Chapter 4 of Tales I Can Remember, by Elsie Swagerty Burton
The next few years get rather scrambled in my mind. I remember going to school in Hughson while staying with my mother’s parents. The school was an old building and was entered after climbing a steep flight of stairs. An episode in the school yard I remember very well. Somehow with timing and school bells and all I could, in no way, reach the sand box in time to get a place to play. I was accustomed to being the “first” at home and I was not about to be undone in that situation. I maneuvered in some way by telling a lie to a child or the teacher, I cannot remember which, to get the desired playing space. Of course, I was found out and was taken down (and it was a way down) to the basement to get my mouth washed out with soap for telling a lie. I remember putting up such a ruckus when we got there and struggling so hard to get away that the teacher bargained with me. She wouldn’t do it that time if I never lied again. Well, I saw to that. It never happened again.
Another recollection of that period is when we were living at my father’s parents’ home in Escalon. Mother had had the baby, Wilma Ardele, and now there were five of us. The child was what mother always called a “Blue Baby.” It is a respiratory problem which is simply taken care of at birth these days, but then the child was expected to live but three to six months. Mother was not told this. She was giving considerable extra time to this baby which didn’t seem to be developing as healthily as her others. This attention was given to the neglect of her next youngest child, Darrell, so my Aunt Helen, who was also living at home, felt. She was not aware that mother did not know the expected outcome for the baby. She asked mother why she was neglecting Darrell when the baby was going to die anyway. This is the way my mother found out that her baby would surely die. It caused quite a disturbance. I loved both of them and I was bewildered.
The baby lived to be nine months old. I remember the funeral day. It was not required that the corpse be taken to a mortuary. It was at the house. I have a feeling that the casket was made there, too. I don’t know if we went to the church for any kind of a service or not or if a minister came there to the house, but I do know that all the relatives did come and there were many and the house was so small. I have this memory of the baby being on the small cot in the living/dining room. The room could barely accommodate a dining table, a cot at one end and a pot-bellied stove with grandpa’s wooden rocking chair at the other. On this day the dining table was taken out. I can remember seeing mother sitting, leaning over the baby and father standing with arm around her shoulder. Even then, at age six, I realized that they needed privacy, but there was none-no possible space for privacy.
Because the baby had been ill all of its life I had not had an opportunity to be brought into any sort of relationship with her, besides I had no idea what death was. Consequently, I had no concept of grief in this situation. However, I did have a feeling of guilt because I realized that it was a sad occasion and I was not sad. My two favorite cousins were there and it was fun. Nevertheless I felt that I should not be having fun, hence the guilt. I carried that guilt a long time. I don’t know if I ever discussed it with anyone or if I had to mature to the point when I realized my feelings were only natural for a six year old.
I remember at another time living in a house in Ripon with my father’s parents where grandma had a pump organ. It was off limits to children. I managed to play it only a very few times and that was when no adults were present. My brothers would pump the pedals while I “played” the keys. Grandma didn’t have the organ when they lived on the farm in Escalon. I don’t know what happened to it. I don’t believe grandma could play it anyway.
Swagerty-Aldrich Family Web Site 