A Wyoming brain echo.

In Wyoming

I started school in the second grade in Wyoming. It was a one room
schoolhouse. Had a big pot belly stove at the back of the room with a
rail fence around it to keep kids from bumping into it. At that time
there were only eighteen kids going to school. There were just two of
us in the second grade. And there was one girl in the twelveth grade.
There was a boy who was in the eleventh grade. Usually by the time
the boys sixteen or so, they were working in the mines. His folks
were not a mine family, but were farmers. He rode a horse to school,
that was staked out in a pasture behind the school. There were very
few homes with running water and modern bathrooms in this town of
Blazon, Wyoming, and the school house was no exception. We had two
outhouses out back. One for boys and one for girls. My teacher was
named Mrs. Woods. When she found out I was hard of hearing, she
decided the whole school needed to learn lip reading. That's how I
learned to do it. So did the rest of the kids. She used to read to
us a half hour before school let out every day, from some of the best
books. Some times our mothers would bring our younger siblings down
to hear the stories.
After the snow fell that winter, the boy with the horse brought a
toboggan to school with him and would give some of us a ride on it
during recess, and after we ate lunch. One day when there were five
of us on it the kid took us down along side the drainage ditch from
the mine. It had concrete sides that sloped up and was over eight
feet deep. The toboggan slid over the side of the ditch and all five
of us slid off the toboggan, down the slope into the drainage ditch.
There was only a few inches of muddy water in it, thank God, but the
sides were too steep and slick fo us to climb out. They had to get
some men from the mine to bring a ladder to get us out. My snowsuit
was wet and a bit muddy. Mom had made my snowsuit out of a big old
black wool overcoat someone had given to her. When I took it off and
hung it on the rail by the stove to dry, it made the whole room smell
like a wet dog.
My Uncle Phillip came up visit us and was staying with us while he was
trying to get work at one of the coal mines in the area. One day when
the folks went into town and left Uncle Phillip to baby-sit Weldon,
Fred and I, we were all wrestling around on the bed. We all three
piled on top of him then he pretended he was dead. We really thought
we did kill him and Weldon went bawling over to the neighbors house
and confessed. The neighbor lady came running over and saw he was
only faking and she grabbed the broom and whacked him a good one for
scaring us like that.
One day mom was fixing supper and sent Dad to get a bucket of water
from the town pump. While there, he met another miner friend getting
water. He invited Dad over for a wee glass of home made wine. A
couple of hours later he came home with just a few drops of water in
the bucket. Told us all how walked the power line wires home and
fell off and spilled the water. Mom was really pissed at him because
she had to go out in the dark to the pump and get water because we all
wanted a drink.
Dad was laid off at the mine because he was getting too much coal dust
in his lungs, so we went back to Uintah. Mom was pregnant with
Suzanne at that time, and Dad couldn't find work in Utah, so he went
to Nevada , to look for work.