NADINE
INTRODUCTION
This story is fiction but it is based on the experiences of my mother. She wrote a precise of her life covering the time from when she moved to Billings, OK until she left there after finishing the 8th grade. The time period would be 1913 to 1925. This is a story of one year in the life that a girl such as Nadine might have experienced. I tried to be consistent with tenor of the events as she related them. There are some events related here that actually did occur in her life. I have used some actual events that my mother has described in her paper. This was done to add authenticity to the narrative.
spring
Talking to my dad can be a very frustrating activity. I love my dad. He is big, strong, loving guy with a good, although many times misdirected, sense of humor. He really doesn’t understand which things that are really important in the world, but you’ve got to love him, he tries so hard. Momma says that’s why she loves him. Sometimes she doesn’t know whether to shake him or hug him. Oh, he is a very good businessman and that is important. Also, he is a good farmer and that is important if you depend on it for making a living. But there are other things that are very important and he just doesn’t understand what those things are. Actually I suppose he is not much different from other fathers that way. My girl friends mostly have the same kinds of concerns about their fathers. But dad loves us all and would never leave anything undone for our benefit, if he understood that these things are important. I think that the reason I tell you all of this will be apparent later.
We live on a small farm about five miles from the nearest small town. The farm is on about 160 acres. It has a two-story house with a large, well built and beautiful barn and some other out buildings. The town is named Billings. It was established when the Cherokee Strip was opened to settlers in 1893. That makes it a pretty young town.
About 3 miles away from our house is my school. I started there three years ago. I guess I will go there until I finish the eighth grade. Then I will have to go into Billings for high school. A lot of the boys quit when they have finished the eighth grade. Some of the girls do too. But mama isn’t going to let me do that. My two older brothers have to decide pretty soon. Jack is in the eighth grade this year. He wants to find a job or join the army or something. Mostly he talks about visiting far away countries, taking chances, living adventures. Mama is pretty unhappy about it. But dad said: “Jack is old enough to make up his own mind. Let him go whichever way he needs to go. He’ll never be happy if he doesn’t.”
When no one was around mama just cried a little bit more. Jack didn’t know she cried. Dad wasn’t much help either. Boys and men can be so dumb. Other times they are just blind. But I knew she continued to cry for a while. She finally decided she would hold her tongue and live with the idea until it happens or he decides to stay in school.
It doesn’t seem fair to make mama so unhappy. I don’t want Jack to go either. I told him that but he didn’t take me seriously. He grabbed me around the waist and tossed me up in the air and laughed at me. He caught me and then threw me up again. He did it over and over again until I was laughing and crying at the same time. When he finally quit I knew it no use for me to try to change his mind. My brothers just never take me seriously. I just went to my room in frustration and lay on the bed crying until mama came to get me. She talked to me about being grown up and making the best of things. I knew she feels the same as I do. I think she gave up too easily. She says she is just biding her time. I don’t want to “bid my time.” I want to know that the matter is settled. When I went down to eat I didn’t say a word to Jack the rest of the day. Mama tried to cheer me up. Finally, I began to think that maybe mama is right. I suppose that neither of us can do anything right now so I’ll do like mama says.
I don’t know why people have got to change every thing around all the time. Seems to me every thing is working just fine. So leave it alone.
George needs to make up his mind about what he will do by next year. I think he wants to drop out. He says: “I know all that I need to know to work the farm. The animals don’t know if I’ve been to school all my life or not. They don’t much care either.”
Some times though he’ll talk about staying in school and going to the agricultural college if he can get through high school. He could maybe teach at the Experimental Agriculture Station for the agriculture college. He says he thinks he would really like that. Mama is pretty determined that he will go to college, but I’m not sure if she wouldn’t be just as happy to have him at home working on the farm. Dad doesn’t think that is a bad idea either.
George joked about me marrying some one who would like to stay on the farm and would be willing to work the farm with dad. George, he just kept on with his joking saying: “Dean is really a farm girl at heart and she would love to marry some good man who would be content to stay on the farm. She could be happy to stay here and help take care of the farm and raise eight or nine little ones. Dad will spend his later years playing with his grand children and resting on the back porch while Dean and her husband do all of the farm work.”
I think mom must have known that he was kidding but she wasn’t going to allow all that to pass just in case some one might take it seriously.
