My First 56 Years

The old man came out and asked “What do you want little girl?” She told her she needed a phone number to give to her teacher because we didn't have one. She got the phone number and rode back home.
Waiting for the school bus was a harrowing experience. I had gone over with her what side the doors on the bus were. We weren’t sure which direction the bus would come, east or west, so I went over the if's, and's, and buts of each situation. The bus came from the east side ,Jenny was waiting at the mailbox and the bus stopped. I could see her contemplating which side she could go on so I yelled from the living room door,” Go On!" Unfortunately the bus driver thought6 I was talking to her so she started to go on. I yelled,"Wait! "And to Jenny I said ok Go On. Again the bus driver started to go. So I yelled louder, “I’m not talking to you I’m talking to Jenny, You’re going to run over her!” Halfway down the hill the bus stopped and Jenny finally got on! I told that teacher about it and she got an earful. The bus was a long yellow bus and Jenny was so small she would have never seen her.
During the months that came and went Charles built a fence around the yard. We had two of them, one in the front yard and the other was in the back diagonal from the garage next to the shed. All around the property was a cornfield that the man down the hill rented from Mr. Becker our landlord. He was the man who always had an excuse to come up and complain about the dogs and the horse, whatever he could think of to complain about. He made me nervous because as I said Charles worked nights and I was alone with Jennifer all night while he was gone.
Those maples were so pretty in the fall. We wanted to build a barn to store hay in the winter with stalls for the horses. We went down the hill to the woods, scouted out the trees we wanted to use. Mr. Becker (his name was Bob too) had told us what trees we could cut down. I saddled up Terre and brought rope, tied one end to the horn of my saddle .Charles would cut them down, strip the branches off and Terre and I would drag them up the hill. These logs were 14 ft long and about 4-6 inches across. We never would have been able to do it without Terre's help. We didn't have a truck or a chainsaw either. He used an ax. It was pretty slow going at first. We finally got the frame up. We went to a wrecking company on 6th St and bought corrugated tin for the roof and 2x4's for the rafters. In no time it was up and ready to paint. On the side of the barn on the yard side facing east he made a window with double doors so Terre could look through. The barn was painted red with white trim. The first time it rained hard the roof leaked through the previous nail holes, the material bought was used of course and we hadn't really thought it through! So we bought black roofing material to go over that and we made an opening in the roof and bought Green see through fiberglass to let the sun shine in for light.
Terre got used to me getting up at 6o'clock for our morning ride. One morning I didn't get up that early and she unlocked the gate and took herself. She was so smart and it didn’t seem to matter what kind of lock he fashioned she could unlock it and go the neighbor's house to the north of us, that’s where I always went to ride. I’d bring the bridle and prepare for the long walk over. She was pretty happy being loose and free as a bird and wasn't too happy about being caught. She’d finally relent and I'd slip on the bit and bridle, find something to climb up on and off we'd go back home.