My Best Friend
My best friend during my growing up years was Sylva. She was an only child and always fit in well with all the girls in our family. In fact, Mother often called her her eighth daughter. When she cut hair, she cut Sylva's along with all the rest. Sylva was in my grade in school, so we spent much time together.
During the summer, she would come over quite often and we would get into all sorts of deviltry. One afternoon we crawled into all kinds of places in our barns and sheds where I had never been before. This was pretty exciting for me. We had a loft above one of our log barns where the cats always had their kittens. There was no entrance to this loft except through the spaces between the logs. We were pretty curious, so we crawled into the loft and found nothing but straw spread over the floor, no doubt for insulation for the barn below. We just barely fit through the space between the logs. It would have been a sorry day for us if we had gotten stuck up there. Sometimes we would crawl up onto the barn roof and peek over the top. Mother and Dad must have known we were doing that as we have pictures to prove it.
One afternoon we walked down the road to the gravel pit that was on our land. It was not being used and water had collected in it. We stopped and puddled in the water awhile and caught some pollywogs. Having no container to put them in, we filled our pockets. Later when we walked home, we took them from our pockets one by one and "popped" them. This was not a nice thing to do and except for the fact that kids do all sorts of things, I don't know what ever made us do something like that.
Sometimes I would go to Sylva's house and stay overnight with her. I suppose the reason she never stayed at our house was because there wasn't room. We already slept three in a bed. She lived in a small log house down by the river, and I was always fascinated by it. The house is still there, but is not being used. Many pleasant memories are associated with it.
To this day, Sylva is still my best friend. Besides going to grade school together, we attended Jr. High and Normal School
together. Later we taught together in the same school for eleven years. Since retirement, we have gone on many trips
together. For the past several years, we have gotten together once a week to bowl and have lunch together, and we always
look forward to seeing each other.
"True friends are like diamonds
Precious and rare.
False ones like autumn leaves,
Found everywhere."