CHAPTER 2

I NEVER LIKED GRADE SCHOOL VERY WELL

             My first two years of grade school were at Taft church school. It was truly a church school, as it was attached to the church. I was in the first grade with our nearest neighbor Burl Freeman and a couple of other guys, Ron Bigalow and Maurice Kevit. The teacher had our names up at one end of the blackboard. She then put are grade each day next to it. She had put Ronnie P. and Burl F, etc. One day before the grades had been put up, I said, “Burl’s got an “F”, Burl’s got an “F”. He said, “No I didn’t”, I said, “Yes you did, look at the blackboard” He said, “Ronnie’s gotta Pee, Ronnie’s gotta Pee”. I didn’t tease him anymore.

            The older boys would try and get us younger kids to fight after school, while waiting for the public school bus. I could beat Burl he was so small, but Maurice was taller than I was, but I would always beat him until we got in the second grade. I don’t know what he did that summer, but he sure beat the socks off of me that year. We became good friends fast.

            We had to raise our hands up if we wanted to go to the restroom. One finger meant you had to go number one and two fingers meant you had to go number two. I don’t know why the teacher needed to know that. I guess she thought it was important to know that number two took longer or something. The restroom was out side around the back of the building. One day this friendly dog started jumping up on me. I would push him away but it would hang onto my leg with both its front legs. As I walked back to the class room door it still hung on. I opened the door, it would not let go. The teacher said, “Ronnie get in here and close the door“. I said, “I can’t, this dog is trying “Fight Me”.  She grabbed my arm and yanked me in the room, took me over to the sink and washed my mouth out with soap. I was dumb founded. I sat down at my desk and hid my head in my arms and cried. I didn’t know what I had done. Later one of the big kids told me what I had said. I still didn’t get it. He told me it was a bad four letter word. I still didn’t get it.

            Another time that she made me sad was when she asked if anyone could count to ten backwards I raised my hand. She said, “Ronnie you may come up and try”. I stood up front of the class and counted 10 to 1 without stopping. She said, “Wrong”. Anyone else want to try? Burl walked up and with his back to us he counted 1-10. “Right” the teacher said. And she made fun of me for not counting backwards like Burl had. I guess she thought it was funny. I didn’t.

            The teacher taught us reading with word cards and not phonics. We learned the words by sight. We never learned to sound the words out. Mom finally learned what was going on and made a set of phonics cards and tried to teach me some at home. I never really learned to sound out my words until I married Joann and she helped me the most. Linda is my teacher now. I was really bad off through out high school, both in spelling and reading. Thank God, now I’m 68 years old and writing a book on the computer. Thanks, to spell check.

            Nearly all of my cousins had moved to Siletz by my third grade year. There was Donna and Buzz, Willis -- Mickey and Rex Ring -- Earlene, Gary, Joe, and Tom Parmele -- Shirley, Me, Jeannie, Dickie Parmele -- Bob and Roy Ring’s Kids were to small to go to school yet.

 The church school fire story

             We went to Toledo church school until the eighth grade. It was a two story building 1-4 grades down stairs 5-8 up stairs. I can think of a few things about the school that may be of interest to you. They had a well but the water was to dirty to drink so we had to bring drinking water from home. They had a big wood furnace to heat the building. One day the building smelled like smoke. So the down stairs teacher called for a fire drill by blowing her whistle. We all lined up and walked up the stairs and out the door with the upper grade students. We were all out side when we heard the fire trucks coming. The two teachers were down stairs trying to find where the smell was coming from when the overhead air duct burst into flames it was covered with ¼ inch plywood and just got to hot. The only water was the drinking bottles, they didn’t do any good.

            The neighbor was asked to call the fire department. The school had no phone. The teachers didn’t tell us what was happening until we saw the fire trucks. By the time the fire was out the down stairs was gutted. We had been studying Bible, so the bibles were open on our desks. The desks were all black and charred. The tablets were burnt the covers on the Bibles were burnt off but the pages were not. The pages of the open bibles had not been burnt. 

My first school spanking

          When I was in the fourth grade we played marbles all the time. One day a boy dropped a steely, an inch steel ball bearing, on my best marble. It broke in two. I got mad and threw his steely over the bank. We started to fight, big time. The teacher gave me a whipping with her rubber hose. She kept it in a secret place, in a tinker toy tube, behind the piano. We found it later and hide it. That didn’t make her happy. I didn’t like school!

My first Love

             By the eighth grade I had been in love with a couple girls. In the seventh it was Judy Eastham, but she didn’t know it. They moved away because her dad joined the church and he had to quit working for C. D. Johnson’s because they were a Union Mill. I never saw Judy again.

            In the eighth grade it was Ruth Ellen Bruce. We were engaged. You see it happened this way; we had held hands coming back over the sand dunes at the school picnic at Florence. After that it was love! I passed a note to her one day and the teacher saw it. She came and took it away and read it to the whole room. It said.

                                                             To my dearest Ruth Ellen.

  Roses are red.

  Violets are blue

                  Sugar is sweet and so are you.               

  Love Ronnie

             Everyone had a great laugh, all but Ruth Ellen and I.           

            One day the church had a picnic by the Siletz River so all us kids could go swimming. Ruth Ellen and I were jumping in the river and as she came up her top came down I saw it before she did. She was so embarrassed I felt sorry. I said, “That’s okay I’m going to ask you to marry me some day anyway.” She said, “That would be nice.” So we were engaged having never even kissed.

