Sharon Robbins

My name is Sharon Robbins. I was born in Gunnell, Missouri on July 5th, 1948. It was a very hot day, my mama said, and she had a large garden and the corn was about ready. So she picked, shucked, and canned nine pints of corn the day I was born, later in the day. And she said it wasn't quite ready, but that's why she says I always like my sweet corn nubbiny, not so. I can't eat bought corn, it tastes like field corn to me, 'cuz the grains are so big. That's what shaped me to love the first tenderest sweet corn.

And my parents were Winford and Laverne Upchurch. They lived on a small farm outside of Glen Allen. I had an older brother who died tragically when we were teenagers, and then a much younger brother who still owns and farms the family farm.

Well, my first memory is of us getting electricity in the house, and I was only two. And that's very unusual, my mom always said, for anybody to remember when they're that young. And I only have their picture memories. The man who put in the wired the house, Mr. Elmer Hahn, was so patient with my older brother and I. We followed him around as he did all the wiring work and the overhead boxes for the overhead fixtures. They punched out little metal pieces, about the size of a nickel, to run the wires in. And my memory is of him up on the ladder in what we called the little bedroom, at that ceiling fixture, and looking at the floor with the sawdust and those nickels laying in them. And then I have another picture of him doing the same thing, only the floor was concrete, down at the bottom of the basement stairs. But my brother and I thought that we were wealthy, we had all those nickels that came from electricity.

Oh, things that we played, having grown up on a farm. When my brother being older, we played farm quite a bit. And the old front porch was concrete, but it was not built properly and it had sunk, so there were a lot of cracks. And those made our fields. And of course I got the tractor with three wheels and the cow with two legs, but we played farm all over that front porch.

And that was the story my mama told too, about lizards liked that porch. And I was younger and my brother didn't want to go out on the porch, and she said I said to him, "Ah, fade ears won't hurt you." That's what I called the lizards. And so that's a memory of playing there.

It was a great place of an evening. My dad had a hammock swung between the rails and we had a porch swing. Many hours of me reading and pushing back and forth the wrong way in the swing, my feet up on the chain, reading and reading.

And of course the night sky was very visible, and looking at the stars and the Milky Way, listening for the first whipperwill, the first katydid. It was a time we didn't have a television, so we, it was cooler, no air conditioning, it was cooler on the front porch. So we stayed out there until we went to bed. Lots of good family memories.

Yeah, well, across the house faced the gravel road and the creek was at the far end of the fields. And then there were high hills on the other side. And 4th of July was a big deal because daddy had made a little gun out of a bent pipe and he and my brother liked to put firecrackers in the end and shoot them. And it echoed off the hill over there wonderfully. But our favorite old dog Lucky was terrified of firecrackers and he cowered and hid.

Where was your farm?

It was at Glen Allen, which is in Bollinger County, but it was about, oh, I don't know, a quarter mile out of Glen Allen. And my folks started with a 40-acre farm. Daddy served in World War II in the Pacific. Mama worked. They were engaged. Mama worked at a small arms plant in St. Louis and they saved toward their goal of buying a farm.

That's a kind of a funny story too. The man who had the farm for sale told them their price and they agreed. And mama said she thought that he was sorry that he didn't really want to sell it and didn't think they would be able to buy it. And he moved to a house in Glen Allen, but he walked out every day, walked around. And she said he picked up and took anything that was lying around, including she had wash hanging on the line and he took the clothesline down and took it. And she was angry and she was taking in the clothes and she said, "Well, what will it be next, the well?" And he said, "I would if I could."

So this is after they moved in?

Oh yeah.

He would just come out...

Yeah, he just missed it. I guess that's what mama thought with, clothes on it.

Well, so where were your parents from? The St. Louis area? How did they end up buying a farm around here?

They both grew up around Glen Allen.

Oh, okay. And then she ended up working up there.

During the war, they were engaged before daddy left for service.

Do you remember where the location was of that munitions plant?

