Hey, it's March already! How fast time seems to be going these days. Do you suppose it's because I'm getting older or are the days really getting shorter? Maybe there are just so many more things to do . I love living in the country, everything is slower paced here, but there is still plenty to keep me busy. I used to look back on the stories my grandmother told me about life in early Arizona and think those must have been lazy, easy days. But perhaps not, or at any rate, not for her parents.
My grandmother, Ethel H. Stewart, lived on a homestead in String Town, (which was a little community strung along a road 1 mile West of the main town of Mesa, Arizona. It was later named Alma School Road after they built the school on it.) They built Mesa on the dry, hot desert, but they dug canals to bring water from the Salt River which was only a mile or so to their North, and planted orchards and vineyards and wheat fields and gardens, and it became a lovely place.
Ethel and her sister made a playhouse under a big old apple tree in their back yard. They would sweep and clean and play house. Over against the the tree trunk stood their stove, and on the other side were dolls beds and rocking chairs with a little table near-by so they could cut out pictures and make scrap books or sew dresses for their dolls. It was HOT on the desert, especially in the summer, but with lush green grass for their carpet and thick leaves above to shield the sun that little play house was perhaps the coolest place on the farm.
On baking days their mama would give them some dough, which they rolled out and cut into little biscuits. When the dough was raised they would pop it into the oven to bake. In their little cupboard they kept a jar of honey, so when the biscuits were done they could have a feast! Sometimes there were also big juicy bunches of grapes picked from the nearby vineyard or figs and plums and almonds from the trees in their back yard. Old Rover, their dog, would wake up from his nap and join them any time there was something good to eat.
Over on the shady side of the apple tree, where the limbs hung low, was a cemetery with little rows of head stones all neatly laid out. There was poor Tweedles, the canary, whose cage was left on the table one night. Snowball, their old mother cat, came looking for a juicy morsel for her kittens. She couldn't pull Tweedles out of the cage, but his feathers were nearly all pulled off. How sad they were to loose the pretty songbird. Then there was Spot, who got run over, and Rover that got the gopher poison, and Ethel's dolly, Sally Jane, who tumbled out of the tree and broke her head. It was so sad, but it helped to have them near so they could be remembered.
Ethel and her sister would play outside all day until their mama came to the door and called, "Girls! I need you, come quickly!" Maybe mama would be sewing carpet rags and they could treadle the machine for her, or maybe it was time for papa to come home and they needed to set the table for supper. Sometimes in the evening he would read aloud from historical novels about Pocahontas and John Smith or the Indians showing the pilgrims how to plant corn. The girls loved that! So they would quickly put away their things, say good by to their little play house, and scamper in to see what mama needed.
(taken from Ethel H. Stewart's story, Play House Under the Apple Tree)
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