Journal, 1922

File — Box: 5, Volume: 14

Identifier: III

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

On the way home from Church in Upton Mary and family were caught in a cloud burst and took shelter in a nearby house:
"I looked with envy at the sparkling cleanness of the linoleum on the floors, the ruffled white curtains, the snowy bedspread seen through the open bedroom door, the colors of the new braided rugs on the kitchen floor vieying [sic] with the geranium blooms in the windows. When at last we got back to our bleak dirty little shack I just threw myself face down on my bed and shut out the sight of it. Hours later I woke up. It was dark and still. Charles had fed the children, put them to bed and was himself asleep."
Some neighbors owed Charles and Mary money, which Charles refused to pressure them for. Mary and Charles argued about this and Mary felt angry and frustrated by the situation and Charles's weak, evasive approach. On a picnic with these people Mary writes:
"I was constantly thinking of whether or not to ask Mishie why Ed wouldn't pay us any of the money he owed us. Outwardly I was a member of a happy picnic party. Inwardly I was a seething furnace of resentment. No wonder I felt sick when I got home."
One day Mary, desperate for a change from childcare, volunteered to hunt porcupines in the field at night. Charles agreed but added that she would be sorry she had made the bargin.
1923
July 28
"He boosted me into the saddle on old Doll, and handing me a hoe told me how to use it to kill a porcupine. He told me how to stalk a porcupine, walking slowly behind it-a yard or two away from it so it couldn't swish its body around and fill my ankles with quills; and how to strike its neck with the hoe so as to kill it instantly. It had to be done while the animal was in motion because when a porcupine stops walking it draws its head up under its body."
She gives a beautifully harrowing description of her adventure as she reluctantly kills three porcupines that night. Getting back on her horse at one point she caught her foot in the stirrup when the saddle slipped part way underneath the horse:
"My ankle and knee were twisted so that I could hardly stand the pain. I thought, 'this is it, this is what I have been waiting for twenty-three years.' But good old Doll didn't budge, and I breathed a prayer of thankfulness. I somehow got my foot out and leaned against the horse for a few minutes."
1924
May
"Trek to grainfield-two miles with four babies. Like a sage hen and her chicks."
The rest of the journal are notes copied from a class or books. There are quotes from Victor Hugo, Buddha and others.

Dates

1922

Conditions Governing Access

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