Dr. Slonaker was married to my father’s first cousin.  This was Bess Medbourn.  Aunt Bess had gone to DePauw with my Aunt Myrtle and Minnie Shilling Osborn.  They were known as the three musketeers.  Anyway, Bess Slonaker had studied elocution there, which was popular at that time.  She offered to give Helen Medbourn and me lessons.  She taught us to speak our pieces with expression, how to talk out front and how to curtsey when our reading was over.  I enjoyed the lessons and gave a number of readings at various churches and so forth.  One summer day there was a big picnic at the Park and afterward entertainment.  I had a poem of several verses to recite and had been well drilled by Aunt Bess and my Mother.  Close by was the bathhouse and much activity was going on there with bathers running out to the lake and jumping in the water.  I was so busy watching the bathers that when my turn came, I stood up and began to recite the last verse first.  My Mother was so embarrassed, but I didn’t notice at all, just went on through the poem and ended up repeating the last verse again.  I heard plenty about that afterward, but maybe the listeners thought that it was the way it was meant to be.  I’ll never know!
I remember the first street carnival to come to Culver.  The Main Street was closed from the Hardware corner to the Methodist Church corner, a distance of two blocks.  The Merry Go Round was at the south end and the Ferris wheel at the north end.  In between were many games of chance and eating booths.  The whole town was so busy all week long.  I had saved pennies and nickels for a long time in my little leather pocketbook.  Then just at the start of the carnival I lost it.  I was so sad thinking of all those merry go rides that I would miss.  The men who worked in our grocery took up a collection for me so I did not miss out after all.

There was one booth with a barrel that you threw baseballs into it.  If the ball rolled out a hole that was in one side, a kewpie doll would be awarded.  The fellows in the store put up a practice barrel in the back room.  When they got real good they took turns going out and winning a doll.  By the end of the week they had the top shelves in the store al lined up with kewpie dolls.