Making People

When Shirley and Frances were really young, they came to visit us once in a while. When they got a little older, their parents wouldn't bring them anywhere. They had to stay home, though they always brought Tommy. I loved it when Shirley came to our house. She was kind of a leader, and always had ideas, certainly a new and welcome change for us. Of course, we were always to play outside, in pretty much any kind of weather. One such time when they came to visit was when we lived on "the hill" now Brundige Road. The house is still there, but the old barn is not there anymore. Attached to the back of that old barn were 3 or 4 boxes built right up against the side of the barn, probably nesting or egg laying boxes for the free range chickens. Shirley had started school, so she had ideas. "Let's make people." She told us how, and we did it. We gathered up old corncobs, easy to find, rolled them in mud, also readily available, and, then the important part, we breathed on them, or Shirley did anyway, and placed them in the hens' boxes, which were probably not in use. I clearly remember my big worry----I was afraid that the new people who hatched out would be "big people." We, or at least I, thought we had enough big people, and they were boring because whenever big people came to visit, all they did was sit and talk. I thought my mother felt trapped at those times, though of course we never spoke of it. Years later, I brought this story up to Shirley. She had no memory of it, but laughed and said it was probably something she picked up in the Catholic school in Troy she'd attended then. She said the nuns there had all these strange stories from the Bible and such, and that was one way she interpreted them.