by Lois Lenski
“More squabbles then, I reckon,” said Boyer, smiling.
“I reckon so,” said Slater.
“Times are bound to change,” said Boyer. “Open Range can’t last forever in Florida.”
“Further south it will. Plenty of open land down there—that’s where cattle raising will flourish. One of my cows got bogged down in that phosphate mud!” said Slater, laughing. “They paid damages—twice what she was worth.”
“I hope they won’t come too near my land,” said Boyer.
“Phosphate’s used for making fertilizer and other things, but the way they mine the stuff out of the ground—piling up mountains of dirt and running ditches everywhere, and layin’ their railroads with engines a-tootin’ and whistlin’, and building all them houses—I don’t like it. It ruins all the farms near by.”
Slater shook his head. “Hit ain’t good for the farmer nor the cattleman neither. They’ve leased most of the land my cows run over for pasture.”
“That makes it mighty bad for you, if they fence in your range,” said Boyer. “What will you do?”
“Sell out,” said Slater. “Can’t do nothin’ to stop it. Citrus people are fencing, too. Got to quit the cattle business, I reckon.” A week before, Slater would have ranted with furious anger. Now he spoke quietly and peaceably. Every one noticed the change.
“What you fixin’ to do?” asked Boyer.
“Take a job with the phosphate company, I reckon!” Slater laughed heartily. “Ain’t nothin’ else to do. Hear them loud booms goin’ off early every mornin’? They’re dynamitin’ the stuff out of the ground. I went over to tell ’em what I thought of ’em for fencin’ my cows out, and I come home with the job of dynamiter! Hit will jest suit me. Grandpa was an old Indian fighter in the Seminole War. He liked nothin’ better than firin’ off a gun, and I favor him in most ways. I reckon hit’ll jest about suit me to touch off a fuse in them pits, then run as fast as I can, and listen to it go BOOM and blow the whole place up!”
Everybody laughed.
“I can’t say I’ll be sorry to see the last of that herd of cows of your’n!” said Boyer.
“Birdie,” said Mrs. Boyer, “go fetch the strawberry wine.”
Shoestring followed her to the kitchen. She filled the glasses and the boy placed them on the tray.
“I’ll tell you something,” Shoestring confided, “I’m fixin’ to go to school once the new schoolhouse is built.”
“To learn to read and write?” asked Birdie in astonishment. “Now, I think that’s just plumb good!”
“Yes,” said Shoestring. “Pa said he made a mistake to take Gus and Joe out of school, and he wants me to git a little book-larnin’. Pa ’lows if I’m smart enough, I might could git to be state senator or leastways county commissioner!”
“I’m shore proud to hear it,” said Birdie. “I’ll help you with your lessons.”
When they passed the strawberry wine around, Mrs. Slater spoke up: “Some day we’ll make our own strawberry wine.”
“You fixin’ to …” began Mrs. Boyer.
“Raise strawberries? Yes,” said Mrs. Slater. “With Pa at the phosphate company and no cattle to trample things over, the boys will put out the crops for me and soon we’ll be sellin’ things like you-all. We’re studyin’ to put out a grove of them new seedless grapefruit too.”
Mrs. Boyer glanced at the baby sleeping on Mrs. Slater’s lap. “You’ll keep cows enough to have milk for the young uns?”
“Shore will!” said Mrs. Slater. “I don’t want ’em to grow up so puny lookin’. I want ’em to be strong and healthy.”
The next time the cow buyer came through on his way from Jacksonville to Tampa, he stopped at the Slaters. Buzz and Dan Boyer had gone on the cow hunt with the Slater boys and had rounded up the cattle for the last time.
Birdie and Dovey watched the long line of cattle drive past their house. Shoestring dashed by on his cowhorse, the sharp cracks of his long whip sounding like shots from a gun. He pulled up only long enough to say: “I’m shore proud to get shet of these here cows!” Then he was gone.
It was several months before the new schoolhouse was rebuilt on the site of the old. It was a great improvement, with weather-boarded instead of planked walls, new seats and desks, a table and chair for the teacher, and glass sashes in the windows. The new teacher was Miss Annie Laurie Dunnaway.
It was a proud moment for Birdie when she presented Miss Dunnaway with a bunch of red roses, and introduced Shoestring Slater. It was a proud moment, but an awkward one.
“This here is Shoestring …” she began. “Oh, no, I mean …”
“My name’s Jefferson Davis Slater,” said the boy. “I come to git book-larnin’.”
“You are one of the Slaters?” asked Miss Dunnaway. In her eyes there came a frightened look. “They told me the Slater boys had left school. Was it you and your brothers who …”
“Gus and Joe whopped the man teacher,” said Shoestring, dropping his eyes. “I wasn’t in school then.”
“But Shoestring … I mean, Jeff’s different!” broke in Birdie. “He ain’t rough and wild like Gus and Joe.”
“You must say ‘isn’t’ not ‘ain’t,’ Berthenia,” corrected Miss Dunnaway.
“He isn’t rough,” said Birdie. “He won’t make ary trouble for you, Teacher.”
