May 2023

Celebrating 150 Years of the City of Corning & Clay County in 2023 First Graders, 1954-1955... Mrs.

This column was originally published on May 7, 2020 and has been edited slightly from its original publication. The fragrant smell of peonies in the air lets me know that Mother’s Day is near.

led to believe it was an honor, when in realty all it meant was that after we served the food and cleared away the dishes, we were allowed to sit at a distance and take in all the action… I made up my mind right then and there that I was never going to go through any such performance… I didn’t know yet just how I would get out of it, but I knew for sure that no one could hog-tie me and get me to wear one of those long-tailed dresses and high heeled shoes and willingly spend a night of misery. I got out of it my junior year by convincing my parents that it was a complete waste of money (which too was to me) to buy all those fancy clothes which I would never again wear when we needed that money for so many other things. By the time I was a Senior we had been at war for some time, and it was the least of my parents’ worries about whether I went to a prom… they were worried about my brothers, brother-in-law, uncle and 21 cousins who were scattered all over the world, fighting for freedom. So, I got out of the prom in my Senior year even easier than my Junior year. Had I not gone to the Prom when I was a 10th grader and seen what it was all about, I might have been talked into attending even though I was somewhat of an odd ball… I didn’t wear paint and powder or fingernail polish, I hated high heel shoes, I wasn’t about to be caught outside the house in a dress of material so thin you could see through it, and I was so near tone deaf that I not only couldn’t dance, I didn’t even want to… I was more interested in those throw lines that my dad and I had set out in the ditch between Staley Lake and Corning Lake, hoping to hook a big old catfish. That’s the way it was and that’s the way it still is, I’m just what I am!