One 20Th Century Woman: The Life and Times of a Distaff Doctor

By Lois Schillie Eikleberry M.D.

You’ll get a first-hand look at the life of a woman doctor balancing career and family—exemplifying a 20th century phenomenon. Dr. Eikleberry’s autobiography chronicles one mid-western, middle-class woman’s life in a rapidly changing century for women. You’ll learn what it was like to grow up on a farm in Missouri, to attend a one room school, to graduate high school at the end of WWII, and to compete against the college Greeks via an Independent Society.

She started medical school as one of two women in a class of forty-four and subsequently lost peace and tranquility. Polio dominated her first private practice in Iowa. Soon she had four children and began life as a juggler, juxtaposing medical practice and family. She moved with her physician husband across the western United States; she experienced sexual harassment in her work for the military and derision from her fellow physicians as she cut costs for the Department of Public Assistance.

Her medical practice ended in Colorado. Children now nearly grown, she and Bill embarked on a more recreational family project: the building of a log cabin in the remote Rocky Mountains. She tells the heart-wrenching story of losing their son to schizophrenia, a baffling and frightening mental illness. In conclusion, she takes you into a doctor’s mind, illustrating how too much money was spent on health care when less would have done, pointing out the many shades of gray in medicine, and stressing the value of clinical judgment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Mar 18, 2009
• ISBN: 9781426925665

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Copyright 2009 Lois Schillie Eikleberry.

Copy Edit by: Kathy Cain

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4251-6333-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4269-2566-5 (e)

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CONTENTS

1. From the Hilltop (1927-1936)

2. From Country to Town (1936-1941)

3. From Beanies to Graduation (1941-1945)

4. Another Hill to Climb (1945-1949)

5. Into the Grinder (1949-1951)

6. State University of Iowa—The M.D. at Last (1951-1953)

7. Chronic Fades, Acute Reigns (1953-1954)

8. Off to a Shaky Start (1954-1956)

9. In and Out of the Army: To Fort Sam Houston and Beyond (1956-1958)

10. Between Two Rivers (1958-1961)

11. In Mill Valley and the Presidio (1961-1963)

12. Back to Longview (1963-1969)

13. Off to Colorado (1969-1988)

14. Illyria, and More of Lakewood (1975-1988)

15. Of Negative Symptoms (1958-1982)

16. Off Like a Rocket (1966-1988)

17. Reflections and Remembrances (1953-2005)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

To Bill

Carol, Linda, Bill Jr., and Beatrice

Frank and Louise, Gene and Frank Carl

Bea and Charlene

1.

FROM THE HILLTOP (1927-1936)

M ost of my early experiences took place in a simple house on top of an oak-covered hill in Adair County, Missouri. This was Hilltop House. During those years between 1933-36, when I was between six and nine years old, I accepted everything and everyone in my life at face value. I did not question my life. Neither did I wonder about my own place in the life of my family. I never laughed and I never cried, except when my parents sold my ducks and kept the money for themselves. That year was 1933. I don’t remember how we acquired the ducks in the first place; most likely they were given to us as ducklings. I fed them and considered them mine. I admired the ducks’ smiling faces and the sweep of their rounded bottoms as they waddled around our yard. Just to have a pair of ducks to sell was a bonanza in those cash-starved days. To me, my family was like household furnishings; they were there and so was I and that was that. Times were hard, frugality reigned, and I never considered that there could be alternative lifestyles. Our life was the way life was. But had a piece of furniture been thrown out or a meal skipped, I would have sorely missed its presence.

My little, peppy, dark haired mother had the greatest babysitting method in the world: she simply ushered us outdoors. We had the whole hill to play on. Rocks, bushes, wildflowers, trees, vines, ducks and chickens were the props in this enviable babysitting service. That we were alone and free to roam at Hilltop House never registered with me until I was older. And, until my dad finished his degree in agriculture at Kirksville State Teachers College in 1933, most of our time was spent on the College Farm or moving into or out of a series of tenant houses on our grandparents’ farms. The College Farm provided us with shelter, a garden and an abundant playground in exchange for my dad’s services: milking cows and caring for chickens and hogs. Often, Dad taught in country schools, West Elm Grove and West Center. West Elm Grove was the grade school he had attended as a child. West Center, near Midland (Tipperary), was closer to Novinger, Missouri: my mother’s hometown. He commuted to the school on a miner’s train from Novinger, boarding the train with the shaft miners in the morning and returning with them at night.

