Anne’s Hearing and Education– by Louise

My Mama had ear infections, before she went to school. She was the first child in her family. All the others had ear problems too, hers were worse. Eighteen years before she was born, her Fathers five year old brother, Alex, he died with a spasm because his fever went to high--from the ear ache. They had no medicine for it ; they didn't even have aspirin then.

She went through the seventh grade, because her Father was a school trustee. He had hired all her schoolteachers. They let her set on the front seat and helped her hear.

Aunt Jennie, her dad's sister, asked her to stay with them, in Palo Pinto and go to school, the eighth and ninth grade. Her Uncle Aaron was the sheriff, so teachers were partial to her there.

She started to high school in Mineral Wells and was going to live with her grandparents who were raising a granddaughter that was her age. She set down on the front seat. Her teacher set her on the back and she couldn't hear.

The teacher asked her a question. She couldn't hear. Another student told the teacher that Anne didn't even know that she was talking to her. The school immediately wrote her Father that she was deaf and couldn't go to school.

I was 18 months old when we moved New Mexico. Our homestead was 8 miles south of Corona. Daddy worked on the big TOT ranch for a few months. It adjoined our land. We lived in a cute little house on the ranch. Mama said that my first little 'stunt' was to bow my head, over and over --mocking the woodpecker that was working outside my window.

I soon learned to tell Mama when someone was at the door of the log cabin that we built in that pine forest. And I learned to talk loud. I pulled on her coat tail toward the back door or the front door.

The first good hearing aids come out. I was 18. I paid $59.00 for her first one. I happen to still have the receipt. I paid $9 a month on it and I was making $21 every two weeks.

She wore one until she died. Each one was progressively more expensive, and smaller and harder for her aging fingers to adjust them. At the nursing home, the aids would always pop in a new battery. Whether it was needed or not.