Norma Shupe Clarkson Crandell wrote this humorous story of her life for a 1974 Clarkson Family Reunion. The poor grammar is all a fake, she had lovely grammar and spelling.
Dale is an industrious sort of chap. He is a lot of help to me milkin' the cows and such. I had to turn the whole job over to him when the spotted cow kicked at me and I bumped the boil on my wrist. Ohoooo, how that did hurt, but I recovered and was back on the job a week later when Buck (that's Dad's name for Dale) Buck began to feel bad. The doctor gave me some medicine for him to take. Doc said if he didn't get better he'd stay the same, but ya know, he got worse and we had to have his tonsilitis removed, and I fed him ice cream which he thought was great.
Now Sissie Boo, that's our Alice. We call her Sissie Boo for short. She is our sunshine and joy. Well, she came down with the mumps the other day and now she has a swell time. Her face is so cute and round as a ball with a pigtail hanging down on each side. That's Alice Marie our fourth.
I must tell you about our baby, Joyce. She is so sweet and does the funniest things. Yesterday she swallowed a roll of film, but I don't think any thing has developed yet. This is our Joyce Fay. Alice calls her "Doydie". She is learnin to talk a right smart, just like a grown up. Before she was two she would say "Poor Bako boke ees ago," (Poor Break-o, broke his leg-o) talking about our race horse, The Break. His leg was very bad so poor Joe had to lead him off in the woods and shoot him to get him out of his misery. Made us all very sad.
Another bad thing happened..our dog just up and died. He ate up our only tape measure and died by the inch, but Joe said he crawled under the bed and died by the foot. Anyway we had to bury him and get on our way to Arizona now that the races at the State Fair was over. We went back to Carson to join with my family in celebrating Grandma and Grandpa Shupe's 50th wedding anniversary, which was October 1, 1941. We enjoyed being back with uncles, aunts and cousins.
We finally got on our way and everything went fine until we got to the state line and, you know, they would not let us enter Arizona until they knew our life history from start to finish, and found out for sure we hadn't swiped that Chevy truck which we had bought with the money we sold our homestead for five years ago getting $3 an acre for the 640 acres. Well, we couldn't find that title any wheres to prove the truck was really ours We unpacked and dug and looked, but it was no place to be found. Finally Joe gave up in disgust and went to sit in the truck cab and scratched his head to see if he could come up with any ideas. There right before his eyes was that precious bit of paper fasted around the steering rod where he had put it months before with his own two hands. With a sigh of relief we were on our way again.
WE did make a quick trip. It only took us from the time we left till we got here which was April 4th till October 7th. Only 6 months to make the trip of 450 miles with the truck pulling the 4 wheel trailer and our Model A Ford pulling a 2 wheel trailer. Course we stopped off in Albuquerque quite a spell, as I said before. Like I wrote you , we didn't know where we were headin' till we came to a cross roads near Tuscon and that truck took off to the right. The Model A was so used to follerin' along by then that all I had to do was just sit there. Now if you ever decide to come out west don't miss the trip 'cause it's the best part, but be sure to bring your chickens and cows to help out with the grub bill.
Oh, I forgot to tell you we decided to sell our biggest cow because he didn't give any milk.
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