“I’ve told all of you that Nadine is going to college, get her degree and become somebody important. Now don’t anybody get any other ideas.”
There was no other discussion about my opinion about what I want to do about going to school. I was going to high school and then college. Mama won’t hear of anything else. Dad will go along with her, because she is so determined but he is not too sure about the value of educating a girl. His sisters didn’t go beyond the eighth grade. They both got married and have lived very happy lives with their children and husbands. If they wanted some thing else they never said anything about it.
Mama says: “That may be good for some people but that’s not good enough for my daughter!”
Like I said, I don’t remember anybody consulting me but I’ll not go against my mother or father. Of course, he isn’t going against her either when the talk about my future. Mama graduated from high school but instead of going to college she fell in love with dad, married him and moved in to live here on the farm. I wonder if she thinks she missed out on anything special. I never see any sign of that she would have done anything different.
We ask Frank all kinds of questions about his past and his future. It’s funny how he can talk for the longest time about something and when he is through you realized that you don’t know any more than you knew when he first started talking. His stories are always entertaining though. You get so taken in by the stories that he is telling that you forget the question that was asked in the first place. We know that he has been a lot of places and that he, at least, finished high school. When I’m doing my homework I can ask him all kinds of questions and get the right answer from him.
I’ve lived here, on this farm, all the eight years of my life. In fact, I was born here, with my mother’s mother and grandmother, I’m told, helping with the delivery. My dad had gone to get the doctor. The rain and muddy roads delayed him so that I arrived before the doctor did.
My dad’s family homesteaded the farm originally. He and grandma had moved here from Tennessee where they had heard about the land opening. Grandpa was interested in getting some new land. They saw the land and knew that it was just what they were hoping for. Grandpa was a good farmer and the farm did real well, I heard. Dad’s father farmed it for about 10 years before the time he had an accident with a mule. He had to slow down some after a mule kicked him in the side. The bones never did heal right. He was able to keep it going but he needed more help from dad after that. My grandfather died before I was born.
Grandma didn’t have anyone to help her with the farm except my dad and his two sisters and Frank. Right after the mule accident Frank had come by looking for work. Frank had done some odd jobs for others in the area. He had a good reputation from that so grandpa hired him and he had just stayed on. It was really a fortunate coincidence. Frank is a very quiet man. He works as hard as if it were his own farm and talks very little. He was helping there on the farm when all of us kids were born. So, we have known him all of our lives. Even though he was not actually a blood relative to us he couldn’t be more a part of the family. He has a room attached to the back of the house that was a storage room until it was fixed up for him to live in. It has an outside door as well as one that opens to the kitchen so that he can come and go without disturbing anyone else.
Dad’s two sisters were older than dad and already thinking about having their own homes when grandpa died. I’m not sure that dad wanted to live permanently on the farm. However, that seemed to be necessary and I never heard him complain about how he was forced into taking it over.
Not too long after he started taking care of the farm he and mom met at church. She had come to visit her cousin for the summer. By she left for her home I think they had what was called “an understanding.” I think they got married about a year later.
Mom said: “Dad kept the post office busy during the year he was courting. I was pretty nervous when I realized I’d be moving in with my brand new mother-in-law. But your daddy was so persistent I just screwed up my courage and gave in. Besides it would have made a lot of talk if I had come to visit my cousin as often as I wanted.”
When she told me this she always finished the story by telling how wonderful grandmother had been and how easy she made the new bride feel welcome in her own new home. The early years of mom and dad’s married life before I joined the family is a whole story all by its self. Maybe I’ll tell it sometime. Anyway, I never suspected that wasn’t the normal way to handle things. By the time I came along all three were working together beautifully. She always felt good about having grandma there when my brothers were born. Mama’s mother came to help when my first brother was born but she decided that everything was well in hand when the rest of us came along and didn’t come back except for a visit every couple of years.
My mom said that dad was really worried about what kind of girl I was going to grow up to be. According the scale that I was weighed on, I weighed nine and one-half pounds at birth. Dad was scared that I was going to grow up to be some kind of monster-sized woman. My grandmother seemed to have the same concern.
Granny said: “She’d better slow down on this growing pretty quick. Men don’t like women that are bigger than they are, even if they do come in handy for handling the stock. That ain’t what they marry for.” That was one thing that was different for mom from grandma. Grandma always thought of girls as growing up to be mothers, housekeepers and neighbors always quick with a helping hand for any one with a problem.
