Maxine Lee is grandmother of our good friend carterzest. We will continue to share the narrative of her family’s history as presented in the book she published in 2005 entitled Some Assembly Required.  The gathering of her stories in the book was a result of her dream “to leave a printed account to my family, of my beginning, my birth place and childhood, and a few of the lessons life has taught to me.”  Thank you, Maxine, for sharing with us what you gathered for them.

Links to previous posts in the series will be shared at the end of each Sunday’s post.

Schools and Books

The first school I remember was located three miles from home. My brother was in first grade and brought home his books, See Jane. See Jane run. He read to me and soon I was reading better than he was. I loved to read and was so frustrated when I couldn’t make words out of the funny looking characters which I had not yet learned. As soon as I could read, I was hooked. I read everything that came my way. Right there and then I decided that some day I would have my own library.

The second school I remember was the most outstanding. My brother was always into mischief and had a mischievous glimmer in his eye. When we had a new teacher, it was his personal calling to drive her over the edge. I remember one in particular. I can still see her chasing my brother with a book in her hand, ready to beat him on the head with it, while he was quietly laughing to himself. The teacher had a big nose, huge feet and a boyfriend, which provided my brother with lots of ammunition to annoy her. It petrified me.

There were more than two hundred books in our little library, and I read them all several times. There I met Heidi, Anne of Green Gables, Dandelion Cottage, and books on Greek mythology, history, biography and travel. I loved them all. One book was about King Neptune and his imprisoned daughter. I developed a wild imagination. I read at home by the window past dusk until Mom made me stop. With no electricity, lamp light was not the best for reading.

I kept that love of books and passed it on to my children. They all love to read, and Ginny is an avid old book collector. I also have managed to find some of my own old favorites. Five Little Peppers, The Bird’s Christian Carole, The Little Lame Prince and many others fill my guest room bookcase. For the downstairs bookcase, I entertained dreams of my grandchildren coming for visits and laying on the carpet with a book in their hands. I didn’t reckon with TV and video games.

When we moved from Minnesota to Oregon in 1942, we attended a huge school in Portland. Imagine my fear coming from a one-room schoolhouse with fifteen kids or less to one with countless class rooms and four hundred kids. It was frightening to one so timid.

Fortunately for me, we were not there very long – only about six months or so. Then we moved into the Tigard school district, where we lived across the road from the Bunn’s house. Mr. Bunn was on the school board, and the bus stopped at their driveway. The Bunns only had one fat daughter, Bunny, her sister was a majorette, which made Bunny sort of famous.

Papa’s brother, Larry, took us by to see that school many years later. I had forgotten it. The building was old then, but that’s where I graduated from grade school, wearing a beautiful pale yellow (still my favorite color) embroidered, organza dress my mother had made. Unfortunately, I had a terrible cold, coughed the whole time and was freezing, but I felt elegant. There were six in that graduating class. I loved school and fully intended to become a teacher. I loved books, English, geography, spelling and literature. I hated math and was not good at it, so when I entered high school I took four years of math. I decided if I got good at it, I wouldn’t find it so difficult and unpleasant. I still do not have a great love for mathematics, but taking a class in geometry did teach me a lot about organizing and logic. Mrs. Mullens taught our geometry class and stood for no nonsense.

I was elected by my classmates to edit our year book. It was a narrow choice, and I believe Mrs. Mullens set me up, because I was timid and easy to manipulate. She could get me to do what she wanted as far as pictures, theme and material were concerned which would be used to go into that book.

I also took a speech class with Mrs. Mullens who was the instructor. I thought it would help me conquer my shyness. We had to give a speech once a week in front of that huge class. Eventually, I got so brave that I gave a speech in front of the entire student body.

Mrs. Galvin, tall and funny, was my favorite teacher. She understood me. She taught social studies. Everyone loved her. I recall saying I would have loved to live in pioneer days, in a log house with primitive amenities. My classmates ridiculed me for that idea, saying I would not like doing without the comforts of a modern home. Mrs. Galvin supported me, saying I was the one who would have endured the struggles and difficulties in that era, and would have been happy in that kind of environment. I did endure that environment for some time in my early married life which I did not particularly enjoy.

