An early memory

One of my first memories as a little girl happened when I was about three years old.  We lived at Riverbow at the time.  This house had been built in the early 1800's and had been in the family for many generations.  (One day I was at the Royalton Town Clerk's Office looking at the deeds and before I had to stop for the day, I found deeds going back to 1832.  There were more to go but I did not then have the time, nor have I done that since. I should start a list of undone things that would be important to do...)

Riverbow sits right on Route 110 and is a house with a lovely front porch and a marvelous back porch overlooking the First Branch and the field where the Indians first began their "impredations" in October 1780 when the Burning of Royalton took place.  For many years of my childhood that large field on our side of the river was a huge corn field which lent itself to hours of fun and hide and seek...though the leaf cuts always eventually pulled us back up to the house and safety.  Other years had the corn piece turn into a hayfield. I remember Daddy cutting a couple of swaths around the entire outer circumference of the field and we kids running around it. I wish I had kept up that running.  My physical condition would be entirely different today.

So, on to the story of the day...the front porch where our story starts had a wonderful railing around it.  It was a white solid upright railing with a horizontal green 2 by 6 piece on top.  It was a perfect place to sit.  On the day I remember, it was a great place for Lester and Everett to climb up on and jump to the ground three feet below.  They did this many times and as many times tried to talk me into climbing and jumping with them.  I did not want to, being gutless even then, but eventually and after long pleading peer pressure I climbed up onto the top of the railing at the corner where the upright post held up the roof and, holding hard onto the post, I  finally leaped to the ground.

Big mistake!  By holding onto the post I was in the perfect position to land, not on the ground, but on the jagged rain downspout, which is what I did, ripping a gash in my three-year-old leg.  As luck would have it, Mother and Daddy were gone that day to an all-day Farm Bureau meeting so the babysitter just put a large band-aid over the injury.  When Mother and Daddy came home late that afternoon the babysitter told them that I had had a little cut on my leg when jumping off the porch and that they might want to look at it.

Mother picked me up and placed me on the blue linoleum counter top beside the cast iron kitchen one-bowl sink.  When she took the band-aid off, I think she must have shuddered because what she and I saw was that the edges of the cut had curled back, revealing the inner flesh which had a greenish cast to it.  She immediately called Dr. Guilmette and took me to Randolph Hospital where he met us and cleaned the wound then stitched it up.  I remember him giving me some little round brownish pills, which were probably vitamins, but I felt like a big girl because he gave the pills to me.

Another thing I remember from that occasion was that he told Mother that, because of the large scar that was going to occur, when I wanted to be a majorette I would need to come back and have plastic surgery to cover the three-inch scar.  Well, I never was a majorette so that did not happen.  I did play the drums in the band though and marched along with the majorettes.  The scar remains to this day, ornamenting my right leg with a large scar about three inches long and half or three-quarters of an inch across.  Whenever I manage to get a puncture on that site the blood that comes out seems to be thick and black...but that has not happened in quite a long time.