These preschool years yielded some lasting memories, not the least of which was the death of a thirteen-year-old uncle. I was in the Big House, my paternal grandparents’ home. What was Uncle Lloyd doing sleeping in a box in the parlor? Usually, if he weren’t playing jacks with me, he’d be teasing me. Now, neither did he awaken when a stove lid fell to the floor nor, as he so often had, did he peek at me when I began babbling about my new set of jacks.

He’d been sick all winter and had not attended school since Thanksgiving. His illness worsened and the following April he was carried up the hill in a wagon on a bleak day full of rain, sleet, cold and darkness. At the top of the hill, he was met by a car and taken to a Kirksville hospital. His leg was examined. The cancer was deemed inoperable. He died in less than a week.

Back at the Big House, my dad, uncles and older male relatives gathered in the parlor, then picked up the box by its handles. At this time bodies were kept in the home to await burial. The rest of us fell in behind as we walked up the long hill to the country road. Turning south by the mailbox, then west, we entered the pasture land where the cemetery was located. A tall gaunt man read from a book, said a few words, and Lloyd in his box descended into the earth. I did not understand it. I did not cry. Why were his sisters crying?

From this experience and others like it, I developed an aversion to viewing the deceased. The minute I entered a room where a body lay, it seemed to be right in my face, almost as if the body was levitating, all else that was lovely or ordinary—the Christmas cactus, the player piano, the lace curtains and the water stained wall paper—was negated.

As a little girl, I could not appreciate the social consequences of funerals in rural America. Not only was the ceremony an opportunity for family and community gatherings, it was also the vehicle to satisfy the social needs of some of the lonely locals. One of my grandparents’ neighbors attended all funerals in the neighborhood and sat with the family, even if she was unrelated!

My fondest memories are many and varied: our amusements, our outdoor life, our farming and our social life. Mostly, we played. My mother’s youngest brother, Robert, was only two and a half years older than I, so he fit in well with my two younger brothers and me. My brother Gene was darker skinned than either brother Frank Carl or me. We were, instead, fair skinned with freckles. The hill we sat atop was covered with house-sized slabs of exposed sandstone, flush to the earth and easily soft enough to carve. We took ten-penny nails, sharp pieces of metal or hard rocks, and carved our initials, numbers and simple designs into the sandstone. Frequently, we spent half a day engaged in this creative activity. Not only did we carve the rock, but we also took random pieces of sandstone and rubbed them on the huge slab of sandstone until we had beautiful little pieces of smooth shaped cubes, tiny pyramids and pillows. To have in our possession a collection of these small sandstone sculptures brought us unmitigated joy and great wealth.

We had some strange rituals. One was related to our toilet activities. We had no outside toilet except Mother Nature in all her bounty, and since we had no indoor facilities, not even running water—except for what my parents ran into the house from the springhouse in my grandparents’ yard—we were left to our own creativity.

Every morning after our sausage, eggs, fried potatoes and crumb pie, we put on coveralls, heavy cotton one-piece suits with long sleeves and legs, added our straw hats, and went out to play barefooted. Little money was wasted on shoes in the summer. We headed toward the scrub oak forest southeast of our house and climbed into the trees: beneath us grew mullein, bluegrass and sedges. We positioned ourselves on large woody vines (woodbine) and using two vines, we dropped the back of our coveralls and sat on the woodbine so that our bottoms hung out over the posterior vine; thus began our daily toilet activities while we were swinging from tree to tree. Since the trees were seldom over fifteen feet high, there was little danger. We all pretended to be Tarzan; occasionally, I was Jane.

We often gathered eggs, always afraid that a sitting hen would peck at our hands as we tried retrieving an egg. Or, what was worse, occasionally a large black snake would conceal itself in a nest, coiled and ominous. Terrified, we’d hurry back to the house.

Most days were finished by forays through the woods, hoping to hear a rattlesnake, which we did occasionally. But if we hoped to hear one, we just as fervently hoped not to see one. Just the thought of a rattler was enough to scare us. We spent a considerable amount of time discussing our exploits in search of this fearsome snake. All of this was more prattle than substance, for we seldom ever heard a rattler, let alone viewed one.

When it was hot, and it often was, we quit playing and ran down the hill, up and over the stile, through a pasture and headed for the white-trimmed, red-brick spring house—a small building built over a spring that cooled food. The spring house was located in our grandparents’ yard, and we went there to get a drink of the hard cool water and to cool off. The same graniteware dipper always hung on the wall. The cream separator stood poised near the middle of the tiny room. And, in late summer, watermelons filled the southwest side.

