Page 46 - 1st Anthology 2011

didn’t want him to continue. The old colored guy, Mr. King, he must have been doing
something right too.

I never went to boarding school. I only went to day school. I think my mom and dad went
to boarding school and stuff like that. During my time there was no boarding school.
They used to tell me by the time they went down there, their parents took them down.
Their parents left them, and they stayed there. Some of them were lucky enough to go
home during the weekends. That was just some of them. My dad, he more or less just
stuck around down there.

My dad didn’t really say too much on the learning aspect of it. You know how to read and
write and stuff like that. It was more or less that they done more work outside than going
to school.

He remembers that they used to have a big garden. They used to steal the turnips when
they got to a pretty good size. Then they were excused to take the horse for water down
to the creek. Then they would take their turnip with them and eat it down by the creek
while they’re watering the horses. The horses belonged to the school.

They also made butter that they never ate. He said what the hell; why are we doing all
these things? He used to kind of imitate what they would do. He said we were never
going to eat these damn stuff. Those guys in there are going to eat it. He also said we did
a lot of things. We weren’t allowed to eat any of them. It was taken away and somebody
else got them.

Talking about going to bed he kind of touched on it. He didn’t really say anything, like he
was scared. I asked him, why were you having bad dreams or what. He said, no son, it’s
not that. During the time he was there when he was my age. That’s when I was about
fourteen, fifteen he said. When I was your age it was time for me to go to bed; we were
scared because next morning some of the boys wouldn’t wake up because they would pass
away in their sleep from the sicknesses. I guess that’s why they were scared.

He used to say Isaac Crowchild and me, I guess we were made out of hard material
because nothing can affect us, any kind of disease. We were the fortunate ones that are
still living today.

People his age, some days there were about five or six coffins on top of each other being
buried. It was a common sight to see. There was a funeral just about every other day.
That’s how much the disease wiped them out.

My dad never really specified what those sicknesses were when the boys would be scared
to sleep at night. I don’t really know what they were dying of. My way of thinking it was
something really catchy. So on my way of thinking I think it was TB, but that was later on
back in the 1920’s, I know early on we did have the small pox. That was during my

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