No, I have a newspaper article that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published. It showed all the women working in the factory and mama is in the picture. And I could look up the name. I don't recall it, but there was, I have read a couple of novels from this library about one of them was the code women who worked. Great book. But it's the other one I read also, which I just finished, was the wartime sisters. That's an excellent book too. But it shows kind of a bond that the women workers developed. And mama has pictures. There are, you know, wedding showers. There's, you know, outings that this group of women. They became good friends, support each other, and wrote letters after . Mama has a whole chest of correspondence with her and daddy during the war.

She had an apartment and a lot of her roommates. There's pictures of them. And she started out by my father's aunt lived in Webster Groves. And she stayed with her, I think briefly. But she got an apartment and stayed with other women who were working there too. Some of them. I don't think there were any from her hometown that she knew really. But yeah, mama was pretty spunky. Because when she got word that daddy was coming home, he'd been in New Guinea, she took her sister's husband, drove her to California to stay with an aunt and uncle to meet daddy. But when was he coming? Didn't know. So she got a job in a candy factory.

While she was waiting.

Oh yeah, oh yeah. And she had to ride the bus quite a little ways. And so one day they tell them they have to join the union. It's gonna be so much money. And mama said, "I wasn't gonna be here that long." And she said, "I told them no, I wouldn't join." So they said, "Okay, you could leave." So there she was, way out there, with no bus schedule to pick her up. So she said, "I walked and I ran and I walked and I ran." All by herself until she got to a place where she could get a bus and get back. And the funny thing about that is mama loved licorice, but she never ever ate licorice again. Because she said all the candy that dropped on the floor went into the licorice because it was black and it didn't show the dirt.

Well, how did she get to...

The bus? She rode a bus. There were no buses coming at that time of day.

So she could have waited...

She could have waited all day, but I don't know. Maybe they were not very nice to her and she decides better to go.

You can imagine the strength of the unions back then...

Or the strength of mama's will.

So okay, so she went to California to meet him. They come back here, they get married, and they're farming. Were they full-time farmers?

Yes. And that is not as unusual in the 40s, 50s as it is today to make your entire living from a small farm in Bollinger County, where there's a lot of rocks. But my brother continues to do that. And so that of course daddy added land as he was able to and my brother has too. But it's...

A little bit more than 40 acres.

Oh yes, oh yes. But machinery changed.

And of course Lynn and I played. My brother and I played farm a lot with pretty good-sized front yard and mama mowed it. But Lynn thought we should make it into hay. So we, he raked it into windrows with the garden rake, which is terrible to use. And then we picked it up and put it in the red wagon and delivered it over to the barn driveway, where he had a one-gallon paint bucket rigged up with a pulley. And I was to load the bucket and he pulled it up the pulley and we had our own haystack in the barn loft. And I got a ride back in the wagon because I had helped him with making hay. It was many loads.

And of course my grandpa still, my dad's dad, lived at Glenn Allen also. He still farmed with horses and he had a pair of horses. One of those haymaking times with my brother and I, he had his horses were in the barn lot. And why I had my doll with us I don't know. But jello was a red cloth doll with a plastic face and I still have jello. But the dent in her cheek is from where the horse thought the five gallon bucket had something in it besides a doll I guess and he stepped on her face. So jello has a dented cheek.

So what kind of, what kind of farm was it?

Well, daddy had hogs. He also had milk cows, Jersey milk cows. He grew alfalfa hay, he grew corn, he grew wheat. They had a milk route in Glenn Allen.

I don't know how many Jersey cows they had, at least six. But he brought the milk in, mama strained it, get out any bits of hay or cow hair or whatever, and bottled it. And we had a route. She drove the car to Glenelg and my brother and I sat in the back seat and she delivered it to the customers who love to talk. They also loved on a quart of Jersey milk, at least a third of the jar was heavy cream. They loved that. I did too. We had that on our cereal every morning and ooh, yummy.

Is that exclusive to Jersey?

Guernseys also have a high butterfat. Okay, but they're there too that have the highest butterfat level. Holsteins, the big black and white ones, are a dairy but their milk volume, they produce the highest volume of milk. But my folks were after that and they sold cream. Mr. Hood picked it up at the end of the driveway in milk cans and they did that for a while and had a little separator machine in the basement which I can barely remember them doing that. But that's the kind of farming farming they did.