While at the Big House, if we were in the mood for more cultural pursuits, all four of us went charging into Grandma’s house and played the player piano. I don’t know how this fit into our other plans but we really had fun with it—too much so. We were quickly ushered out of the parlor as well as the house. Apparently our enthusiasm for music knew no bounds. We were excited by peddling the piano and the mystery of those little holes in the rolls of music. Could they really make the music?

This brush with culture took place in the parlor. Almost always cool, this West Room was special—almost sacred. Though relatively small, the room held pieces of furniture and ornaments that caught my eye. Foremost was the just mentioned player piano with a doily on top. Occasionally, in the late ‘30s, I would play a piece on the piano, though never did I want to, and never did I play very well. Music was not my forte, so I was relieved that the piano could almost play itself. A short, heavy library table in the room was made of dark wood. On its top rested one of the most beautiful lamps: a soft pink, double-globed, satin glass light with many shades of pink roses. My grandmother’s mother had given this lamp to her early in the twentieth century. On the wall, over a horsehair davenport (for that’s what a sofa was called then), hung a portrait of my great grandparents, both determined-looking German immigrants.

Sometimes we actually contributed to the family’s well-being by gathering wild blackberries in July and hazelnuts in the fall. We were often sent to the springhouse to bring drinking water back to the house. Robert, older and sturdier built, would carry a three-gallon bucket. Gene and I carried small axle grease buckets, and Frank Carl a peanut butter bucket.

The views from the hilltop, three to four hundred feet high, revealed all shades of green with little interruption except farm roads, the stream and the animals. To the south, along Hog Creek, we could see the corn and hay fields, and the gentle hills framing the valley. To the southeast, horses and black-Angus cattle grazed on Cemetery Hill. Always, when I look back, I recall the beauty of the contrast, bright green enhanced by bold black. To the southwest and west stretched more hayfields, corn and the beloved watermelon patch. Where the cornfields ended, a new series of hills rose in the western part of the valley, nearly concealing a white frame schoolhouse, West Elm Grove.

But I most remember our home, Hilltop House, and not the beauty that surrounded us. Our three-room tenant house, rent-free, was crude by today’s standards, but we survived in it quite well. My mother, however, had no amenities such as a sink. We washed dishes on the wood-burning kitchen stove. In 1935, she got her first Maytag, a gasoline powered washer. A well just outside the house provided water for washing dishes, clothes, and bathing. In the summer, we filled a galvanized tin tub half full with water, set it in the sun for the day, and all bathed in the same warm water that evening. Our upstairs ceiling was a corrugated tin roof. When it rained hard or hailed the sounds were loud and frightening, like a shower of steelies (steel marbles) being hurled against the roof.

But if our housing was minimal, our food was not. We always had plenty to eat and the best of country fare: chicken-fried black-Angus steaks smothered with deep-fried morel mushrooms that flourished all around our house and hilltop. Since my grandfather and dad also raised hogs and chickens, we had pork chops, pork roasts, and that lost marvel, freshly fried chicken that had just been slaughtered. I was never again to eat such meat. Often, I’ve wondered why was it so good? Was it outdoor life and natural food the birds ate or was it simply the short time from slaughter to frying pan? My guess is that both helped produce those marvelous frying chickens. We enjoyed all fresh dairy products, cottage cheese, butter, and milk as well as freshly picked vegetables and fruits: field corn, carrots, onions, rutabagas, parsnips, turnips, rhubarb and strawberries. If not absolutely fresh they had been preserved while fresh. Even in early winter we had fresh vegetables. Carrots were replanted in buckets of soil or sand and placed in the cellar; apples from the orchards were also stored there. Turnips and cabbages were hauled in from the fields where they had been buried in large hollows. The hollows were layered with straw, then cabbages and turnips, then straw put over the top again, and covered with four to five inches of soil. To finish, an opening was made from outside and obscured so that we could reach into the cache of vegetables and retrieve our needs for the week.

