Viewing page 35 of 96

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

- 35 -

on my night-table and reading it is a relief from the material one feels compelled to read.

But at eleven, after Sunday School, Mother would gather us up for the regular church service. (My father attended church only on some special occasions.) Invariably, she seated the four of us on a bench against the wall where she could detect the first signs of wriggling and when my brothers surreptitiously began punching each other.  The sermons seemed interminable.  In those days, it took a long time for a clergyman to put the Devil to flight.  Ours would be barely warmed to his task by noon and we considered ourselves lucky if we were on the way home before one o'clock.  By that time, the bench had become hard as granite.

I took some comport, however, in the anticipation of our Sunday afternoon.  Frequently, we visited my father's parents on their ranch near Healdsburg, motoring there in our Rambler.  The old red Rambler had brass fittings and leather covers for the carbide headlamps.  the wheels were almost twice the size of those on cars today.  My mother