I went to country school to a teacher named Adams. My birthday being in November, I started to school when I was four. The teacher wrote numbers one to ten on the blackboard, and said, "You make these just like I did." There was no way I could do that, so she spanked me and said, "You go home and don't come back to school until you are five." I stayed home until I was five, but I had some good teachers. One of them was Vera Glass. She was a wonderful teacher!

We went to East Chapel Church about a mile from where we lived. I suppose I started going to Sunday school when I was about five. We would go in Dad's horse drawn carriage. Grandma Morrison was my teacher and then Miss Finkbone, who moved away to Minnesota. My sister, Minnie, was going with Raymond. He had no brothers or sisters. He would take me home from Sunday school, and bring me home when he came to see Minnie. He called me his little sister. I was even with them when they were married in 1921. He died in January the next year with T.B. and I missed him terribly. When I was in high school I went to the Christian Church, and joined in 1923 at a revival meeting. After I moved to Osceola I went to other church meetings and worked in the church kitchen.

In the wintertime, when I was a child, we went places in the sleigh. It was a wagon box with runners. Our father would put straw in the bottom, mother would cover us with blankets, heat irons she used to iron clothes, and put them under the blankets with us. This is the way we would go to visit our relatives. I don't know what the older kids were doing but this was the five of the younger bunch - Marie, Cecile, Ferne, Kenneth, and Victor. It was a wagon full. My mother's relations had cousins about our age, and going to see them was so much fun!

It would be hard for young people now to imagine how our life was, particularly without a car, but Dad didn't buy one until the 1920s, and even then he wouldn't learn to drive it. My brother and I learned when we were older.

I graduated from rural school, went to high school in Osceola, and graduated in 1925. I planned to go to college, but my dad died in August, so I couldn't go. It was a good thing I stayed home because my mother got sick with urinary trouble, and my brother Charlie had pneumonia. That year Mother and I also helped Hazel and Happy Clifton when Hazel was pregnant with Mary. We kept their son, Keith, and Little Keith only lived until he was five. In January 1926, he died from an infection in his leg that they think was cancer.

The next year two years I taught in the Groveland rural school - the school years of 1926-'27, and 1927-'28. During that time, I was taking college classes on Saturdays. We didn't have options of transportation. I came by train in the morning, and usually could find a ride home. There was a day when there were only two of us on the train - a man who worked for Millers and myself. The conductor got off to put the flag down and the train started up before he could get back on. We didn't know what to do. Neither of us had ridden the train enough to know what we should do. I saw a cord and said, "I don't know what it will do, but I'm going to pull this." It was the right decision. They stopped the train, and the conductor got on. He had been able to get up on the step and hang on, but it was a freezing cold day and he said, "I don't know what would have happened if the train hadn't stopped. I was just about to give up. I thought I couldn't hang on any longer." He'd probably have died. That was a strange and terrible experience. He turned to me and said, ''Next time, you put the flag down."

I took summer classes for two years, then went to summer school at Iowa State Teachers' College in Cedar Falls. I graduated with a degree in 1929. I roomed with Edna Teller and she is still living - my oldest friend. She is one year older than I. She lives in a Marshalltown nursing home. I heard from her recently and she said she had written several letters which I hadn't answered. I didn't get them but I did write to her. I used to have a lady who wrote for me, and she isn't here any longer. There is another one who is supposed to do that, but I haven't asked her. I just wrote to Edna myself. I tried to call her on the phone but she couldn't hear me very well. I plan to go see her this summer if I am able. I went two years ago.

My first teaching job in town school was in Somers, south of Fort Dodge. I was there for one year then got a call from Charter Oak. I put my application in there and was hired. I was there for four years. It was about then the Depression hit, and things were so bad. One morning when I went to school the superintendent said to me, "The bank in Osceola closed." Two of my sisters and one brother worked there and even they didn't know it was going to close. They didn't get their money out, and I sent money home so they would have some. Dad had bought a piece of land he hadn't fully paid for. Minnie and I put up the money to finish paying for the land. I had borrowed money from Minnie to go to college and paid her back.