Do you remember any national events that went on when you were a child that stick out in your mind?

Well, I remember when Eisenhower was elected president because we had a television then and it was very annoying, all of the political hoopla that usurped the normal television shows. I definitely remember the Cuban Missile Crisis because I was probably 13, 14. My parents had decided to add a bedroom on the back of the house for me so I'd have my own room and the building supplies were stacked out in the backyard. My good friends said, "Oh, your folks are building a bomb shelter," because that was all the talk during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And of course it wasn't a bomb shelter. But that's something from national events I remember. I was in high school and Kennedy was assassinated. That was definitely a memory. And he miss Crenshaw's English class when they announced that.

What, what did you come in from a farm being in school? What were you, you know, like someone that wanted to get back out in the farm or were you academic?

I was academic. I wanted to get it all right. And that's funny because I never felt that kind of pressure from my folks. One reason that they bought the farm they did was because it was only one, even quite a quarter mile to the school and they wanted me, well and my brother, they wanted their children, they didn't have any at that time, to have a good education. And it was a two-room school that I started in. Skip to school every day, mama said I never walked. But I had penny loafers. I guess that was about third grade. I was so proud of shiny penny in them. And I polished those shoes every morning before school. But schools in Bullinger County consolidated when I was in third grade and we went that last month to the old rock elementary building in Marble Hill. It was like sardines, all these kids from the country schools in this room. I don't know how the teacher coped. It was so hot and it was an adjustment. How far was that from? Three and a half miles. How'd you get? Bus. Bus ran by our house. The cafeteria, warm hot lunches, were something new. Quite an adjustment.

I remembered my first day. They had green peas, which I ate, and the merry-go-round was something we didn't have at Glen Allen's. So I thought it was like fun, but I didn't know you had to get off the direction you're going. So I tried to get off the wrong way. So I guess I was getting nauseous anyway. My peas came back. Not a good memory. I guess too many people got off and got hit or something. But went to to the rock school in Lutzville. It's not now, it's all Marble Hill for fourth, fifth, sixth grade. They were building what is now the main school and sixth grade was in that new building. And then we went back to the old high school in Lutzville. And I intended to go to college. My parents encouraged me and I went to Cape.

And why did I major in home economics? Well, I loved Mrs. Rahm, our teacher, and I worked for her with the COE program my senior year. And what is COE? Cooperative occupational education. And I was very active in FHA, future Homemakers of America, in high school. Enjoyed being a regional officer and going to state meetings. She drove an old station wagon and we stopped over here at, at it's not town country anymore, what did they, Olympic steakhouse. We stopped there and ate on the way to Jeff City. Also in Steelville, I'll remember that little restaurant we stopped there. Because didn't eat out much when I was a kid at all. The Olympic Steakhouse in town, mm-hmm. And it used to be a grocery store. Oh no, it was a restaurant. Oh yeah, when the lap girls bought it, they called it talent country, the restaurant, uh-huh. Oh okay, I'm pretty sure that's right.

But daddy, daddy was on the school board and he, he thought being a home ec teacher was a really good idea because they had an extended contract. They worked an extra month a year and they were expected to make home visits to check on their students. See what projects they had going on, what things were they doing for a home project. You know, I remember showing miss Ron was like a washstand that I had stripped and refinished. And oh, she was always so complimentary about everything that her students did. But daddy said, you know, you make more money if you do that. So it wasn't just extra work, you were paid an extra. The Boag teachers still have that. The home ec teachers lost that somewhere along the funding and the lessening of the emphasis on being a productive homemaker and being a dual homemaker wage earner entered that curriculum emphasis from the State Department.

So somewhere along there that extra work, extra pay disappeared. So that is what you're saying though, is that at the end of the school year the kids were in those courses, I guess, were expected to have projects this summer and then we would go and check in with them. Boag students have SOE, if I could tell you what that stands for, but that's their, that's their career project. And it's marvelous to hear some of them talk about some of these kids in high school have quite a productive cattle herd, make quite a good income. So it's surprising sometimes what, what that project gets them started in, in a good business. Is that a rural thing or is that everywhere? Because I grew up in suburbia, I've never heard of that kind of thing. I'm, I'm sure it's rural. It's funded a lot of it through the Carl Perkins vocational education act, which I don't know who Carl Perkins was. I think he was a senator from Tennessee or something, but he pushed vocational preparation education and resulted in funding. Even when I was teaching I could get grants, Carl Perkins grants, for things.