“‘Any’ trouble, not ‘ary,’” said Miss Dunnaway.
“I won’t make you no trouble,” said Shoestring, looking up at her, “iffen you jest larn me to read and write.”
“‘Any’ trouble, not ‘no’ trouble, Jefferson. And ‘if,’ not ‘iffen’. ‘Teach’ me, not ‘larn’ me. That’s fine. I’m proud to welcome a peaceable Slater to my school.”
“I can stay then?” asked the boy, twisting his black felt hat awkwardly.
“Yes, you may, Jefferson,” said Miss Dunnaway. She showed him where to put his hat and dinner pail, and led him to his seat.
There was no organ at the school for Miss Dunnaway to play, but soon she was leading the children in singing, and their happy voices rang out through the silence of the piney woods, where only the shy woods creatures could hear.
When Birdie came home from school that evening, she was not prepared for the surprise that awaited her. She knew her father and mother had gone to town that day, but she was so busy thinking of school that she had not even wondered why Shoestring and Essie and Zephy and Dovey all came home with her and followed her up the porch steps. There was so much to tell about the first day of school.
But they did not tell it after all, for there on the breezeway stood the surprise. It was a beautiful parlor organ, with elaborate scroll work, shiny ivory keys, many stops and two foot pedals. A stool with a fringed velvet top stood in front of it.
“An organ!” cried Birdie. “Oh, I always wanted one!”
“Golly!” cried Shoestring.
“Looky! Looky!” cried the little girls.
“Ma, Ma!” cried Birdie. “Here’s a organ! Where did it come from?”
But Ma did not answer. She was not there, nor Pa, nor Dixie, nor any of the rest of the family. Birdie wondered where they all were. The organ must have come from town, so they must have returned.
Birdie could not wait. She sat down on the beautiful stool.
She touched the stops. She laid her fingers on the ivory keys. She pressed them gently, but no music came.
“Hit don’t play!” she cried in distress.
“Pump the pedals up and down with your feet,” said Shoestring. “Ain’t you see Miss Dunnaway do it in church?”
Birdie began to pump, pushing one pedal down and then the other. She began to play with one finger. The tones were soft and sweet. She pumped harder. They grew louder. She used two fingers, then all five.
“I jest wisht I could make me a purty tune,” she said.
“Why, Berthenia Lou Boyer!” Dixie came up on the back porch with Bunny. “You darsen’t touch it. Ma ain’t said you might could.”
“You don’t belong to touch it till Ma and Pa come,” said Dixie.
Suddenly they were all there. Ma stood beside her. Dan and Buzz peeped in through the kitchen door. And Pa, who was washing his face on the back porch, put his head around the corner and laughed. They had heard Birdie playing.
Pa came out. “Strawberry Girl done worked so hard on the strawberries,” he said, “we made a nice surprise for her.”
“Is it for me?” asked Birdie.
“Yes,” said Ma, “for Strawberry Girl and for all of us.”
“But Ma,” cried Birdie, “I purely can’t make me a purty tune! I thought it would be so easy.”
“Let’s hear you try,” said Pa.
Birdie pumped and pounded the keys again.
“Sounds terrible,” said Pa, looking at Ma. “Reckon there’s anything we can do about it, wife?”
Ma smiled. “How about takin’ lessons from Miss Dunnaway?”
“Oh, Pa! Oh, Ma! I might could?”
“Yes,” they said. “We been studyin’ on it for a long time.”
“Golly!” said Shoestring. “When you get big, likely you’ll play the organ in church!”
“I hope so,” said Birdie.
“Play for us, wife,” said Pa to Ma.
Ma sat down and played a pretty tune.
“Why Ma! How do you do it? When did you learn?” cried Birdie.
“I takened lessons way back in Caroliny when I was a young un,” said Ma, “and I ain’t forgot yet. Hit makes me plumb happy to put my fingers on an organ again.” She looked at Pa and they smiled.
Then Ma played a hymn tune and they all crowded round the new organ and sang together:
“O Beulah land, sweet Beulah land,
As on thy highest mount I stand,
I look away across the sea,
Where mansions are prepared for me
And view the shining glory-shore:
My heaven, my home forevermore.”
A Biography of Lois Lenski
Lois Lenski was born in Springfield, Ohio, on October 14, 1893. The fourth of five children of a Lutheran minister and a schoolteacher, she was raised in the rural town of Anna, Ohio, west of Springfield, where her father was the pastor. Many of the children’s books she wrote and illustrated take place in small, closely knit communities all over the country that are similar to Lenski’s hometown.
After graduating from high school in 1911, Lenski moved with her family to Columbus, where her father joined the faculty at Capital University. Because Capital did not yet allow women to enroll, she attended college at Ohio State University. Lenski took courses in education, planning to become a teacher like her mother, but also studied art, and was especially interested in drawing. In 1915, with a bachelor’s degree and a teaching certificate, she decided to pursue a career in art, and moved to New York City to take classes at the Art Students League of New York.