I don't want to dwell on how bad it was. People who didn't live through it probably couldn't understand anyway. There were some who couldn't cope with it.  While I was in Charter Oak, the father of one of my students come to the door and looked through the glass. I went to the door to ask if he wanted to come in and he said he just wanted to see his children. He went to the park and hung himself. Another father of one of the children killed himself in front of the train. Those were sad years.

While I was there, I was struck with acute arthritis. Knots formed on my joints and I had severe back pain. I went to local doctors, one in Denison, who sent me to Sioux City. I came back to Osceola and saw Dr. Lauser. As is often the case, the source of the problem was somewhere other than the obvious. He x-rayed my teeth and found I had infected wisdom teeth. When I went to a dentist and had them pulled, my problem was taken care of. The basis for this was that as a child I had streptococcus infection, which was diagnosed as tonsillitis. I was sent to bed but they didn't have penicillin so there wasn't much more to do for it. I took sweat baths several times a day out in the sun, or with my grandmother's electric blanket. I recovered, but the bacteria stayed in my system without any evidence until I was 22 years old.

During the summer of 1927, I had the first of several experiences with lightning. My sister Cecile was married, and Mother was having a dinner for her. It rained and not many guests were able to come because we were still on the dirt road. We were washing the dishes - Opal was washing, Cecile and I were drying - when a terrible storm came up. The folks had a lot of shade trees west of the house. Lightning struck one tree near the house. It broke the window where the cream separator was; a ball of fire came in through the window, out through the pantry door, into the kitchen, across the floor, and out the open door. I happened to have a tin curler in my hair and was struck by the lightning. Cecile held me up. I don't know whether she knew I'd been hit, but I still have a lump on my head. I'd never seen anything like that before and hope I never do again.

I had another spell with lightning after I had come to Osceola in 1934, and taught second grade. Lowell and I had been married and were coming home from town when a storm came up.The garage was quite a way from the house. I got out of the car and remarked that I hoped there would be lightning so I could see to get to the house. Lowell got up on the step to unlock the door, and I hadn't quite gotten there. We had a wind charger; lightning struck the wind charger, and it hit me. I just stood there. I couldn't move. Lowell quickly grabbed me and got me into the house. It knocked out several things in the house even though we had lightning rods. Another time lightning came in and knocked out our telephone. We had stock killed by lightning- a hog, a cow, and a horse.

Lowell had grown up in the Hopeville area, and I met him when we both happened to be visiting my sister, Marie Moran. He asked me, "Would you like to take a ride with a young man?" I said, "Young man?" and he said "Sure." So I took a ride with him and that was the beginning. We were married in 1938. We had planned to get married a year earlier, but when the year rolled around, Lowell said he didn't have enough money to get married, so we would have to wait a year. During the year, I was at my mother's home when a man came to take orders for fruit trees, so I ordered raspberry plants, fruit trees, and grape vines. Lowell, his father, and a hired man set them out. That didn't work out too well because the next year we were married, and the day we were going to celebrate our honeymoon, the raspberries had to be picked.

I taught the neighborhood school, Doyle No. 5. I think I taught two terms there and finished a term for a teacher who got pregnant. Pregnant women weren't allowed to teach in those days so I filled in for her and got more money teaching her term than at any other place or time.

I totally accepted the role of farm wife. I helped Lowell raise hogs, I fed the pigs. We built a hog house that held about 20 sows. There was a place out in front of the building where we fed them. There was a fountain where they could drink their water. They knew exactly where to go. The sows knew where their stall was. Relatives visiting us from California were so surprised the hogs knew where to go. Pigs were weaned and sold. I raised a lot of chickens so we could have eggs for sale. We milked cows, separated the milk from the cream and sold the cream. Someone came from the creamery and picked up the cream. Someone else picked up the eggs.

