To Sail Beyond the Sunset Read Online Free PDF Page A

really), she didn’t keep that promise more than thirty minutes.
    But they worked out practical compromises.
    Mother bossed the household. Father’s domain was his clinic and surgery, and the barn and outbuildings and matters pertaining thereto. Father controlled all money matters. Each month he gave Mother a household allowance that she spent as she saw fit. But he required her to keep a record of how she spent it, bookkeeping that Father examined each month.
    Breakfast was at seven, dinner at noon, supper at six; if Father’s medical practice caused him to need to eat at other times, he notified Mother—ahead of time if possible. But the family sat down on time.
    If Father was present, he held Mother’s chair for her; she thanked him, he then sat down and the rest of us followed. He said grace, morning, noon, and night. In Father’s absence my brother Edward seated Mother and she said grace. Or she might direct one of us to return thanks, for practice. Then we ate, and misbehavior at the table was only one notch below high treason. But a child did not have to sit and squirm and wait for the grownups after he was through eating; he could ask to be excused, then leave the table. He could not return even if he discovered that he had made a horrible mistake such as forgetting that it was a dessert night. (But Mother would relent and allow that child to eat dessert in the kitchen…if he had not teased or whined.)
    The day my eldest sister, Audrey, entered high school Father added to the protocol: He held Mother’s chair as usual. Once she was seated Mother said, “Thank you, Doctor.” Then Edward, two years older than Audrey, held her chair for her and seated her just after Mother was seated. Mother said, “What do you say, Audrey?”
    “I did say it, Mama.”
    “Yes, she did, Mother.”
    “I did not hear it.”
    “Thank you, Eddie.”
    “You’re welcome, Aud.”
    Then the rest of us sat down.
    Thereafter, as each girl entered high school, the senior available boy was conscripted into the ceremony.
    On Sundays dinner was at one because everyone but Father went to Sunday School and everyone including Father went to morning church.
    Father stayed out of the kitchen. Mother never entered the clinic and surgery even to clean. That cleaning was done by a hired girl, or by one of my sisters, or (once I was old enough) by me.
    By unwritten rules, never broken, my parents lived in peace. I think their friends thought of them as an ideal couple and of their offspring as “those nice Johnson children.”
    Indeed I think we were a happy family, all nine of us children and our parents. Don’t think for a minute that we lived under such strict discipline that we did not have fun. We had loads of fun, both at home and away.
    But we made our own fun, mostly. I recall a time, many years later, when American children seemed to be unable to amuse themselves without a fortune in electrical and electronic equipment. We had no fancy equipment and did not miss it. By then, 1890 more or less, Mr. Edison had invented the electric light and Professor Bell had invented the telephone but these modern miracles had not reached Thebes, in Lyle County, Missouri. As for electronic toys, the word “electron” had yet to be coined. But my brothers had sleds and wagons and we girls had dolls and toy sewing machines and we had many indoor games in joint tenancy—dominoes and checkers and chess and jackstraws and lotto and pigs-in-clover and anagrams…
    We played outdoor games that required no equipment, or not much. We had a variation of baseball called “scrub” which could be played by three to eighteen players plus the volunteer efforts of dogs, cats, and one goat.
    We had other livestock: from one to four horses, depending on the year; a Guernsey cow named Clytemnestra; chickens (usually Rhode Island Reds); guinea fowl, ducks (white domestic), rabbits from time to time, and (one season only) a sow named Gumdrop. Father sold Gumdrop when