Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

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Timothy was so right about this. It certainly did make a lot of difference. Incidentally, I may say I have not thought of this boy for a long time. And Gaskel was his me—not Doble. But the boys all called him Doble because he was at one time—a considerable time—in a fair way to have Archibald Doble for a stepfather. However, Bill Kerr, young school teacher, stepped in and married the widow Gaskel, who was nearly twice his own age. That marriage did not endure.

Before going on with the main show, let us go back little—maybe a year, maybe two or three years. This tanyard pool brought the swimming hole a mile and a quarter closer to town—and it was hailed with delight by le barefoot boys. Prior to this, the town boys did their swimming in the “prairie pools” out south. But the pools had their bad features—hazards fraught with disturbing elements.

In the first place, one-third of the distance to the pools was across the big bottom south of Spring creek which skirts the town. The bottom was covered with a rank growth of sloughgrass, and, in the early summer months — the natural time for swimming—after the grass had burned off, needle-pointed stubs were very damaging bare, feet, and caused utterances of many an “ouch” and not infrequently a “damnit”—and this unholy language emanating from youngsters barely past the trundle-bed stage. But the little sinners could swim—every one of them.