My brothers and I helped out in other ways. We were scooted out of the house early to help with the haying. In fact, we were a mighty army out in the hayfields. Our tall, stern father did the stacking, our jovial grandpa, the mowing, and aunt Bertha and uncle Loren, teenagers, helped grandpa Charlie cut and rake the hay into windrows and to drive the long tom. This mostly wooden rake, with its twelve to fourteen wooden teeth flush to the ground, gathered hay from the windrows and deposited it on the hay rack. The long tom was powered by one horse on each side. Sometimes, while driving the long tom, a snake would slither out of the hay right into the operator’s faces. At other times, the activity would disturb a beehive and the bees would swarm and sting both horses and humans. The horses would buck and kick and start the long tom going around in circles. Pulling back on the reins, Loren or Bertha would have to use all their strength to restrain the horses. We grew up encountering nature firsthand. This provided good experience for the future. After the long tom deposited hay on the rack, the hayrack was pulled up high into the air by a horse, the stacker horse. The hay was then thrown from the rack onto the new haystack.

But we three, Gene, Frank Carl, and I, had a much simpler job than managing long tom crises. Lined up on the shady side of the stack, awaiting our turn at leading Old Betty, the stacker horse, we amused ourselves by dismembering grasshoppers and squashing wooly worms (crude precursors to anatomical studies). We were often distracted when the moment of action came, and one of us was supposed to jump up to lead the horse. If we led too far, the hay fell on the far side of the stack. If not far enough, it landed on the stacker side, instead of where it belonged. Fortunately for us, most of the time we weren’t this inept and the hay was properly delivered. We were usually barefooted, so Old Betty often stepped on our toes. Luckily the discomfort was lessened by the cushioning effect of the stubble.

Not only were we young ones involved with the stacker horse’s routine, it was also our job to replenish the water jugs. Usually, in twos, we’d head back to the springhouse for fresh water. Dipping from the better tasting northeast reservoir, one of us would occasionally fall in. The unlucky one, usually my brother Gene, whose enthusiasm for dipping often landed him in the water, had to try and right himself in the nearly three foot deep reservoir when, just about the same time, our kind but no-nonsense grandma Nettie came rushing out of the house drying her hands on her apron. She’d pull us out of the reservoir, dry us off and send us really refreshed back to the hayfields. Stoppering the gunnysack-covered jug with a corncob, we threaded the handle onto a stick and, with one of us holding each end of the stick, we made our way back to the haystack.

It was a wonder we ever got out of the springhouse. It was cool and it held an array of attractive food. There was at that time no refrigeration on the farm; thus, this small building, with two springs flowing into it, served to keep the food cool. Two large reservoirs measuring thirty inches in height, width and depth occupied the northwest and northeast corners of the spring house. Each fed into a common rectangular reservoir where the food was stored. Others in our neighborhood, not so fortunately blessed with springs in their own little brick houses, had to lower their perishables in a bucket into a well and secure the bucket just above water level.

This shallow reservoir, with fresh spring water running through it day and night, served as the warehouse for dairy products, fresh meat and other perishables. There were crocks of milk with heavy sheets of cream on top, custard pies, and that miracle of the twentieth century, Jell-O, setting up with cooked strawberries and bananas. Left over pork chops from breakfast and compacted cottage cheese, plump in a recycled salt sack, completed the cache.

Much of the leftover food was fed to the pigs. Oh, how we loved to watch the little squeakers nurse and run around. When they wallowed in a shallow pool that they soon churned into a black creamy liquid, we marveled at the mix of mud and water and how smooth it was. We always kept a degree of wariness around the hogs. If a mother hog ever acted the least bit aggressive, we got out of her way.

My mother had few social outlets, but she did have one favorite while we lived on the hill. One neighbor, Rachel with only two teenaged daughters to raise, had more time than most and used it in a way that endeared her to her neighbors. Each August, after the hay was up and before the corn was picked, she invited the neighbor ladies to a sack exchange. Rachel made marvelous checkerboard cakes, so after the coffee and cake were served, dress print feed and flour sacks were placed all over the house for viewing. The many and varied print patterns were similar to dry goods at the department store. Unless we bought all of our feed at one time, or bought multiple sacks of flour in order to get the same flower pattern, we were often left with only one sack or two at most. If we went to the feed store for that one missing sack, the workers might have to move twenty sacks to find a match. Thus was born the dress print sack exchange. Sacks also ended up as tea towels, aprons, undergarments, curtains, pillowcases and handkerchiefs.

My mother always took an assortment of sacks to these events, to exchange for those more to her liking. She returned happy because she’d traded a couple of patterns she did not like or that would have been too big for me, and picked up four sacks to match the patterns she did like. The light turquoise and white background with scattered yellow leaves and orange flowers was not only a small, pretty print, but also a good color for my pale, freckled skin and green eyes. Soon I had a dress, a pair of panties, and a brimmed hat. Scraps from this favored dress set later showed up in a crazy quilt. I could see the story of my life in a quilt.