In an illustration class at the League, Lenski met a muralist named Arthur Covey. She assisted him in painting several murals, and also supported herself by taking on parttime jobs drawing fashion advertisements and lettering greeting cards. In October 1920, she left New York to continue her studies in Italy and London, where the publisher John Lane hired her to illustrate children’s books. When she returned to New York in 1921, she married Covey and became stepmother to his two children, Margaret and Laird.
Early in her career, Lenski dedicated herself to book illustration. When a publisher suggested that she try writing her own stories, she drew upon the happy memories of her childhood. Her first authored book, Skipping Village (1927), is set in a town that closely resembles Anna at the start of the twentieth century. A Little Girl of 1900 (1928) soon followed, also clearly based on Lenski’s early life in rural Ohio.
In 1929, Lenski’s son, Stephen, was born, and the family moved to a farmhouse called Greenacres in Harwinton, Connecticut, which they would call home for the next three decades. Lenski continued to illustrate other authors’ books, including the original version of The Little Engine That Could (1930) by Watty Piper, and the popular Betsy-Tacy series (1940–55) by Maud Hart Lovelace. Lenski also wrote the Mr. Small series (1934–62), ten books based on Stephen’s antics as a toddler.
The house at Greenacres had been built in 1790 and it became another source of inspiration, as Lenski liked to imagine the everyday lives of the people who had previously lived in her home. In Phebe Fairchild, Her Book (1936), for instance, a young girl is sent to live with her father’s family on their farm in northwestern Connecticut in 1830‚ when Greenacres would have been forty years old. For its rich and detailed depiction of family life in rural New England, the book was awarded the Newbery Honor.
Other historical novels followed—including A-Going to the Westward (1937), set in central Ohio; Bound Girl of Cobble Hill (1938); Ocean-Born Mary (1939); Blueberry Corners (1940); and Puritan Adventure (1944)—all set in New England; and Indian Captive (1941), a carefully researched retelling of the true story of Mary Jemison, a Pennsylvania girl captured by a raiding Native American tribe, for which Lenski won a second Newbery Honor.
By 1941, Lenski’s stepdaughter, Margaret, had married and started her own family, and Margaret’s son, David, spent a great deal of time with his grandparents at the farm. Lenski’s Davy series of seven picture books (1941–61) was largely based on David’s visits to Connecticut as a child.
During this period, Lenski experienced bouts of illness, brought on by the harsh Connecticut winters. The family began to spend winters in Florida, where she “saw the real America for the first time,” as she wrote in her autobiography. Noting how few books described the daily life of children in different parts of the country, she began writing the Regional America series, starting with Bayou Suzette (1943). The seventeen books in this series depict children’s lives in every region of the United States, from New England to the Pacific Northwest, in rural and urban settings. Lenski traveled to each region that she would later feature in her books, spending three to six weeks in each locale. She collected stories from children and adults in each area, documenting their dialect, learning about their way of life, and otherwise getting to know the people that would become the characters in her books. The second book in the series, Strawberry Girl, won the Newbery Medal in 1946. The Roundabout America series (1952–66), intended for younger readers, was based on the same theme of daily life all over the country. Lenski was unparalleled in the diversity of American lifestyles that she documented; the combination of research, interviews, and drawings that she utilized; and the empathy and honesty that she employed in recording people’s lives.
Other popular series for children followed, including four books about the seasons—Spring Is Here (1945), Now It’s Fall (1948), I Like Winter (1950), and On a Summer Day (1953)—and the seven Debbie books (1967–71), based on Lenski’s experiences with her granddaughter. Lenski also published several volumes of songs and poetry, mostly for children.
In early 1960, Lenski’s husband died, and she soon sold the farm in Connecticut to live in Florida year round. There she wrote her autobiography, Journey Into Childhood (1972). Lenski died on September 11, 1974, at her home in Florida. The Lois Lenski Covey Foundation, which she established to promote literacy and reading among at-risk children, continues her mission by providing grants to school and public libraries each year.
Lenski in 1897, at age four, when she lived in Springfield, Ohio. She was born there on October 14, 1893.
Lenski photographed at age seven or eight, when the family lived in Anna, Ohio. The family lived in Anna for twelve years. It was there that Lenski developed her love of country life and began drawing and painting.
Lenski with her family in Anna, Ohio. From left to right: sister Esther; brothers, Oscar and Gerhard; father, Richard; Lois; mother, Marietta; and in front, sister Mariam.
Lenski’s high school graduation photo, taken in 1911. Her E
nglish teacher predicted that some day she would “do some form of creative work.”
Lenski in her studio in Pelham Manor, New York, around 1925. She lived there with her husband, Arthur; stepchildren, Margaret and Laird; and later, her son, Stephen.
Lenski with Stephen, age three, in 1932.
Lenski with Stephen and Arthur in 1946, just after she had won the Newbery Award for Strawberry Girl. With them is their pet goat, Missy.
Eventually, Lenski’s declining health led her to move to a warmer climate. In this 1960s photo, she is in her studio in Tarpon Springs, Florida.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1945 by Lois Lenski, renewed 1973 by Lois Lenski Covey
cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
cover illustrations by Lois Lenski
978-1-4532-4151-6
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
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