The following is the fourth installment of a series of vignettes by Georgia (Joey) A. Munson Hadfield recounting her stay in El Dorado in 1932.
The “doctor” incident sure put a crimp in our “cowboys and indians” games! On Saturday afternoons, after watching Tom Mix or Roy and Dale or Rin Tin Tin at the movie house, we backyard thespians would come home and make up our own hair-raising adventures: talking tough cowboy talk and chasing each other with shooters drawn. Jimmy, the fearless, one time climbed to the shed roof and jumped off! Wowee, just like The Lone Ranger! We would sure miss Jimmy.
Nelson Eddy, the most handsome, the most elegant and the most wonderful man in the whole world stood high on my pedestal! I wanted to be Mrs. Nelson Eddy above all else! I knew I had to look older and be a little more sophisticated. I found some hollow reeds for my project and confiscated some kitchen matches. When I thought the coast was clear, I sat in front of Aunt Inez’s dressing table mirror, applied lipstick and rouge liberally, and with some difficulty, got the reed fired up and posed just like Carol Lombard or Jean Harlow with the smoke curling alluringly around my face. Nelson would have gone mad! And I wasn’t caught!
My big brother, Miles, 14 1/2 years old, was working toward his Eagle Scout badge. His troop had scheduled a hike to earn certain merits. There must have been a real emergency, as Miles was informed that I had to accompany him! (To be straddled with a pest of a lousy little sister in front of the guys! Oh man, it couldn’t get any worse!)
The Scouts wore their uniforms with big packs on their backs. They looked very professional. Finding a site suitable for their project entailed a long hike. Anathema, thou art my name! No one even glanced back to see if the sister pest had managed to get lost. Alas, she hadn’t!
Plan for the day: baking potatoes in the ground. Each boy brought his own spud (varying sizes) for the event. Following the handbook instructions, the eager beavers dug a shallow pit and put the taters flat on the bottom, smeared them with thick mud and built a hot fire on top of the mud. (I could help find sticks but if I griped I’m TOAST!) They continued doing other important jobs but kept a sharp eye on the crackling fire. The book said the taters would be ready to eat in one hour. At the exact time, and with some excitement, the fire was doused and the potatoes brought to light. The tubers were as firm as when first placed in the ground. Double rats! They replaced the vegetables using less mud and much more fire. In exactly one hour, the hungry group again doused the fire, gingerly pulled a tater up to find the top charred black and a little bit soft, but the bottom was muddy and hard as a rock. No problem, they took out their mess kits and we all sat around eating the dirt-encrusted nearly raw spuds. Blaah! Mission accomplished, duty done! They cleaned the area, burying any remnants of the fire, struggled into their packs and hiked for home; a tired, hungry, dirty girl waif still trying to keep up with the “men.” (Miles was never obliged to take me with him again.) The teenage male mantra: When around a girl ignore her completely. If I had somehow gotten in any danger, I would bet on a stack of Scout Handbooks every one of the “men” (my brother leading) would have come quickly and willingly to my rescue. (Boys will be boys, however, one day Miles lovingly gave me Exlax for a chocolate bar.)
El Dorado summertime weather: hot during the day. hot during the night. Little, if any breeze. Every now and then a swirling wind would develop out over the prairie and by the time it reached our town, a full blown dust-storm was in action. Batten down the hatches and hang wet sheets at all the windward windows. When the storm passed, MaMa and Aunt Inez had a mess of fine dust to clear away. Conversely, huge black clouds would materialize out of nowhere and everyone would take shelter. First the lightning: one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three, boooom, the thunder shook the house, the lightning supposedly three miles away. Sometimes we didn’t count one before the boooom and we knew that bolt was right over us! The furies were harsh but mostly short lived, always followed by torrential rains. The streets would quickly overflow and the kids sloshed barefoot through the gutters. Wowee! (A Kansan never lets any water go to waste.)