As of now that doesn’t appear to be anything to worry about. It appears that my growing is pretty normal for my age. But I still am working on the part about why boys want to marry girls. Looks to me like the boys get to do all of the fun things. Girls just aren’t allowed to do most of those things. Why would a boy want a girl hanging around with him if she can’t do the things he likes to do? Momma says she’ll explain it all to me one day soon. Whatever the reason, the way my brothers act it must be something powerful. I can hardly wait to find out what it is.
I think though I understand about girls wanting to be married when they grow up. It’s hard for a girl to get respect without a home and family to surround and love her. The idea of growing up to be an “old maid” is not very pleasant. It just sounds so lonely.
We have an old man comes by every four to five months. He is a traveling salesman for Rawleigh products. He isn’t married and doesn’t have a family. He usually stays over night when he comes to our house. We call him Uncle Jed. He always has lots of news to tell and usually some new jokes. We always enjoy his visits. He does seem lonely though. He has no one to care where he is or how he is feeling. Mama feels sorry for him and pampers him a bit while he is with us. He always leaves a number of samples of things that he knows mama is partial to. Mom won’t buy any perfume. She says it’s too expensive. She and I both really like to smell the bottles. Several times after Uncle Jed left we found a bottle of Eau de Cologne accidentally left with the other products. It makes mama and me smell really nice. Dad always notices. My brother notice too but I wish they didn’t. They always have to tease me about it. Mama will try to pay for it next time he comes. He won’t accept any money though. He just says it was his mistake and he can’t expect his customers to pay for his mistakes. I hate to see him wander off down the road just him and his mule.
The farm was able to provide a pretty good income for the family, but dad always says a growing family needs a more stabile income than a farm can provide. So dad had a job in town to supplement the farm income. That meant that mom and I had to care of many of the normal daily duties of operating a farm. Dad has an insurance agency in town so he had some flexibility in setting his work schedule. One of the things that dad didn’t leave to me or mom was helping cows birthing the calves when they came.
Of the entire farm I probably felt at home and most secure in the barn. Mom thought it ought to be painted some other color. Dad says “No. Barns are supposed to be red. If you paint it some other color people will be asking where is your barn?” The barns on all of the farms around us are red unless the paint has worn off. I think dad is right.
The barn was the real center of the activity of the farm in my eyes. When I thing of mama I usually think of her working in the kitchen fixing all of that good smelling food she was fixing. She is baking something all of the time. Of course she has to bake a lot of bread but the boys and dad really love her pies. But if she bakes great pies it’s grandma that bakes the great cakes. They bake a lot of those and the smell seems to be always in the air. But when I just think of home what I think about is the barn. I think mama might think that of the kitchen as the center, but not to me. Sure, I love the kitchen, mom’s food and the warmth in the winter. Still, to me everything I do or am interested in seems to be focused on the barn.
I’ll bet dad feels the same way. He keeps most of his tools in the barn and all of the maintenance on his tools is performed there. Any time the weather is rainy or cold dad will be in the barn fixing something. There is always something that needs to be fixed. The tackle is always in need of repair or improvement. Dad has a last that he uses to repair or re-sole the shoes and boots of the men and boys. All of the heavy or large equipment pieces can be brought into the barn out of the weather and worked on. At the side of the barn he has a covered forge that he can use to make or fix pieces of ironwork. The forge is set away from the barn so that it won’t start a fire in hay. The Frank and the boys work with him in the barn a lot. They seem to have a lot of fun in the barn. I try to help but mostly I get pushed aside. Sometimes they will send me to the house to get something. When I get older I’ll probably be able to help more. I hope.
There were just so many fascinating things going on in the barn. Also much of the time I could find solitude in the barn. As I was growing up I had so many things to think about and try to work through in my mind. The older I get the more I want that alone time.
Of course, when I was very little my parents wouldn’t trust me to be safe in the barn. There were a great many hazards there for the unwary. As I get older they put fewer restrictions on me. After I was about five any time they wanted me the first place they would look would be in the barn.
