NOTE: The following composition is excerpted from Chapter Two of the book “The Hardest Life I Could Ever Love”, which is a memoir of Mary Blahnik’s life. That book was published in 2012 and was edited by Fred Blahnik.
As a girl I had a pretty doll that Aunt Mary, my godmother, had given me for a present. This doll had beautiful eyes that would magically open and close, and the damsel even cried out—a lugubrious wailing that touched my heartstrings and made me love her even more. One afternoon—wholly unbeknownst to me—my younger brother Joe and kid sister Catherine invaded my belongings, kidnapped my irreplaceable princess, and secretly hauled her outside to perform major surgery on my dearest. The juvenile felons were curious to see exactly what it was that made her cry………
This devious pair unmasked the physiology behind my marvelous doll’s crying and–fearless medical pioneers that they were–discovered the mystery behind the opening and closing of her eyes as well……but my precious doll wound up “dying” from the rigors of all that surgery at the hands of the famous operating room team consisting of “Dr. Joe” and “Nurse Catherine”. You can only imagine how angry I was with my overly inquisitive younger siblings that opprobrious day; I probably would’ve shot ‘em both between the eyes right then and there with Papa’s gun if I only knew how to use the danged thing!!!
On Sundays Papa would take us older Snyder kids to Catholic church services, and on the way home we would stop at the Ramsey Ice House and buy a large chunk of ice. Mama would already have dinner prepared for us when we arrived home. Her scrumptious fried spring chicken, mashed potatoes, and heavenly chicken gravy–augmented by luscious lemon pie for dessert–still causes my mouth to water uncontrollably whenever I think back to those irresistible meals.
Then, in the afternoon following dinner, Mama would cook up filling for homemade ice cream, to which we then added real cream courtesy of our herd of cows; and with Papa standing by in charge of the ice and rock salt……our family was ready to begin making homemade ice cream! All of us children had to take our designated turn cranking the cumbersome ice cream maker. We would impatiently crank on its handle, add more ice and salt around the ice cream container as needed, and after numerous earnest entreaties of “Is it done yet, Papa?! IS IT DONE?!?!” Huh?!?! HUH?!?!?!…….Papa would finally ceremoniously declare the mixture was stiff enough to eat.
The paddles—still dripping with sweet, creamy residue–were removed from the ice cream maker, habitually followed by brief squabbling centered on which lucky child would be given the devices to lick clean. Oh, but what a great treat that homemade ice cream was to us hillbilly Snyder kids!! Those Sundays were crammed full of fun and love and family camaraderie and…..and……oh yes, let’s not forget by far the most important facet of this equation: Nice, uber-full tummies by the end of the afternoon as well!!
Once in a great while, Papa would decide to drive to Austin to partake in the Catholic sacrament of Confession on a Saturday night. We Snyder offspring felt very classy being allowed to venture into town on a Saturday evening, even if others were on their way to celebrate a festive, oftentimes liquor-fueled occasion while we were just going to attend a pedestrian church sacrament. Understand, it didn’t require very much back in those Paleolithic days to make us Snyder children feel important!
Our idyllic summers would fly by like wispy cirrus clouds propelled by the fast-flowing Jet Stream high overhead, and as much as we kids despised the idea, September and a return to school was quickly upon us. Mama sewed us girls new print dresses in honor of this dubious benchmark, and all our underwear was sewn from an assortment of bleached feed sacks. The boys received new bib overalls and shirts to complete their Spartan wardrobes. And of course, school time also meant encasing our calloused, stretched-out, bare feet—big and roughly conditioned from running barefoot outside all summer long—into stiff new shoes.
Every autumn we faced the same painful ritual—first our heels developed severe blisters, followed soon thereafter by ruptured blisters, and, as the aggrieved skin slowly healed, eventually this epidermal tissue culminated in thick calluses—until our feet gradually adjusted to our rigid new footwear. Necessary—Yes, I suppose it was–but that fact did nothing to help alleviate the extreme discomfort we newly imprisoned pupils endured for a few days—No, it was actually closer to a few weeks!–thereafter.
On my first day of school in the first grade—my runty little brother Joe also started along with me that year—Mama drove us to school in our family’s horse and buggy. I can remember being decidedly shy and afraid because there was no one else I knew there. However, by the time school let out for that afternoon, I had begun to grow a bit wiser about the ways and wiles of the outside world……
In honor of my inaugural year of formal education, Mama had bought me a nice black sailor hat with a couple of decorative ribbons hanging down the back. She had stitched a length of elastic to go under my chin so the hat would not blow off my head if it became too windy on my way to or from school. I was predictably proud of my gaudy new top-piece, as you might well expect. In my fledgling mind, I looked every bit as alluring as big-screen siren Greta Garbo!
Well, at the close of that first school day Luella Hagan–who was seated in the desk immediately behind me—reached up and jerked hard on the ribbons on my hat, leaving my beautiful showpiece hat dangling forlornly on my back.
YIKES!!!!!
I was so incredibly embarrassed!!!
That unsavory experience represented the beginning of my true education in life; I started learning from that moment forward that you cannot trust everybody you meet during your one-way passage through time.
Incidentally, the Hagan children traveled barefoot to school until it began to get exceedingly cold in the fall. Our concerned teacher would inveterately ask them if their feet were not getting too cold without shoes to shield them from the increasingly harsh elements, but their reply was invariably a defiant, pride-filled “No!!!”
In the autumn we Snyder urchins raked the leaves in our yard into a big pile–and then was it ever fun to run and jump into that behemoth mass of foliage! Unfortunately, on one occasion we were not very careful when we raked and a small piece of board with a rusty nail sticking out of it was accidentally included in the mass of fallen debris. As the reader has probably already deduced by now, I took a gigantic flying leap into that majestic pile of leaves…….and landed squarely on the board!
My Olympic-caliber jump proved to be an expensive one for our cash-deprived German heritage family, since Mama had to escort me to the doctor several times following the painful incident for treatment of my injured knee.
During the Dust Bowl years, we Snyder descendants frequently had to rake all the fallen leaves and carry them to the stalls in our barn so they could be utilized as bedding for our cattle. Our family simply could not afford to buy standard straw bedding with the limited funds available to us.
Silo-filling was another loud and exciting time for us rural backwoods rubes. Neighbor men loaded heavy corn bundles (which had been previously clumped) onto waiting hayracks, hauled them into our frenetic farmyard (Think bees inside a hive!) with teams of hulking draft horses, and then as each bundle hit the conveyer belt with its knives spinning furiously below–there was unerringly that big noisy “Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr” as the cornstalks were chewed up and propelled through an extensive piping network up into our wooden silo.
Once again for the perennially overworked Mama, silo-filling meant preparing enormous meals for the Goliathesque work crew. This labor-intensive task was generally undertaken after school was already in session, thus we Snyder kids were not around home for most of the day to witness the excitement. Silo-filling was inherently a more dangerous undertaking than threshing. That said, during both threshing and silo-filling horses that had never been around loud machinery before could suddenly become disoriented and then unruly……or even bolt away unexpectedly, arrantly out of control, with their hijacked loads following precariously in tow.
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