Willie Read Online Free PDF Page B

didn’t get a lot of toys like kids do now. They had to take care of their things because they weren’t going to get something new every time somebody went to town. People didn’t go to town every day, either.
    Myrle and Ira got divorced and went their separate ways, leaving Bobbie and Willie with Ira’s folks, Dad and Mom Nelson. Times were hard in the Great Depression. Our granddaddy was a blacksmith. Sometimes people would have work done and then not pay him. Some were well-to-do farmers around Abbott, but they wouldn’t pay and never did pay even after Granddaddy Nelson died and left Mama Nelson with Bobbie Lee and Willie to take care of. Bobbie Lee and Willie had to wear clothes somebody handed down to them, or gave them, but they didn’t mind. If Bobbie and Willie only had one good dress and suit to wear to church, it was always nice and clean.
    It was such a blow to us all when Dad Nelson, our grandfather, suddenly died at age fifty-six. He was a powerful man, not tall but real strong, but he had a bad heart. He caught pneumonia and tried to take some kind of sulfa drug that went against his heart. He took sick one day and died two weeks later.
    I spent all the time I could with Bobbie Lee and Willie. We played games—hide-and-seek, Annie Over, follow the leader, little games that groups could join in and play. Sometimes we’d play paper dolls with the girls and little Willie would help us cut dolls out of the mailorder catalogues.
    Before I got married and left home, I helped look after Bobbie Lee and Willie. Mama Nelson would never let me spank them. I used to tell her, “If you just let me take a broom weed, just a broom weed, and spank their little old naked legs when they get out of line . . .” But Mama Nelson said no.
    After I moved a mile down the road with my husband and couldn’t see Bobbie Lee and Willie so much anymore, Mama Nelson had to stake little Willie in the yard, like a cow. She used a twenty-five-foot rope, which gave him plenty of grazing room. I would walk over to the Nelson house to visit the children. When I had to leave, BobbieLee and Willie would follow me as far as they were allowed to go away from the house, up to the next street. Then they would lay down in the grass and cry until I was out of sight.
    I couldn’t stand that. Finally one day I stopped and went back and said, “Let me have a little talk with y’all. If you keep doing this, I can’t come back. I’ll just stay home and not come see you. So you promise not to follow me up the road and cry.”
    They cried some more and promised.
    There was never anything said about the children being raised by their grandparents and not having a momma and daddy all the time like other children did. Bobbie Lee and Willie never seemed to mind the fact that they didn’t have something other children had. Of course, it was depression time, when nobody had a whole lot. But Bobbie Lee and Willie were happy, well-adjusted kids.
    They made good grades in school. Bobbie always played the piano for the school, and Willie would play the guitar and entertain the kids. Every fall the Abbott school would hold a carnival to raise money, and each class would pick a boy and a girl to be the king and queen of the class. Whatever grade they were in, Bobbie Lee and Willie were nearly always chosen.
    Myrle and I used to try to write songs together when Bobbie Lee and Willie were babies. After school we would sit and try to put words together so they would rhyme. I’d say, “Did you think of anything that rhymes real good today?” We’d sit down and work some more. We weren’t worrying with music, just trying to put words together to make a song. We never did get anything written. What made us want to make a song, I don’t know. But we worked frantically at it.
BOBBIE LEE NELSON
    Our grandmother would wake Willie and me up in the morning by throwing ice water on us.