The barn is where the cows always dropped their calves. To me, this gives the barn a special feeling. Even though I know about where babies come from and all that stuff. Still, the whole thing about calves and other farm babies is special, wonderful and mysterious. I mean I know how it works; I just don’t know why it works that way. Mama says its part of God’s plan so that little ones have big ones to look after them. The magic surrounding the barn makes it feel like the well or source from which the life of the farm flowed It was not just the calves; the hens always brought their chicks into the barn because it was so easy for them to find food they could scratch up. The new puppies and kittens always started their life there also. When it came time to deliver their offspring the mothers don’t stand on any ceremony. When she was ready to deliver she just headed for a comfortable corner spot filled with hay in the barn and took care of the job. Some times she will find on a spot on the ground but once in a while she will make a nest in the loft. The cats and dogs are more independent than the cows. They not only didn’t need any help delivering; they really don’t want any. This is also the place for any animal that is sick. It will be treated here and then provided a place in the barn to recuperate and looked after.
We have a couple of mules and they have their places in the barn. The wagon, surrey and their tackle were also kept in the barn. We kept a saddle but we had no riding horse most of the year I was eight. There is a story about that I’ll tell you about a little later.
Dad tried to keep the cows delivering on a staggered schedule. He didn’t want to have both cows dry at the same time. Dad always preferred to have the cows rest for six months after calving before being re-impregnated. This means that each cow would have fifteen months between calves.
But he can’t control at what time of day the calf will be ready to make its entrance. It always seems to happen at night. Mom and dad always prefer to have deliveries in the warm months. That just couldn’t be possible with the way the deliveries are scheduled.
When a cow came close to her delivery time we would move the cow to the large comfortable stable in the barn. There they are protected from the weather and made as comfortable as possible. She will be given all of the fresh bedding straw she can use and a lot of fresh alfalfa hay if we have it. We knew she was about ready when she started getting restless. It was always evident that she has something on her mind when she starts moving all around that big stable. Dad will keep a close eye on her. He will make frequent trips to the barn to se how she was getting on. Along about bed time dad will go down to make one last check on the cow before going to bed himself. As the time gets closer he will frequently be up in the middle of the night checking on her again. It she is running very late or beginning to show signs of stress then dad will just take a blanket, pillow and some coffee and stay with her through the night.
With all of the tension of waiting and watching the anticipation will just build and build. Finally, the big moment will arrive and dad will come back to the house to get mom or the boys. If the birth was expected to be difficult then one person can’t usually handle it.
“Looks like Lily (or Bossy) is ready. I’ll go down and stay with her. When you can get away, come on down. I don’t think it’ll be more than a couple of hours till she delivers.”
I always thought it unfair that I couldn’t go down and see the whole process. I guess they thought it was too much for a girl so young. What nonsense! With all of the other things I saw on the farm I don’t know why they would worry about me watching the birth of a calf. Besides, I thought it was a marvelous thing. Anyway, after the calf was born and the mother had enough time to clean it up a bit then I could go down. They were always so cute and I just loved them. Some of the mothers didn’t care much about having me there and would watch me very closely. If I got too close she might get between the calf and me and then just kind of nudge me with her head. Letting me know that I need to stay away. Most of them didn’t worry about me though.
A few of the cows don’t seem to have the mothering instinct. A young mother sometimes just isn’t interested in feeding that calf. She may be bawling her head off because her udder is full and she still won’t let the calf relieve her. When that happens I am given one of my favorite chores. We, mother and I will take turns feeding the calf from a big bottle with a large black rubber nipple on it. The calf never seems to know what this nipple is for. They are always hungry, they can smell the milk and they want it. But they have to be shown the connection with the black nipples and the milk they want so badly. They will butt the bottle about and the feeder had to be careful not to drop the bottle.
The calf was so anxious for the milk that it was throwing its head around searching for the milk. I will hold the bottle and try to get the nipple in its mouth. We wrestle; me trying to force the nipple into the calf’s mouth and the calf trying to knock me out of the way so it could get to the milk. Eventually I would get enough milk on the calf’s mouth and maybe get the milk-covered nipple in the calf’s mouth so that it would begin to associate the nipple as the source of the milk. Once that was done we were home free. Not only the calf was relieved to have found the source of milk, but also the cow usually understands the relief she gets by allowing the calf to suckle.
