Ginger

  The first pet that I really remember was a cat by the name of Ginger. My friend Kathy had found this kitten that had been abandoned by the road. It was too young to have even been weaned. Her mother wouldn’t let her keep it so she brought it to me. My mother only let me keep it because she was sure it would die. I got a medicine dropper from my father and I hand fed that kitten several times a day until she was old enough to eat on her own. I named her Ginger because of her brown and orange coloring. Ginger thrived and we were devoted to each other. When she was about a year old, she had a litter of 3 kittens of her own. One looked like her so we named her Gingerale. The other 2 were black and white and we thought one was a male. Unfortunately, we were wrong about that. In another year, Ginger and her 3 offspring all had kittens the same week. There were 15 new kittens and four adults making a total of 19 cats. That was more than enough for my mother. When they were old enough, we had to give away all of the kittens, plus the other 3 adults. I could keep Ginger but she had to be spayed.

Down by the river

More about the Little River at Cherry Hospital:
I didn't go swimming in the river that often. It was too murky for me. I do remember swimming in it once and some black people came to the river for a baptism. We all got out of the river while the baptism was going on. I never had the nerve to walk across the dam in the summer when the water was low, either. I certainly watched other people do it. I could just see myself falling off onto the rocks below the dam.
The area by the river was a great place to play, explore and build forts. The boys had a rope that they used to swing over the water and drop down into the river, up above the dam. I don't think any girls ever participated in that activity. But I loved to go down by the river and wander around and daydream.  There was also a swinging bridge across the river, for use when the road was flooded out.  It was a rope swing with wooden planks.  One more thing I didn't have the nerve to do was cross that bridge.

Why I am not a dog person

 As a child, we supposedly had a dog named Costello but I don't really remember that dog.  What I do remember is  being bitten by a dog when I was not yet 10.  I lived on the grounds of a state mental hospital.  Our first house was in a row of five houses with a highway at one end and a river at the other.  I could go between the highway and the river, even down to the river, without asking permission.  But I was not allowed to go past the highway without first checking with my mother.  One day my brother, Bobby, was riding his bike with a friend, headed past the boundary.  I hopped on my bike and followed.  A dog belonging to a couple that worked at the hospital came out yapping and nipping.  Bobby started weaving the front wheel of his bike back and forth and he hit the dog with his bike.  The dog bit me.  I couldn't tell my mother because she would kill me for going somewhere without her permission.  (My mother was a fearsome creature).  I knew that the chances of getting rabies were slim, but still I worried.  Some of my father's medical books were in my bedroom, so I got one of them and looked up the symptoms of rabies.  Once the symptoms appear, you are a goner but, still, I thought I would rather take my chances with the rabies than with my mother.  I wore socks until the bite healed.  As luck would have it, I didn't get rabies but I developed a fear of dogs.  This fear was not helped by the paper route I sometimes helped with.  The hospital was rife with dogs, some of them wild and vicious.  I was frequently chased by snarling dogs while delivering papers.  I once took a side trip from my route up to the house at the bottom of the hill before O'Berry.  There was always a dog on the porch but he never bothered me - until that day.  I started to walk over to the fence to get a look at the pony.  That dog came off the porch and 2 more came from around the back of the house, all three intent on my destruction.  I jumped on my bike and pedaled as fast as I could.  That man didn't get another paper for a week.  And then there was the dog, a German shepherd rumored to be trained to kill, owned by the hospital superintendent.  Whenever I went to collect money for the paper, Dr. Vitols would be there straining to hold his killer of a dog.  So, now I have cats.  They never snarl at me.