Well, in the early 80s in Fredericktown the students built houses and oh yes, yeah, and they're over there and beyond. Had the building trades class. But I did go to Cape my first two years to college. My husband Dwight was a chemistry major. He was a senior and his good friend was the chemistry lab. All home ec majors had to take organic chemistry and he, his good friend was the lab assistant in my lab. But Dwight was in there checking out all the girls. Evidently I caught his eye. So at the end of our, so he went to graduate school at Ames, Iowa. And at the end of my sophomore year we got married and I went to Ames and finished. And man, that was a awakening. Their home ec department was humongous. The elementary education department was included in it. Oh, several other fields. And there was a huge campus. We lived in married student housing, which was World War II Quonset huts. And some of them had rounded roofs. Ours had a flat roof. No, I think it sloped a little bit. Old kerosene heaters that clogged up the chimneys. There was always a fire in somebody's chimney. And the mice were just horrible. This was in the mid 60s. Yeah, we got married in, we've been married 51 years. We got married in 68. And you know, when it finally got really cold and the snow piled up, we didn't have mice coming in. But I can remember Dwight spent a lot of hours in the chemistry lab working. And I remember studying with gloves on because it was so cold. And here'd come a mouse crawling in. You couldn't leave any food on the counter to thaw or anything because the mice would get it. And I'd whack them with the broom. I got pretty good at annihilating mice with the broom. This was in Iowa and Ames, Iowa. Iowa State University. And I graduated before he was done. Did some substitute teaching there. And then we moved to Hamel. We live in Fairfield, Ohio, which is kind of a suburb of Hamilton, Ohio. Very industrial town. A Fisher body and Masler. Say about sixty thousand population. He worked for Procter & Gamble as a research chemist. And I, he is, yeah, and I taught in two different middle schools in Hamilton, Ohio. So talk about home visits. We were still required to make those. And the first high school, it was middle school, I taught at, we joked it's not the best part of town. And well, I hated it. But on the way to school, if the trains were going and I had to stop at the railroad tracks and all these kids were looking at me, I thought they would push me under the, into the train. Wasn't quite that bad. But we joked about our home visits. That was where we returned all the knives and the guns that we had confiscated from our students during the year. Which wasn't really true. No, I drove. I drove. But it was a rough school, rough part of town. And the next year I went to the, we call it the country club junior high. It was a different area of town, totally. And I had, I love to sew and I had a clothing class. And I'm kind of a perfectionist, but I guess I am a perfectionist.

But anyway, one little gal, she had, they all, they were making was a simple A-line dress, but had a patch pocket on it. And she had taken that pocket back off so many times, it's practically a hole there. And her mother came for a conference and she said, "Can't you just give her a D?" She said, she said, she, she doesn't really ever want to sew. I thought, well, no wonder, after me making her take that pocket off all those times. But anyway, that was my first teaching experiences. Seventh, eighth, and ninth, yes. And our salaries were so good. My first teaching salary, I believe, was $5,700 a year. Sure. But that was another reason my dad had encouraged me to be a teacher, because he thought they made good money. So it's relative, I'm sure. But I did, I did enjoy my students. I loved what I taught very much. And I was out of teaching for 16 years when we had our first child.

