassed because I was sheltered from that sort of thing.

I had learned to use the toilet by myself at this home. I could use the toilet but I had not learned to wipe my bottom. Mom always wiped my bottom. I could rely on her to do that. I would go to the bathroom and when I was done I would yell and she would come. One time I went to the bathroom and when I was done I yelled for Mom. She didn’t come. I yelled and yelled. She didn’t come. The bathroom was upstairs and there was a window overlooking the back yard. I waddled over to the window and there was Mom in the back yard. I pecked on the window and yelled but she was talking to a neighbor and didn’t hear me. After a while I waddled back to the toilet and learned how to wipe my bottom.

I got my Schwinn bicycle while we lived here and I got a football and a green corduroy shirt that I really liked. I also got some cowboy boots that I wore all the time and when they wore out we could not afford to get me another pair.

The front yard didn’t have much grass but it had a lot of dirt. I built a drive in theater for my cars and a neighbor girl, Karen Harwood, walked by and destroyed it with her foot. Karen was a year older and was friends with Sharon Ratcliff. I had made little speaker posts from sticks and the screen was bigger sticks. I made the humps to put your car at the correct angle for viewing the screen. It really made me mad when she torn up my drive in. Another time she was walking down the sidewalk and a bird pooped on her. She screamed and I was so happy. For years we exchanged unpleasantries.

We moved from this house about 1950 into the Dan Newnum house which was next to where we would end up building our new home.