The most popular family social event was the big Sunday dinner. Everyone brought a dish of food. The children were always seated after the men had eaten. Chicken drumsticks were miraculously extended to all who wanted them (and all did) by using the meaty part of the wing as a tiny drumstick. After the children ate, the women ate and then washed the dishes. The men, however, sat out under the trees. Lounging on old quilts, they discussed politics, weather, and farming problems.

Almost all of our activities away from our home were with our parents, especially evening events. I especially liked going to shivarees, a noisy mock serenade to newlyweds, because we were given treats. We carried with us anything we could find to make noise. My dad took a circular saw on a crowbar. My brothers and I shared one hammer between us, striking the saw every chance we got. Our main purpose was to be disruptive to the newly married couple, a task accomplished with little difficulty. There were catcalls, yelling and whistling. It didn’t take much of this before the bride and groom would open their door, either to let us in or to distribute their gifts to us so we would leave. Sometimes, watermelon would be served in late summer; at other times the homemade bribes consisted of popcorn balls, pie, cake or candies.

In the early 1930s, the Fourth of July (Independence Day) was still a popular holiday, joyously celebrated in our area. Large gatherings took place with softball games, basket dinners and formal programs. The Declaration of Independence was usually read. Politicians spoke. Sporadically, firecrackers went off . Big fireworks meant shooting of the anvils. Gunpowder, when placed between the anvils and lit, created a deafening, frightening noise.

Aside from these family dinners, shivarees, and Independence Day celebrations, my biggest social outlet was West Elm Grove School. The school was like most country schools of the time: a white frame building with steps leading up to it, an outside well with a common cup hanging on it, two privies, wood storage and little else. However, no good roads led to it. West Elm Grove School was remote and more removed from the traffic of life than most schools. It lacked the status of being on the main road, or even a frequently traveled dirt road, as most were in 1933 in that section of Adair County. But if we were set away from the business of life, we didn’t know it.

As for the teachers of West Elm Grove, during the early 30s they were paid $35.00-$45.00 a month for teaching six grades, with three to four courses per grade. The total number of students varied from forty to sixty. Each year only one of either the fifth and sixth grades and of the seventh and eight grades was taught. If the teachers did not have their own quarters, they boarded with the students’ families. My dad had taught at West Elm Grove two years while working on his college degree in the late 1920s, but by the summer of 1933 he had graduated from Kirksville State Teacher’s College. As the Depression deepened, so did his cynicism about teaching fifty to sixty pupils for $35.00-$45.00 a month. He was asked to teach during the school year 1933-34 and declined, stating I would rather farm for nothing as teach for nothing. With a college degree, he felt that he should have been paid more. The school board thought otherwise. And farm for nothing he did: eggs sold for eight cents a dozen, hogs for two and one half to three cents a pound, and a big black calf for twelve dollars!

During my first school year I sat in the same seat with my uncle Loren. He was in the eighth grade. It must have been somewhat beneath his dignity to sit with a little first grade girl, and a niece, too. But he braved it. As the older student and the teacher’s unofficial helper in that one-room school, he helped me with words, spelling and numbers. He even sharpened my pencils for me—though I really wanted to sharpen them myself!

The next school year, the fall of 1934, my brother Gene started school and we walked to school together. We were slow. Oh, how we dawdled! We stopped to examine the road’s bounty: rocks, insects, sticks, weeds, leaves, snakes and dung beetles. These beetles were a great source of wonder and amusement to me then, as they are now. They rolled up acorn-sized balls of manure, containing their eggs, and pushed the ball toward a burrow. Later, the larvae consumed the manure. What was even more amazing were walking sticks. These insects looked just like a three to four inch twig with branches. They were dark colored and possessed tenacious little feet for their ungainly bodies. No wonder we found them so intriguing. They still hold my attention. Gene and I were both drawn to nature. Our fascination with form and function would later translate into human anatomy and physiology. Today, if I were to go back to those roads, I would still dawdle.