Why? Do I, I had a good job and I stayed. I was a full-time homemaker, stayed with my kids for 16 years. And somewhere there, at 16 years, Dwight decided it was time for a career change. And he decided to move back to Missouri and go to law school at Wash U. And so we bought a place here. His mother was not that well, was nice to be around her for the last two years of her life. And he drove back and forth every day to school. And that was to me quite a ordeal. Where we live now, which is 72 East on 212, yeah, it was pretty good drive for him. But so you were in Ohio in the early 70s. How long did you stay up? You said Ohio. How long did you stay up there? 18 years. Then you came here. Yes. Went from Iowa State, he took a job with Procter and Gamble and we moved to Ohio. We actually lived in Indiana, just maybe one, was far as from here to the post office in, to Indiana. It was a wonderful community that we lived in, was rural farming community. It's where our kids went to school, Michael through fifth grade. And then we moved back here. Was it an adjustment then? I was horrible. Jonathan, our youngest, was not well at all. He had had serious medical problems. And I really did not want to leave our doctors in Cincinnati, our supportive church, and the neighbors. I mean, they were, they were wonderful. I stayed in the hospital with John and, you know, they came in and fed the other kids and got him off school and cleaned my oven and all that horrible, you know, the daily stuff. So I was not really sure it was the right thing to do. But whether thou goest, I will go. And I've not regretted it at all. When John went to kindergarten, our youngest one, then I started looking. There was an ad in the DN for a part-time aid at Mark One. And John's kindergarten was half-day. And so I got that job. I was a remedial reading aid. I loved it. No, I did, I did take classes. To the superintendent there at Marquand.

Mr. Deardorff, he was great. 86, probably 85, 86. But I was a remedial reading aid and he looked at my college hours and said, "You know, you have enough hours, you could teach English. They needed an English teacher." And so I went ahead and took two English courses. They weren't online back in those days. I think I took tests at the extension office or something. But anyway, you could do your work at home and and got my English certification. But I taught sixth, no, seventh, eighth, and ninth grade English at Mark One. One year. And then the home ec opening came available here and I applied for that.

Before that though, I took my resume and I went to all the school districts I thought were in drivable distance and applied for a job. Ask if they had any openings. And when I went into West County, I asked to see the superintendent. Everywhere I went, why, he was available. And I walked in the door and I was so surprised and I said, "Well, Mr. Lynch, I don't know if you remember me or not." He said, "If you're not Sharon Upchurch, you're her twin sister." He was my freshman science teacher. Now that the old high school in Lutesville, he taught in this basement room that was just awful. And he was, oh, he was gruff and he wasn't much older than we were, just right out of college. And we had to do an insect collection. And friend of mine and I went all out, you know. She was as wanted to be as good a student as I did. We had hundreds of bugs, all labeled, and you know, we got the same grade as somebody who got, you know, like 25. And I made the mistake of saying to him, "Well, how come so-and-so got an A for that many bugs?" Oh, he jumped down. "Why, you think you should get credit for everything you do?" But I've stayed friends with his wife. He's passed away now, but I do know her. She taught at North County for years. And they were, they went on. We had senior trips back in those days. I worked all year to earn money. I sold the ice cream bars after school every day till the late buses came. But anyway, they went with us. They were, they were good, good people.

I think it's interesting that you were out of teaching for 16 years and hoops to jump through with recertification. Yeah, it's really difficult. In the past 10 years, there was talk about whether a teacher could even keep one's job if the kids didn't perform well on a standardized test. Well, in my day, they gave lifetime certificates. And mine was, you know, far seven through 12. And they've broken up those certifications into, you can only be certified for 9 through 12 or different things. And you had to renew it every so often. Of course, I had an Ohio teaching certificate. Also had an Indiana one because I had done a little teeny bit of substitute teaching there. And so I don't know. I don't think was any problem. I just applied for Missouri when and I got it. Now, I had to do the course work to get certified to teach English and I did do that. But the home ec lifetime, I had that. But I never got my master's. I always said I would when our youngest graduated. And I wish I probably don't. But I would have made more salary and had a larger retirement if I had gotten that. But never did seem like was always too busy.

So how long did you teach them from getting back into it? When did you retire? 11 years ago. So I think total I taught 23 years. And did you get to keep your years from other states? I bought it from Ohio. Stupidly, I always told every teacher never take your retirement out. Because I had only talked two years in Ohio. And and I thought, well, that money's just, you know, how much was it? I only made six thousand and I think my second year, you know. And and then when I started planning for retirement, I decided to buy those years back. And I don't mind to tell you, it cost me seventeen thousand dollars to buy those two years of teaching credit back. So I was gambling that I live long enough to draw enough retirement to have made that a smart move.