I spent one weekend in college. I attended a statewide journalism convention. As a guest for the night in a ladies dorm, they held a party for me, roasting marshmallows over a candle and drinking hot chocolate. I was elected secretary of the convention and my pictured appeared in our school paper. Mrs. Mullen, again, had instructed us to nominate one of our local group for an office.

My school days were not particularly happy. I felt intimidated, and very much a child of poverty because of my lack of nice clothes. Everything I wore was a hand-me-down. But I survived it.

Ladies Aid Society

Once I went to a Ladies Aid social where they served chicken salad on a lettuce leaf. I thought it was awful stuff. The whole thing was boring. I must have been about four, so my memory is vague. But Mom went again another time, and I remember the dress she worked on for weeks before. She had splurged with whatever cream money she managed to squeeze out of the modest budget in 1933, and bought some baby blue, embroidered material.

The dress was simple and had a sort of cape over the top. With Mom’s blue eyes and black hair, she looked very pretty as she walked the mile or so the church where the luncheon was held. I vividly remember seeing her return from her outing.

The weather had turned bad as she walked home. In Minnesota it never sprinkles. It’s either dry or it pours. That day it poured. Mom looked like a drowned rat coming down the hill heading for home. Her hair was dripping, the dress had shrunk and she was steaming. Once in the house, she worked her way out of the dress and threw it down with her handbag. I never saw the dress again.

Consider the Lilies

You cannot walk through a wood, or look into the sky without seeing the wonders of God’s handiwork.

We live in such a busy time. I pray that several times in your day you can look around you and “consider” the lilies. Count the stars. Look at the clouds. A verse in Psalms 104 says God makes the clouds his chariot and “walketh upon the wings of the wind.”

At the ocean, you watch millions of grains of sand hold back mountains of water. What a wonder!

You cannot look at nature without seeing God unless you purpose to ignore Him. Everywhere you look is a lesson for your life.

Jesus used the simple work of the shepherd and the potter, or the carpenter to teach us the lessons we need, to live with each other.

He shows us important spiritual truths with simple every day examples. He used the washing of the disciples’ feet to teach us to serve one another. Even going in and out of a room, would teach us that Jesus is “the door” to heaven. At almost every meal we eat, we can remember Jesus is the bread of life, and every time we drink a glass of water, it can remind us of the Living Water.

One year, we kept my brother’s sheep. Oh, the lessons to be learned there. Even in our trials and tragedies we can learn important lessons and Jesus is always there to show us if we will keep our ears tuned to His loving, still small voice. Go through the day sometime, and list on paper all the little things God shows you. Then try to make mention of what it teaches you. You could even share it with others. Maybe someone would be encouraged or edified by it.

God is good to His children and  we should be learning every day. His wonders. His lessons, and His “parables”surround us if we will only take time to look. From the earth to the sky it’s all a “school house” just for us.

Why it’s called Mailboxes and Old Barns

Mailboxes along the roads and old barns set back in fields overgrown with weeds often served as landmarks in rural Montana. These landmarks told us where we were, and how far we had to go. Sometimes they signaled “home”  and the end of the road.  At other times, barely visible through swirling snow, they told us we had miles to go.

Maybe you’ve seen some of the same mailboxes along your roads, or glimpsed some of the same old barns through your storms.

In one way or another, anything you read in this weekly feature is a word picture of some mailbox or some old barn, tangible or intangible, seen by the author somewhere along the roads of their memory. Our stories of other times and places become word pictures of our mailboxes, our old barns.

This current series from Maxine Lee has elements of Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Oregon in it. Others have shared MBOBs from Kansas and Texas and Oklahoma and MBOBs from anywhere show up in the threads. Thank you to all who share in the posts and in the threads, and thanks again to Maxine today. 

Previous posts in the series:

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2014/05/04/mailboxes-and-old-barns-guest-post-some-assembly-required-by-maxine-lee/