            I went off to Laurelwood for the summer. We wrote nearly every day. Mom said the only way she could find out how I was doing was to call Ruth Ellen. After school started I met Joyce Wade. Wow! Was she ever beautiful! My letters to Ruth Ellen were less and less.

            I don’t think Joyce knew I liked her so much. I asked her to march with me a few times, and we even held hands at camp meeting that summer.

            One day a junior classmate, by the name of Johnny Hill, asked me if I was going steady with Joyce. I said, no not really. He asked if he could ask her to march with him. I said, I guess so. He did, dare it! They got married during college. 

Learning to drive

            I learned how to start the car for mom in the mornings, before she drove us to school. I would volunteer to go out in the cold rainy weather and warn the car up for her. One day I thought I would back the car out of the garage. I knew how to put it into all the gears, so with the car running I pushed in on the clutch and put it in reverse. I knew I had to give it enough gas to get it out of the garage and up the driveway incline. I guess I gave it to much. It left black marks on the garage floor, across the driveway, up the bank and through the neighbor’s fence. It stopped by itself. I don’t know why, unless it was all the dirt that was in the tail pipe. Or maybe it was the post it climbed up on. I know it wasn’t the 1x6 boards that were on the fence, because they were about 20 feet away in the neighbor’s garden. I knew I was in trouble right away. I pushed the clutch in and it rolled down onto the driveway. I got out and looked things over. There was dirt on the bumper and the spare tire, but no dents. I cleaned the dirt off and dug the dirt out of the tail pipe, just as mom and the other kids came out. Mom was surprised to see the car out of the garage but she didn’t seem to notice the bank or the fence. She got in and the car started right up. We drove to school. After school I made a dash to fix the fence before dad got home. Mom was watching out the kitchen window as I was fixing the fence. The next day she told me she would back the car out of the garage as it was raining. Bless her heart she knew all along. I think maybe it made more noise than I heard inside the car, squealing of the tires and all.

The Jeep story

             I did learn to drive the Jeep pretty good though. One day Dick and I were home alone so I decided it was time to get the wood for dad. So we drove the Jeep up the mountain in back of the house. The Jeep had a winch on the back bumper. We had to go all the way up a steep dirt logging road in order to turn around. At the top there was just enough room to jockey it around and head back down the mountain to the tree which I wanted to get. The top of the tree was hanging about four feet over the upper bank on the right side. I drove past it, had Dick get out, while I held the brake and unwound the winch. Dick pulled the cable up around the log and hooked it about four feet from the broken off top.

            Dick got in and down the hill we started. The cable tightened and the tree started coming straight down and across the road. It was much bigger than I had thought. As it rolled across the road it started to pull the Jeep sideways, just as the Jeep was about to roll over the bank, the tree hit a stump. Wow! Were we shaking! I turned off the motor, went down and unhooked the cable, got in the Jeep and coasted down the mountain. I wound the cable up and parked the Jeep where it was supposed to be. We were loading the wood; dad had wanted us to pile on the porch, when mom and dad got home. They thought it was nice to see their boys minding so well.

 Dick’s broken arm

            One day, Dick thought he was to sick to go to school. He was in the second grade I was in the seventh. Grandma Ring was gone so, mom made me stay home with him. As soon as mom was gone he got better.

            We decided to build a swing out back of the house. We only had one rope so I climbed up a big maple tree and out onto a big limb and tied the rope out as far as I could.  I tied a stick across the bottom of the rope. I was the first to swing out over the blackberry filled gully. You had to really push yourself in order to make it back. To stop short meant falling into the blackberries. I did it until Dick wanted to do it. I lowered the cross stick to his height. I was afraid he wouldn’t be able to push off fast enough to make it all the way back to the landing spot. So I pushed him a little to hard I guess. He swung all the way over the gully and let go. Down he went, about ten feet, into the blackberries. I got an old ladder and laid it over the blackberry bushes and climbed down to him. He was a little mad at me for pushing so hard. I told him I was sorry, he didn’t forgive me. 

            He was really hurting bad. I tried pulling him up onto the ladder but he wouldn’t let me touch his right arm. I was able to get him out of there somehow. He went into the house and laid on the davenport. He kept holding his arm, but he would not cry. He stayed on the davenport the rest of the day. When dad got home he took one look at Dick and rushed him to the Toledo hospital. He had a broken elbow. I felt so bad I went over to the swing and cut it down. Mom and grandma both told us, that is what happens when you lie, about being sick, so you don’t have to go to school.    Poor Dick had to wear that cast for a long time. When it came off, his arm never would stick out like his other one. It always bent downward, when he held it out.

            Grandma always had a large garden both by the house and a bigger one, down by Depoe creek, on the other side of the highway. At least Dick didn’t have to weed the garden for a while.

            The pantry was about 8 x12 with selves all the way to the top and about two feet wide. We had corn, peas, carrots, Parmele beans, green beans, beets, tomatoes, potatoes, berries of every kind, applesauce, pears, prunes all raised on the place. We all gleaned cherries and peaches from the Willamette Valley. We had are own cow so we had milk, lot’s of milk, about four gallons a day. Grandma knew how to make butter and cottage cheese; we had our own cream separator and ice cream maker.

            The folks never bought anything from the store. Dad liked to make fudge candy. Mom and Grandma baked all the bread and cinnamon rolls, cakes, pies, and dog ears we could eat. Dog-ears were made from the top slice of bread before it was baked. It was then fried in butter with sugar and cinnamon sprinkled on top.

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