They say that the money that you use to buy them back will provide a higher interest rate than a savings account.

That's true absolutely true.

Missouri has one of the very best teacher retirement systems and it's designed so that you have to be a committed teacher. Otherwise, you're gonna look after that first couple of paychecks and say, "I'm not taking that much out every time for retirement. Can't afford that. Can't pay off my loans." So on and so. It's designed for a committed teaching career, really. If you stick it out, then you'll have a good retirement.

So what is it been like, you know, coming back here, being here? Well, at first, I, I loved the enough being anonymous. I could go to Walmart, just run up to Walmart, and nobody knew who I was. I didn't have to worry about putting on a clean shirt or whatever. When you came back from Ohio? Yeah, people knew Dwight, but I grew up in Belanger County, so they did not know me. But been church has always been a big part of our lives and so you make friends. And then students and parents you meet and your kids' friends and their parents. And we lost that soon, lost that. Yeah, so I had to think a little more about throwing something on, run up to Walmart. But, but it was really nice to, to be close to family again. We maintained a pretty close bond for being that far away.

Dwight want had always wanted to be a pilot and so he took flying lessons and we bought a little plane and we came back and forth pretty often to visit our families. And then he encouraged me to get my license as a safety thing and I did. Yeah, and and so we, we did maintain a pretty close family relationship even being that far away. Oh yeah, we had some quite good adventures. We've laughed several times about when you're young. Because we'd head home and run into a line of thunderstorms, bad weather, and land at an airport. Didn't get any better. There's at least two or three times that we slept on the chairs in the airport terminal. I mean, it's a little bitty airport. Yeah, I was trying to think, we might have had Michael once, our oldest. And we usually stopped and refueled over at Carbondale on the way in. After there, Mr. Crater down it at Loose will go up Marble Hill now became a steel chainsaw, steel distributor, and he flew a little bit larger plane and they built a runway down there. So that was more convenient for my parents. But we didn't land there as much. Shorter runway, kind of in the valley. No phone there. So we had to circle around mom and dad's house till she came out, way best. She knew she was supposed to come pick us up. But I did fly by myself and with the kids some. And once took my mother down to Steel, Missouri, to visit her sister when I was here. And that was easy, flat country flying over. Easy to find your landmarks. Took the kids and a babysitter when we live in Indiana. Just the babysitter and three kids. And we went to the World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. And a little bit scary. Great experience. We went, Dwight and I went, a lot of places. Some of it was kind of scary. But I remember someplace in Tennessee, we landed it down in the mountains around. And it's warm enough that I was really worried that we were going to get enough altitude to get high enough to get out of that airport. And once I remember we went back to Iowa more than once to visit friends. And I remember over Illinois, it was quite thunderstorm development day. And you get caught in an updraft, you, no matter what you did, you were going up. And that was very scary to me. And the corn shucks were flying around out in the air. Like, is this going to turn into a tornado or what? So that was a little bit, a little bit frightening, I thought.

This is very revelatory.

So do you still fly?

No, we moved here and Dwight went back to school, see. And I watched you to be a lawyer. And so we sold the plane. He had a little Porsche car that he sold. He loved that little car. And we sold all our Procter & Gamble stock. And and were okay until he got through school and John got in school and I went back to work. So that was what we decided to do.

Did you say, I don't think you did?

What prompted him to leave the career in chemistry and go into VOA?

Short interest span, I don't know. I think he liked being a research chemist. He had several patents and originally he thought he wanted to be a patent lawyer. I think he just got an itch to do something different. At one time, Dwight operated a little newspaper here in town. It was another itch he scratched. The Ozark Gazette. And he loved doing that. I don't know how he had time, but he loved doing that. And so he's had other other ventures too, besides just being a chemist and being a lawyer.

One question I have, so here we are, it's 2019, you're not teaching. What do you have any grandkids?

We have four.

Are they all still in the area?