When winter’s cold struck, either the biting humidity or snow, we walked more quickly and skipped our basic research on the road. My peppy little mother took her precious time and paid a great deal of attention to dressing us. Had we been in a cocoon, we would not have been better wrapped. One of my coverings was a woolen scarf across my face and over my nose. How well I remember the smell of that warm, wet, wool pervading each effort to breathe. I did not like it. If the snow was really deep, we rode to school on a horse-drawn sleigh—not the fancy ornate ones of Currier and Ives cards but a simple utilitarian one. This was a special treat. I think I liked it as much for the attention being paid to Gene and me as I did for the luxury of the ride. Then, too, we slid along the snow so fast compared to walking that we were at West Elm Grove in no time. We did not take the road; instead, we cut through the fields, a much shorter distance. Greater than the attention and speed, however, was the beauty of the all white world, including the horse’s breath. Always, I would observe those great, swirling, white puffs.

As we entered the building on those cold days, we were met with the warmth of the central heating—a wood burning stove. At that time, the teachers had to keep the school clean and build the fires, sometimes with wet wood. Off came our galoshes, worn not only for snow and dampness, but for the unpaved, muddy roads, standard for the area in the 30s. Before we removed our wool coats, our mittens had to come off, attached as they were to the ends of a cord, which was then attached to the inner necks of our coats. The cord threaded through both arms and left the mittens hanging at sleeve length. Unfortunately, mittens were not always attached this way. The three little kittens weren’t the only ones to lose their mittens. Another cold weather item that I well remember was my long underwear. No matter how much I tried, although it is doubtful that I tarried long over the skill, I could never make the underwear look smooth under the long cotton stockings we wore.

School began with the Pledge of Allegiance and the singing of the Star Spangled Banner. Such a room, with fifty-plus students, constantly hummed with activity: the movement of children to and from the blackboard, to get a drink, to go to the outdoor toilet and to sharpen our pencils.

I don’t remember anyone else who was in my grade. Perhaps, I was alone, though in a one-room country schoolhouse one was never alone. As to study, we not only had large doses of reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic and geography, but also informal music represented by a record player and at least two records, the Missouri Waltz and Reuben, Reuben. I remember best the waltz and the verses recorded here.

Way down in Missouri where I heard this melody

When I was a pickaninny upon my Mommy’s knee;

The old folks were hummin’; their banjos were strummin’;

So sweet and low.

Hear that mournful melody,

It just haunts you the whole day long,

And you wander in dreams back to Dixie, it seems,

When you hear that old time song.

Way Down in Missouri where I learned this lullaby,

When the stars were blinkin’ and the moon was climbin’ high,

Seems I hear voices low, as in days long ago,

Singing’ hush-a-bye.

Reuben, Reuben was quite different.

Reuben, Reuben, I’ve been thinking,

What a fine world this would be

If the men were all transported

Far beyond the Northern Sea.

O! my goodness, gracious Rachel,

What a queer world this would be

If the men were all transported

Far beyond the Northern Sea.

Reuben, Reuben, I’ve been thinking,

What a great life girls would lead,

If they had no men about them,

None to tease them, None to heed.

Rachel, Rachel, I’ve been thinking

Life would be so easy then

What a lovely world this would be

If you would leave it to the men.

Reuben, Reuben, stop your teasing,

If you’ve any love for me,

I was only just a fooling,

As I thought, of course, you’d see.

Rachel, if you’ll not transport us

I will take you for my wife

And I’ll split with you my money

Every pay day of my life!

For years I pondered the words in Reuben Reuben because I did not remember enough of the words; however, I never once pondered the Missouri Waltz. I embraced it. It reminds me of our slow, sure summer days, so full of humidity and heat, as well as the ebb and flow of our hopes and dreams.

As with most school children, I don’t recall the work nearly as well as I do noon and recess. We all brought our lunches, which consisted mainly of sausage, pork loin or beef sandwiches. I frequently took fried egg and fried chicken sandwiches. Other favorites were bread with butter, jelly, peanut butter, or molasses as spreads. Some had gravy sandwiches. Cookies, pie pieces and candy served as desserts. The most common fruit was apples. My mother baked my brother Gene and me uncommon little fruit pies in four inch metal pans that were so good I can still taste them. The lard crust was golden brown from the rich cream spread over its top, and where the crusts were pricked and pinched around the edges, the apple juice, flour and sugar had boiled out at the edges and baked into beautiful, sticky, golden beads speckled with cinnamon. In contrast to today’s viewpoint, most of us felt our homemade bread was inferior to the commercial variety and would often trade a meat sandwich for store-bought bread with anything on it, especially bologna or other commercial lunch meats. Likewise, an orange or a banana boasted considerable status, as did popcorn. And of all the foods that were readily available and delicious, meat was number one since almost everyone raised and butchered their