I am reminded that in the early days of my life in Yates Center, the earliest type of cereal I can remember was  a cereal called Vigor.  There was also a corn cereal called Manna which was later changed to Post Toasties.  Another thing that sticks in my mind is seeing National Geographic magazines with illustrations of automobiles.  This was extremely interesting to me. 

 

I started to school early.  I don't know how many years I stayed in the primary and first grade but it was enough to get some education before I started on into the higher grades.  It was a country school.  If I remember right, it was the opposite way from town.  I think it was two miles.  Anyway, I would go along to school with the other kids who were older than I.  I started at age four....or it might have been five.  It was a one room school, primary to eighth grade.  I was a small boy among the older boys.  They used to tease me and say they were going to cut my ears off.  I worried a little about that.  That, I remember I didn't like.  I just didn't like school very much.  Maybe that was the reason.  As far as the way school looked, I can picture a pretty big room with a big heating stove in the middle of it to heat it.  There was a coal or wood shed where the big boys would sit around and whittle and say they were going to cut my ears off.  There was an out door privy (toilet).  I think they used the school as an area gathering place.  There would be school programs and box suppers there.  I guess maybe they raised money at those things.  The young ladies would bring lunch in a box.  The boxes would be auctioned off to the highest bidder.  The winner got to eat with the gal.

 

I remember a little about clothes washing.  I remember clothes washing going on while Uncle Otis, Aunt Flo and son Kenneth visited us.  Keith couldn't have been there because he had already died.  Clothing were first boiled in a vessel shaped to fit over the two front lids of a wood cook stove and then rinsed in an old fashioned round tub.  Incidentally this tub was also the bath tub.