A Book Without A Title

One of my BFF's lent me her book.  The book has no title. The cover shows a young girl in a blue dress and a blue hat.  She has blue ankle socks and mary jane shoes. Behind her back she holds a wheel. A stick lies at her feet. She is surrounded by flowers and bushes. The book is dedicated to my BFF's daughter and the date is August of 1990. The pages contain the handwritten memories of my BFF's mother.  I knew my BFF's mother. I met her in the 1970's and she was a very nice woman. She always remembered my name. She always asked me to stay for dinner.  She treated me like one of her family and I thought she was the bomb.  In her book she writes that when she was born she weighed 15 pounds.  She was weighed on a scale that they weighed grain on. Her first best friend was Betty. When Betty moved away "her heart was crushed."  At her home they did not have city water. They had a cistern but the cover was not on tight so lizards and snakes got in there. They did not want to drink that water so they walked to "Doc Johnson's" house to get drinking water. While walking with her brother and her black and white terrier dog, Tootles, Tootles was struck by a car. Her brother Gene carried Tootles home and laid him in the yard. Gene had Tootles blood all over his coat. After a couple hours someone saw Tootles move.  They took Tootles to Doc Johnson's. The Doc found a broken leg and put a cast on the dog.  In a couple of weeks Tootles was as good as new. When she was in first grade she got measles on Valentine's Day. She was sad to miss the big party. She was home alone on Valentine's day.  At lunch time her father came home from work and brought her a heart shaped box of chocolates because he knew she would be sad. Her father cheered her up and she did not feel so sad about missing the party. Her school was on the other side of town. They had to walk to school wearing tan stockings, a garter belt, and long underwear.  When it got warmer she would roll down the stockings and roll up the long underwear as soon as she was out of sight from her home.  On the way home she would wait until she was almost home to roll the long underwear down and the tan stockings up again.  One day her mother had the church ladies over to her house. She was told not to get her feet wet "or else." She and her friends liked to walk in the ditches where the melting snow gathered. So she borrowed her father's mud boots so her feet would be dry. She and her friends went into the ditches to play. Her feet, inside her father's mud boots, got stuck in the mud. She could not pull her feet out.  The harder she tried the more stuck her feet got. She pulled so hard she ended up falling backwards into the mud. She had to take her feet out of the boots and in doing that she fell forwards. The only part of her that wasn't covered with mud was the top of her head. She went home to her mother very muddy and without her father's boots. Her parents punished her.  They didn't spank her. They did something worse than spanking. She was not allowed to play with her friends at her house or their house. She was grounded. She was so bored she laid on her stomach on the swing and watched the ants at work for hours. Her father's job was to drive the gas truck. One year he hurt his back and could not work. Her mother tried to support the family with her seamstress work. Her mother was a talented seamstress. Eventually they could not pay the rent so they had to move in with another family.  A boy at school made fun of her for being poor.  That boy's father was someone who cheated other people out of money. She did not make fun of him for having a cheating father because her parents taught her never to make fun of other people.  Living in Donnelly, Minnesota, she and a friend were out one night stealing apples from an apple orchard. Suddenly the sky lit up with lights. At the time she had not heard of Northern Lights.  She thought the creator was angry with her for stealing apples so she went home and never stole apples again.  When she was 13 her family moved to Murdock, MN so her father could work in a grain elevator. She met a boy in school who was ill with rheumatic fever. Eventually he had to leave school because he was so sick. She wrote him letters. When he died, at age 17, she felt glad she did send those letters.  She went to high school during the war years. All the good teachers either joined the service or worked in manufacturing plants. Gas and other good were rationed. This book ends when she graduates from high school.  Because of the war there is no class trip. no senior dance, no home coming, and no class pictures.  She ends her book with the words, "But we survived."  What a class act!  My BFF's mother, she was a class act.