Donna also told David that first grade was much harder than kindergarten, a warning that she continued to give him each year about each successive grade, until he completely stopped believing everything she said sometime around sixth grade. David did, of course, hear from his first and second grade teachers that Donna had been a very good student and she expected him to do as well.
The first winter back in Miles City seemed especially cold, mainly because the trailer house did not have much in the way of insulation and only a small gas furnace for heat. Most of the cars and trucks had to be plugged-in, an electric heating rod placed in the radiator, to make sure that they would start in the morning. Even then, the motors needed to run for five to ten minutes before the defroster would throw enough heat to keep the windows clear.
Everyone was happy when the spring thaw came, and the family moved back into the house on South Jordan. Most of the caravan that came back from Salt Lake was parked along Brisben. Dad probably bought the house because of the corner lot and the abundant parking space.
About this time. Mom and Dad bought matching two-tone 1957 Fairlane 500’s, matching that is except for one minor detail, perhaps the inspiration for one of Dad’s shaggy dog Pat and Mike jokes. Pat and Mike, as Dad would tell it, were two happy Irishmen and fond of their whiskey. Pat and Mike, like Dick and his brother Jakie, appreciated good horses. They bought two quarter horse colts foaled by the same mare with identical conformation: same number of hands in height, same across the withers, same way of tossing their mane and even clocked the same time in the barrel race at the rodeo. This led to endless arguments between Pat and Mike about which horse belonged to which one. This went on for a number of years, but the dispute was finally settled when a child heard them arguing and said, “Gee, isn’t one black and the other white?” So Dad’s car was two-tone gold and Mom’s two-tone coffee brown.
Dad parked the trailer house behind the garage alongside the alley, on call for a future undesignated assignment. It was occasionally pressed into temporary use as a guest quarters and sometimes as a play house. During one summer, one or more of the girls put on a neighborhood carnival in the backyard, using the clothesline that was built with some industrial strength steel, to make booths by draping sheets and blankets across the five or six wires.
Virginia and Pat seemed to be involved in one fun thing after another. They rented horses and sometimes rode them back from the stables and around the neighborhood. Virginia took up water skiing at a small ski lake near the city park on the banks of the Tongue River, next to the swimming hole, a place forever linked to the song “Yellow Polka Dot Bikini,” though none one of the girls ever wore one, probably Mom’s decision. Virginia and Pat both lived at the ice rink in the winter. The city flooded the high school football field and built a bonfire and warming house at one end. Virginia and Pat both took up baton twirling, but just for the fun of it. They both new most of the popular dances.
Dad, when he wanted to be, made a better than average ballroom and barn floor dancer. He may have taught the girls a thing or two, but I doubt that he cared much for the fast dances. Occasionally, the girls would get Mom and Dad to demonstrate one of the dances they did growing up, the Chicken Scratch for example, which would get them howling with laughter. Donna began ballet classes and started to learn to play the clarinet on a wooden instrument handed down from Terry.
Virginia and Pat had the usual baby-sitting jobs, but Donna and David liked it best when one or the other was the sitter-in-charge when Mom and Dad went out. When very young, David and Donna both have distinct memories of the blanket toss game, and when a bit older, various tricks that involved flipping head over heels when launched from the legs of an older sibling or balancing when standing on their knees or a backwards somersault by being pulled under and through their legs, the one trick that Dad introduced to the repertoire. These same tricks have since passed through several more generations of the clan.
Pat began to show a talent for drawing and painting. She painted a rendition of Warner Sallman's Head of Christ, voted picture of the month by her fellow art classmates and selected to appear in the school paper. She also developed a hand for calligraphy using special pens and India ink. For one high school project, she drew a family tree and entered the ancestral names in her beautiful calligraphy. Pat also liked to do paint-by-number, but the result looked more like a real painting than anything anyone else did. She probably began to improvise and paint outside the lines and ignore the numbers, a characteristic thing for a Holzworth to do.
During two summers, Virginia went to Wasta, South Dakota to stay with Aunt Lucille, Uncle Richard and their daughter Jane. Virginia remembers the ride back from the second trip, alone with Dad, as a special time when she had his undivided attention, and also a chance to do a good deal of driving, but almost never fast enough to suit Dad. In those days, there were no posted speed limits on most Montana highways. If the car could do 120, Dad did 120.
Lucille, Richard and Jane also came to visit in Miles City. David remembers the Cadillac they owned because of the taillight that opened to reveal the spout for the gas tank. Lucille also told David the story of David and Goliath and taught him a song to go along with the story, both staying with him his entire life:
Only a boy named David
Only a little sling
Only a boy named David
But he could pray and sing
Only a boy named David
Only a rippling brook
Only a boy named David
But five little stones he took.
And one little stone went in the sling
And the sling went round and round
And one little stone went in the sling
And the sling went round and round
And round and round
And round and round
And round and round and round
And one little stone went up in the air
And the giant came tumbling down.
Mrs. Hamlet had some doubts about whether David was ready for first grade in the fall of 1957 so Doris waited until the fall of 1958 to enroll him, with the consequence that he almost always the oldest child in her class. Mom did not like always being the youngest in her class. Donna also told David that first grade was much harder than kindergarten, a warning that she continued to give him each successive year, until he completely stopped believing anything she said sometime around sixth grade. David did, of course, hear from his first grade teacher, Mrs. Click, that Donna had been a very good student and she expected him to do as well.
For the next ten years or so, the song inspired David to build a variety of slingshots, miniature catapults and rubber-band guns. He once manufactured something akin to the Biblical device for all ten members of a neighborhood club in Helena when he was twelve or so. They got pretty good with distance, launching silver dollar size stones about 75 yards or more. The problem was accuracy and that depended on knowing exactly when to let go of one of the two strings in order to direct the missile to the right target. The devices were decommissioned after an errant stone went through a window at a small hotel near the County Courthouse. The club did, however, spend the next two weeks collecting pop and beer bottles to turn in at the rate of two to five cents per bottle to pay for the window, about thirty dollars worth of effort. The owner was dumbfounded and pleased when the club showed up as a group to pay for the damage. His two sons were finally allowed to join the club and play with the rest of the neighborhood gang.
Somewhere along the way, David realized that the story and the song might have been about more than a sling … but it is still also about a sling, which David recently confirmed on a trip to Florence, Italy.
Aunt Lucille gave other encouraging gifts throughout the years – a book about rockets, a game with dice based on set theory and a simple algorithmic device that demonstrated a computer’s use of binary functions. These all ended-up as part of school projects or games that the kids devised on their own.
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