Farming isn't the safest occupation and I had three bad scares. One was when I was hauling corn up the hill and one horse fell down. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know if the horse had broken a leg or what had happened. I didn't know if I should jump off the wagon or just sit there. I decided to sit there and pretty soon the horse got up and we went to the house. Another time was when I was harrowing the ground. Lowell told me to turn better at the ends of the rows. I turned too short. The harrow came up over the tractor wheel and blew out the tire. It made me sick. The other time I was shucking corn with the team. I shucked this small plot because it was by the fence, and there was a slough, so Lowell couldn't get in with the corn picker. He was using that machine and I said I could do the small plot. I was taking the load to the house, going up a hill, and the horses got scared and started to run away. I just hung on and they soon settled down.

I raised pigs and chickens and other people's children. We couldn't have any of our own. I intended to go to the doctor to see if there was something wrong with me, but he said, "You get Lowell in here first." Lowell refused because he knew what was wrong with him. He had mumps when he was in puberty, and they went down. It prevented him from fathering children.

Australia, Canada, Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico, and various countries in South America. A friend, Marie, loved to fly and when we were in Alaska she persuaded me to leave the group tour and fly with her to Nome. It was truly primitive but one thing I remember was a style show where they featured fur coats. The price was hundreds of dollars. We didn't buy one but later we heard that the price now is in the thousands.

Brazil was one of the South American countries we visited, but I don't remember which it was when one night our sleep was interrupted about 3:00 in the morning. They came and told us we had to leave. There was going to be trouble if we didn't. So we left that town and went on. Another time, in Europe, we saw a sign that said, "Go home, Americans." They tried to do something to the bus we were on but weren't successful. Those were the only two places we had any problems. In other places, they were glad to see us.

In 1990 I began to lose my eyesight. I lost it completely in my left eye. I went to a specialist in Des Moines who was highly recommended. "Isn't there anything I can do? Change my diet? Anything?" He said, ''No, you will always be blind in that eye." Throughout my life I have had various physical problems perhaps stemming from the arthritis I had in Charter Oak - it may be that it never completely left my body - or maybe even back to the streptococcus infection I had as a child. At any rate, at some time I became aware of Reflexology. I bought several books on the subject and believe it to be true that we have certain connecting points in our bodies. By pressing a point connected with the area that is giving the problem, we are helped. In this case, I went home and got out my Reflexology book. The point for eyes is the base of the first and second finger and the base of the first and second toe. The hands don't work as well as the feet but if you can't reach your feet, the hands will do. I began putting pressure at the base of my toe. There was a picture on our wall that had a blue butterfly. Every morning I would look at that picture and finally one morning I saw a blue streak, and it kept improving. I went back to the doctor six months later and I could read the top line of his chart! He was not impressed. He turned on his heel, walked out the door, and never said a word! In time I could see about as well in each eye.

One of the on-going pleasures I have is attending reunions, and particularly our Adams' reunions. My great grandfather was married three times, so he had three families and we have a lot of relatives. The first reunion was held at Millard Adams' home. We continued to have it in buildings until the group outgrew them and we had to have them in the park east of Osceola. Last fall we had it at Ron and Shirley Fouche's. Ron is a second cousin. I don't have any first cousins living. I am now into second cousins.

Over the years I have belonged to the Federated Women's Club and the Retired Teachers. I went until I got too old. I played a lot of bridge and taught a lot of people to play. I had a little folder that told everything you needed to know to play bridge.

I came to the nursing home in 2001. The transition began with a fall. I had been to the meal site for lunch and fell in front of the Lyric Theater. It happened that a lady saw me fall and came over to see if she could help me. She had a phone so I told her to call someone. They came with an ambulance and I was taken to Des Moines with a broken hip. When I came back they told me I would not be able to live alone. If I stayed in my home I would need 24-hour care. I sold the house on Cass Street, and my nieces and nephews disposed of most of my belongings.