There was one more hazard in feeding the little calf. It is a part of the instinct of the calf to butt the milk source in order to stimulate a greater flow of milk. It of course, doesn’t know that that isn’t necessary when drinking from a bottle. As a result it will continue to butt the bottle as it is feeding and if you don’t keep a tight grip on the bottle you may find it suddenly flying across the barn. The cats that were always on the alert while I was milking would immediately jump to try to take control of the bottle where ever it landed. It was obvious that they resented me recovering the bottle. Depending on where the bottle landed I might have to empty it (to the cats’ delight) and rinse it off before refilling it and going back to the calf to resume trying to feed it.
Having a cow which does not want to feed her calf means that we have not only the job of feeding the calf but also acquiring the milk. In other words, we always had to milk the cow. Then we fed that milk to the calf. If we don’t do that then her udder would be full and painful. She would moan and bawl but still not let the calf feed. Cows are not necessarily the brightest animals on the farm. Worse if we didn’t milk the cow often enough the whole milk production would eventually shut down and she would go dry. When that happens we aren’t able to get any milk from her until after she has had another calf.
I always try to stay with the new calf until dawn, but somehow I seem to manage to fall asleep and dad will carry me up to bed before dawn. As soon as I wake up I’ll be back down to the barn to see if the baby is all right. Mom will just about have to drag me back to the kitchen for breakfast. Of course, if it is spring I have to go to school unless the calf was born on Saturday or Sunday. At school, all that I talk or think about is the pretty new calf. A half dozen times or more in a day my teacher will try to draw me back to the classroom.
“Nadine, we’re all still here in the class room. Would you like to re-join us?”
“Yes’m. Sorry, mam”
Even my friends get tired of hearing me talk about that calf. Winona is my best friend. We’ve been friends since we were in the first grade. Our farms lie close enough together so that it is only about three-quarters of a mile from her house to mine. She loves the farm animals too and will have new calves about as often as we do. But she thinks I spend too much time with them. I didn’t know her with her baby brother was born. I wonder if she was as daft over him as they say I am about the calves? She is very careful to watch over him now, but she doesn’t smother him. He is six years old now and I know he wouldn’t like it if she did.
She said: “I guess you know, Dean. We all got calves at home too. There ain’t nothing special about that.”
“Oh, but this one is so pretty. You haven’t seen it. You just don’t know.”
“Every time you get a new one you say ‘it’s the prettiest one ever.’ I swear you think more of that calf than it’s mama does.”
As soon as school lets out, we head home. Winona walks with me. We, almost always walk together. Usually her younger brother Jake will walk with us. The teacher will keep him in after school some times. He was not a mean kid, but he just couldn’t seem to keep out of the teacher’s way. Mama says that’s the way some kids are. They just seem to draw the teacher’s attention no matter what they do. My mama likes him. I wonder sometimes when I see her look at him if she is thinking about adding another brother or a sister for me. I think his mama likes him too. Come to think of it I think even the teachers like him too. Winona and I always wait for him if he has to stay in after school. I know they seem to worry about him getting hungry if he has to stay. That is why they always seem to have a cookie or something to eat in their office drawers for him.
Of course, while I try to talk about the calf, Winona tries to talk about other things that happened at school. This year, she especially likes to talk about Eddie. Every year Winona likes thinks one of the boys is special. So far it’s been a different boy each year. I don’t know what it is that she sees in them. Anyway, I don’t see anything special about Eddie. If he doesn’t stop messing with my hair I’m going to make him regret it. He does the same thing with Winona and she doesn’t mind. She always makes excuses for him. I’ll admit that when Frank does those kinds of things I never complain. I guess I’m going to marry Frank when I get old enough. He promised me.
With all that was going on the barn it is just a magical place. At night with the lanterns and shadows, it can be eerie and strange but at the same time a comfortable, familiar, safe place to be. In the daytime the sunlight streams through the windows and any cracks in the walls. You can see the motes of dust dancing in the sunlight. You could also see little bugs flying around going about bug business.
There is something about the animals in the barn in the early spring, the heat that their bodies gave off, and the smell that was intimate but not offensive that made it a pleasant place for me to be. Not everyone agreed with me about that. Most, particularly all of the other girls think it is just too nasty. But I find a comfortable comradeship with the cows and horses in the barn.
