Once upon a time there lived four little children named Martha, Little Joanie, Johnny, and Barbara. They lived in Badger, Iowa, a little town of 300 Norwegian farmers. Here they are sitting on the curb in front of Little Joanie and Barbara’s daddy’s second hand truck that he used to haul stuff to put in his corner grocery store.
Martha and Johnny were brother and sister. Little Joanie was Barbara’s little sister and it seems as if I should make up all kinds of adventures for Little Joanie. Her name sounds so sweet and innocent, she must have been up to all sorts of secret mischief, but alas I fear that is not true. Little Joanie was an adorable little baby girl, not at all like her long-legged big sister who would rather have been born an Indian girl than a blonde descendant of her Norwegian grandfather, who farmed the Home Place a few miles out of town. Johnny was Barbara's first boyfriend, although she is never sure that he actually knew that.
It was Barbara, however, who got hauled naked out of a mud puddle by Pearl, the postmistress, and delivered in high dudgeon to my mother with a lecture on propriety. In her defense, Barbara was about Little Joanie’s age at the time. I don’t know if Pearl was the town spinster or not, but she was in a perfect spot to know everybody’s business. It was the late 40’s of the 20th century, and her role as postmistress included being that of “Central.” The town was on a one-party telephone line. You dialed 0 on your wall telephone and when “Central” answered, you asked for a number. Pearl would then connect you. You might say Pearl was the face of social media in Badger.
It was Barbara who ran with her friends, Johnny and Martha, whenever a train passed by, trailing a red caboose, shouting, “Blow the whistle! Blow the whistle!” And sometimes the brakeman would, indeed, blow it.
It was Barbara playing cowboys and Indians with her little friends, insisting that she was an Indian princess. Barbara’s dad taught her to ride a bicycle over on the dusty baseball field. Barbara’s great aunt Sophie lived in a little white house not too far from the baseball field, and she would go over there sometimes in late summer when Aunt Sophie would fix her a bowl of red currents with cream and sugar.
Barbara could sometimes be found upside down diving into the barrel of dates in her father’s little grocery store, but if she couldn’t be found she was likely down the basement at Martha and Johnny’s house avidly reading the collection of horror comic books that could be found there (which would have mortified her mother). Yes. Barbara could read at age five or so, because of the best thing of all.
She attended the same two-room school that had been attended by her grandmother years and years before. There were four grades in her room – kindergarten through 4th. With 3-4 children per grade. She learned to read in kindergarten, and she knows this because her parents kept the certificate she earned for “Most books read in kindergarten.” When the teacher was concentrating on one of the other grades, she gobbled up all the books in the school library, which consisted of two long bookcases with two or three shelves apiece. And they were stuffed with books.
The schoolhouse is no longer there. Years after Barbara and Little Joanie and their parents, along with little brother Randy, left Iowa for Illinois, it was torn down and Badger’s little scholars were bused to a larger school in Fort Dodge, eight miles away. I was told that Martha and Johnny’s parents also moved, possibly as far away as California. I wonder if Badger kids still learn to read in kindergarten.