One day during the summer of 1901 when I was about seven, mother sent my brother Lewis and I to pick black cherries for jelly from a big wild cherry tree down the road from our house. We took a ladder to climb up in the tree, as the lowest branches were about six or seven feet up.  I was straddleing the limb about four inches thick, when Lewie decided to go back to the house. I don't remember if he had his pail full, or just got tired of picking, but when he left he took the ladder with him. So I was left stranded up in the tree. It was too far from the house to yell for help, so when I got my pail full, I tied it to my sash strings at the back of my dress, then slid backwards til my weight let me down close enough to the ground and I dropped the rest of the way and landed on my feet. My clothes were a mess from the crushed cherries I had slid over, especially my underwear, and I think I got a spanking because of it.

Sometimes Lewie would keep teasing me and picking at me, calling me "Redhead Gingerbread, Freckle-Face, Eddie Belcher, and Pork Chops" and  would poke me with sticks or pull my hair until I got mad and I would take him down, sit on top of him, and mop his face in the dirt. He would start hollering and mother would come running to see what was happening to him. She would yank me off and call me a little wildcat, and turn me over her knee. I knew it would do no good to tell her he had been teasing me, and it was worth getting a spanking  to get a chance to give him a wolloping once in a while, because after that he would leave me alone for a while until his scratches and bruises healed.

Grandma wrote about her childhood in her memiors, this is a story about Independance Day in 1897 when she was 3yrs. old.

On the 4th of July, I had a little flag, about 1and a half by 3 inches on a stick about the size of a sucker stick. I don't know where it came from, but my brother Harry made peaked paper hats for all of us out of heavy store wrap. The boy's were brown and mine was blue (and I still have it). My brothers had sticks over their shoulders as guns and I was the flag barer . We marched all around the yard and the house singing Yankee Doodle. Later we had lemonade to drink and a big fat oatmeal cookie, which was a treat that we did not get often.

I hope you all have a good Independance Day 2008!