There was something about sharing the shelter in the barn with the animals that was so much more comfortable than being around them in the pasture. I often make a bed of straw close to where they are standing or lying in the barn and am content to quietly enjoy their company. You know, I think they like having me there too. I like to stand by the door in the early evening when the cows are lined up in the pasture making their way back to the barn. It’s kind of like watching a family of workers coming home for dinner after spending the day working in the field. I don’t know how they know but every evening they know just when to line up and start the slow walk back to the barn. The same cow is always at the head of the march. I wonder if she is hungrier then the others or she is the leader that lets the rest know when it is time.
I’ve noticed that when a cow or group of cows become agitated that they can frequently be calmed by just having a human presence with them. Somehow if you are calm they will feel that reassurance and become and remain calm. It is not a communication that is ever displayed in other of the relationships between cows and humans. Horses seem to share that level of trust too, but with horses it is often displayed in other of their relationships with man.
As the spring progressed the temperatures got warmer which was nice. At the same time, though, we generally got a lot more rain than we get in the winter or summer. The rain made the interior of the barn and the barnyard messy. The floor of the barn interior is dirt or in the case of rain or snow, mud. The animals always keep it pretty well churned up. The cow always manages to get mud all over her flanks and even her udder and teats. We normally wipe her down with a wet disinfectant cloth before milking any way, but she has to be washed more carefully when she has been so thoroughly soiled.
As the days of spring pass I always have something to do, to see, to watch. It is never boring for me. Sometimes Winona or some of the other neighbor girls will come over to visit. We might start playing in my room, but we always seemed to end up in my favorite playroom, the barn. We will pile up large piles of hay in the loft and then throw ourselves on our backs on the piles. Then we stretch out on them in luxuriant poses.
We talk about things that we are going to do. We talk about the other girls and then we always talk about the boys we know. What they are like and why they do what they do. Always, we talk about who likes whom and which boy is nice and which boys are jerks. It was interesting that one of my girl friends thought that this one particular boy was a jerk. Then, later, he went through some miraculous conversion and is now a really quite sweet and considerate boy. At least that is the way this particular girl sees him. I can’t see the change but she swore it is true. That sounds like Winona but this time I’m thinking of another one of my girl friends. Maybe this is a common affliction for girls. I don’t have that problem to bother me though. Once I make up my mind about a boy, I don’t change easily. Have I escaped this kind of fickleness or is that something that might yet happen to me too?
We always had two school programs in the year. We had a Christmas program and then another at the end of school in the spring. The spring program was the teachers would hand out the final grade cards for the year. The kids who had finished the eighth grade were paraded up to the front so that every one could see them. The ones who were going on to high school were identified so that their parents would get their proper credit. Sometimes the county superintendent of education would be there to hand out the graduation certificates.
Usually the daughters, of the members of the school committee that planned the program, would sing or present readings. Once in a while a boy would be persuaded to sing a song or play trumpet solo. That didn’t happen too often. The boys were much too shy. Also the boys knew what kind of ridicule they would have to put up with from the other boys. So far I haven’t had to make a presentation, but mama won’t let that go on forever. The presentations are supposed to be something that will show off how well the teachers and children were doing.
Most of the kids my age didn’t pay much attention to these readings and presentations; mostly we were waiting to get to the cookies, cake and punch that were always served after the program. This is when I learned that teachers are always teachers. They can’t stop being teachers even at parties. They are there to shush us if we make too much noise and slap our hands when we try to sneak a bite of cookie when we thought no one was looking.
Of course, I always have chores to do but not too many and not too difficult. Anyway with my few chores to perform including feeding and watering the animals I am left as much time as I want for my favorite occupation: reading, dreaming and playing with the little animals.
So spring passed this way and soon school was out for another year and our grades were reported. My grades were ok, but it was readily apparent that I would not be the next Marie Curie. That was all right with me though. Joan of Arc was more to my liking.
This year I learned some things that were unexpected. I’ve learned that, if things are going to get done, than someone is going to have to lead. It is usually going to be a girl because when there is work to be done the boys are more interested in skylarking. The girl will have to guide the plan but not be let it be seen that she is “in charge.” A girl has to be careful if she doesn’t want to be thought of as being “too forward.”
But now the school year is over and nothing needs to be planned. There is no homework to do. Every morning I get up, get breakfast, do my morning chores. Unless it is laundry or baking day or mom needs my help in the garden I will then go to the barn to see if there is anything new there. When I get bored I may ride the paint pony over to Winona’s house or some other friend. After that I just let my whims or my mother guide me as I wait to see what the new day brings.