rough crowed

But my crowd was too rough for her. There were four boys that would run around with us, William Tell, Twit Wilcox and I can not remember the names of the other two, so that left me alone. Edith was starting to grow up enough to go with us, I took her all the time, till the girls got together and told me they did not want her. So one day we were all going some place and I told Edith she could not come with us. So we left her looking after us.

I look back at her and there she stood looking after us with tears running down her face. I told the girls to go on I was going to stay with Edith. They did not want to go without me so Edith was with me from then on.

I was the only one that had a buggy and team of horses. So the bunch would get together and take a lunch and go out in the county for a picnic. I do not remember ever asking Papa if I could have that team to go anywhere. All I had to do was take the team and wagon down town and have all the young boys in the wagon, because I always had Robert, Charles and Gene with me. It was always said, "If you are looking for your boys look up Kate Steele." Or

“we know where you were last night, we heard you fighting.”

Everybody know I fought, but I never did anything wrong.

alive & modern
One day when Alta Balard was home alone I went to see her. “Her mother was old fashion and made Alta dresses clear down to her shoe tops, and I keep trying to have her mother shorten her dresses, but her mother would not.” So while she was alone I went down there and shorten every one of her dresses. I think that if Sister Balard could she would have killed me.

dance
Another time I talked Jennie into walking 7 miles to Lovell to a dance. Boy when that dance was over we were too tired to walked home, so she got us a room and caught a ride to Cowley the next day.

initiation day
When I went to High school as a freshman, the school had initiation day for the Freshies. We were all on the stage doing our thing at the end of the program, when in came the sophomores with our coffin all in black. They walked in front of us to a window that was open on the stage, set fire to the coffin and pushed it out the window. I was standing close to the window and I walk over to one of the girls carrying the coffin. As she pushes the coffin out the window, I give her a little push and she started to fall with the coffin. I gripped her legs and held on till a teacher helped me pull her back. We were two stories from the ground. That stopped the sophomores from giving us a bad time.

hang out
At night Edith and I never had much to do but hang around with the kids of the town of Cowley, one night we were out late and mother come after us. All we were doing was setting on the fence watching the moon and singing songs with a bunch of kids with nothing to do. But mother took us home and papa jump on me and had me on the bed slapping me around and trying to make me say that I would not do it anymore. I would not say I would not do it anymore. I think Mother pulled him off, it was the third time he ever spanked me. It was the last time. I guess Papa had gone the limit with me.

nice boy
I started going with a young boy by the name of Tell Aires, he was a nice kid, but was not a religious boy, he did not go to church and he smoked, nothing serious. Papa asked me not to go with him anymore so one night he came to see me with a box of candy. I was alone at the house, Papa and Mother had taken the kids and gone somewhere, so when Tell came I told him Papa did not want him to see me anymore so we set out on the porch and eat candy and talked. When papa came home, there we set, kind of surprised Papa. He said he did not mean for me not to go with him that night.