No, our older son lives here. Might know, he's the doctor here in town. And his, he has two girls. And the oldest one is sophomore in college. The youngest one's a junior here in high school. Our daughter is a middle child and she lives in Overland Park, which is Kansas City area. And she is an attorney. And they have two little boys, not that little, 12 and 9. Just entertained them for a week last week. Great fun. We don't see them as often, of course. And John's our youngest. And I'm sure you've met him. He's very social person. Either a historical society or programs here at the library or bell ringing season. He is the number one bell ringer for Fredericktown Salvation Army. And he has some little enterprises of his own. Raises miniature horses. He has chickens. He raises pumpkins. He has always some enterprise going. Just thinking about technology and the internet and do you use those things? Like where do you fall and all that? I'm guessing as a teacher you're probably more up-to-date than a pilot.

That didn't seem to be that technical back then. I did get my instrument rating, which was, you know, flying without being able to see. But I do use technology. I like email. I use that to keep up with friends and family that are scattered. I google lots of things and look up, how do you, how do you grow a peach tree from a peach seed, that kind of thing. No, I, I think Facebook is evil. I'm sorry. I think it's a little dangers. My husband is completely computer savvy. And when John and I can't figure out something or fix something we've messed up, well, he can always do that. But he uses it all the time with work. And and if all else fails, the grandkids can usually fix it for you. But I'm not, if to me it is a concern, like just having had the grandsons, how dependent or how addicted they are to devices. And I think back to the summers on the front porch, family strong family ties there. And maybe that the media today will not influence that. I don't know. But it is a big change that I see from communicating face to face, enjoying listening to other people's stories and telling your own. And doing it in little, you know, see you know letters. And I like the boys. I like the faces. So I use it. I order things from Amazon too. And I, you know. But what sounds like you have a healthier relationship. You're using it as a tool as opposed to, I think for a lot of people, especially maybe younger generations, it's not just a tool that they use to enhance their life. It's sort of the focus, you know. The screen. And like you said, the screen is always there. You haven't achieved a healthy balance, maybe. Yeah, well, but that's a positive way to describe that. I think an accurate way to describe that. I know my last year teaching, we went to a computerized grading system. Every grade had to be entered. And of course then it gave you the grade, the end. And it was really challenging for me. I wish, yeah, and I wished I had retired one year sooner. But thanks to two or three young men teachers, we had math. They were math teachers. They could fix things that I messed up or find me what I was looking for. And I survived. I'm sure it's. But I kept a grade book too, which some people didn't. But it might have been. But I did make mistakes, you know, in entering something in both, in a grade book. And I would first admit that to a parent. They said, "how did my kid get this?"

Well, let's figure it out. And you know, I make mistakes and so they show up both ways. But there are ways to get around systems. Some teachers were very clever. You wish you to know that. Well, what's an A? So many points, you just enter that there. They go, you see, there you go. And they're done. Oh, I'm telling tales. Yeah, I'll be in trouble. Well, I have to say that when I was learning, great, quick to female teachers. That's neat. Yeah, so to give credit, right. Part of it is an interest and a mindset. And I really don't like spending a lot of time on the computer. It's not my favorite thing to do. I like it in my hand. I've got a Kindle and I rarely use it. Sometimes I do. But I've got my book in my head. And I love this library. I usually check out three. I go for the newer. I read a lot of the older books. But go for the newer books. And and some of them I'll say, nah, not for me. Or I'll finish it, but. And then some of them are just marvelous. And I just enjoy the talent, the skill of a writer to develop their characters or to weave their their story together. So interestedly. And I think this library is marvelous.

And I guess you use libraries in all places.

Yes, of course, in college had to. And then where we lived in Ohio, we lived close to a very small town. It was nine miles to the closest. But it was probably about the size of Fredericktown. But had a good little library. We used it.

So being back here, Madison County, and every time, you like, you like this. You still enjoy living in a small.

I do. It's intimidating for me to drive in St. Louis. The traffic, you know, I'm just. I'd do it when I have to. Well, airports today have become a little complicated too. You have to get there two hours early and then you got these long line. You know, it's not so fun as it used to be there. But I like, I like where we live. I get up every morning and and I'm thankful for where we live. For the beauty of the trees and and you know, flowers. And I grow a big garden. And for the productivity of the soil. All the things that that we have around us. And very, very thankful for that. And I'll see you next time.