AUNT DOT'S MEMORIES2

This is the second segment of my transcription of the 13 page
handwritten memories of my Aunt Dot on her and my Dad's
childhood.



"Pop" is my grandfather Floyd Earl West Sr. and "Mother"
is my grandmother Cora Berthella Barker. Hazel was my
Dad's older sister, and Flossie the youungest. "Uncle
Clarence" and "Aunt Mable" were my grand uncle Clarence
West and his wife. Uncle Clarence was the caretaker for over
fifty years at the Aziscoos Dam.


I'd heard the story about the geese from Dad when I was a kid
but I never knew the story of how he came to be called Bud nor
that he had been called "Pudge" in high school.



And I am quite certain he'd never have told us about setting the
bed on fire!



"My brother, Floyd Earl West, Jr. was probably never called by
his sir name. Hazel was taught to call him brother and it came
out budda- hence the nickname Bud. In high school at Gould
Academy, he was known as Pudge and when his class mates
ask about him to this day- -he is still Pudge!


Bud always took good care of me---



When we lived on the lake shore Hazel was in grade school and
had walk out to the dam to get on the bus. Mother often went
to meet the bus and walk Hazel home. If she got to talking with
Aunt Mable it was sometimes awhile before they returned. Bud
was left in charge and most of the time we would be taking a
nap when she left. One time we got to playing with a box of
matches on Pop’s bed and set it on fire. When mother got home
the wall and bed were pretty well in flames. Bud and I were in
the doorway. He was buttoning my coat.(We were in the
neighborhood of being 3 & 5 years old as Flossie hadn’t been
born yet.) She got water from the lake and put the fire out. We
had a constant reminder as there was a large wood clock on a
shelf above the bed and one end of the clock was charred.



We always had lots of snow and loved to pile it up and make
tunnels and snow houses. One winter Hazel, Bud, & I made a
snow cave and Bud crawled inside and was cleaning it out
when the whole thing caved in on him. We were frantic trying
to uncover him. Yelled for Mother and she came down the hill
and dug him out. Was I scared!!



One of our favorite things to do was to battle with Uncle
Clarence’s geese. That goose and gander came up the lake
every day and always got out of the water at our place. We
were told to stay up the steps where they couldn’t reach us but
we just knew we could get the best of them. We made plans to
stand back to back-one of us had a broom and the other a
clothes stick to beat these geese back to the lake. They went
back all right-each carrying a screaming kid by the seat of our
pants. Mother always rescued us before they got in the water.
Our back “cheeks” had an awful lot of big black spots but we
were already planning how we would get the upper hand and
win tomorrow. "