"VERSE,
a breeze 'mid blossoms straying.
Where Hope clung feeding, like a
bee--
Both were mine! Life went a-maying
With Nature, Hope, and
Poesy,
When I was young!
When I was young?--Ah, woful When!
Ah! for the
change 'twix Now and Then!
This breathing house not built with hands,
This
body that does me grievous wrong,
O'er aery cliffs and glittering
sands,
How lightly then it flash'd along--
Like those trim skiffs, unknown
of yore,
On winding lakes and rivers wide,
That ask no aid of sail or
tide!
Naught cared this body for wind or weather
When Youth and I lived in
't together."
"Youth and Age" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I was born
Becky Louise Thorpe, July 23, 1905, in Blair, Nebraska on the Missouri River. I
lived with my mother Edith Thorpe, a small crippled-back woman, my father Henry
Thorpe, a hardworking farmer with worn out hands, and my aunt Mary Smith, who
knew "everything about everyone." My Grandma Thorpe and Grandpa Thorpe lived a
half mile piece down the road. The world I was raised in was alot different than
it is today. My Grandparents and Ma and Pa had settled on 150 acres of homestead
land. Pa built a large eight room wooden farmhouse and two barns. There was a
dirt road connecting our house with my grandparents and further to Blair where
there were five stores and a rooming house. We weren't rich, and we weren't poor
like the two black families on the other side of the railroad track. We had
indoor plumbing, a well pump in the kitchen, and electric lights. We also had a
telephone that worked "most of the time" when used to talk to my grandparents or
neighbors. And I did get to go twice to a movie theater in Omaha to see a silent
film in 1920. It was a time of peace in our country; Warren Harding was
President. But there were also alot of things we didn't have. We had a Ford
tractor, but didn't own a car(Pa said they were "too dangerous"); we traveled by
horse and wagon. I had heard a radio and a Victor Talking Machine, but we didn't
own one. Ma wanted a piano, but never got one. We never went up in one of the
airplanes that flew overhead, and never rode on the Chicago and Northwest
railroad that ran through Blair. Mother and Aunt Mary made most of my clothes. I
wore plain linen dresses, except for my Sunday flowered silk dress which my Pa
bought me for three dollars from the Sears "Wish Book."When I wasn't in school,
I helped with the farm work. Pa planted corn which he sold by the wagon and
truck load to cattle farmers. Neighbors came to help us, and we helped them at
harvest time. We had chickens, two goats, four pigs, two horses(Sally and Red)
and a cow named Elsie. I was a tomboy part of the time and a lady when we had
guests to visit. I was baptized at the Cottonwood Baptist Church when I was
twelve. I was "almost" a Christian; I am now. I had several dolls and owned six
books. "Life On The Mississippi" by Mark Twain, "Little Women" by Louisa May
Alcott, "Lo, Michael" by Grace Livingston Hill, "The Enchanted Barn" also by
Hill, "The Secret Garden" by Francis Hodgson Burnett, and my favorite "Mountain
Interval" poetry by Robert Frost. Pa taught me to fish and shoot a rifle when I
was only ten. I was a good shot hitting tin cans at over a hundred feet away.
But I was an "only" child, and although my parents tried, they were not able to
have another child, so that's why they decided to adopt a "sister" for me.
**continue**
