Stories from Grandma III- Keith at 5 Years Old

We came home from Dallas to visit often. I would try to have everything ready to leave when Jack came home from work on Friday evenings, but it would always be 10pm when we got to Hatfield. Keith had a little friend who lived down the street who was five years old. His grandparents live in Oklahoma. The little boys name was George David. One night the kids were asleep when we were traveling, Keith woke up and said,” Daddy, are we in Arkansas yet?” Jack said, “No, son we’re in Oklahoma.” Keith said, “Well, that’s George David’s Arkansas.” (Because that was where his grandparents lived and he loved to go to Oklahoma maybe as much as Keith loved to come to Arkansas.

One day when Kent was just a few weeks old, Keith was playing in the back yard. We had a large yard with a chain link fence. I tied the gate to keep from opening, but while I was taking care of Kent, Keith climbed over the gate. After about twenty minutes when I looked out, Keith was gone! Brenda and I started looking for him. She went up the street and I went down by George David’s house. There was no one home, so I looked in their back yard where he often played in a boat. We couldn’t find Keith anywhere! Finally, I went back to George David’s house and tried the front door, it opened and there was Keith lying on a pillow on the floor with a book beside him asleep. I picked him up and asked him why he had gone in their house when they were not home. He said, “Well, I was just waiting for George David to come home.” That was one of the worst scares he ever gave me!!

Keith loved to help Mother in the garden. One day when Keith was about five, Mother was cooking dinner and Keith came in with green onions and told her that he pulled them for dinner. Mother went outside and he had pulled up almost an entire row of green onions. Mother set them back out, but I don’t know if they lived.

We moved back to Mena from Dallas when Keith was five. There were no decent, affordable rent houses so we moved into Uncle Earl Varner’s house north of Hatfield. There was no indoor bathroom and Keith and Kent got a kick out of the “out house.” They had so much fun “roughing it” and playing with their dogs. That was in July and the next spring we were able to move into Mrs. Griffin’s rent house directly across the street from Hatfield Elementary School. She had a barn behind the house that was only used for storage. One day when Keith & Kent were playing in the barn, someone knocked on my door and said that the “barn was on fire!” I ran to the back yard and found the boys running toward the house. Keith was screaming hysterically! Soon after, the place was covered with trying to put out the fire, but the barn could not be saved. I stayed in the house trying to console Keith. Different people said, “I’ll bet he got in BIG trouble for that!” I think the scare was punishment enough and both the boys learned a good lesson! We paid Mrs. Griffin about $30.00, her estimate of what her things that were lost were worth and seemed to be glad that the barn was gone!

This is also where we lived when learned to ride a bicycle and had his first wreck!