By Velma Rose Smith

On October 17, 1943, on my 43rd birthday, Dr. Neal left another package, a baby girl. She was beautiful. When you are picking roses and see a perfect bud, you say “Oh look” and that is what I said, “Oh look at this beautiful baby”. It took some discussion for a name. Most of us liked Winona, but Arnold liked Dianne better, but Mama finally got her Winona for a middle name.

Jay was 16, and he thought she was really nice. John Urban came over and Jay says, come in here John, I have something to show you. John came, stood at the door and Jay walked in and picked up the baby from the bed and put her in John’s arms. I wish I had a picture of John’s face. He didn’t dare move, he was scared, she looked so fragile to him. Then she made up a face. When she was tiny she would make up funny faces.

Papa Rose had his eye operation the year Dianne was two. They stayed with us that winter so he taught her from a milk advertisement book with nice big letters. She learned her A,B,C’s and to read several words. Also learned her nursery rhymes. She wasn’t lonely, we had a house full. There was Arnold and I, and Berwyn and Dianne in the downstairs bedroom, Basil on the couch, Mama and Papa in the big bedroom upstairs, and Jeannette and Bernadene in the back bedroom, Wayne and Laura in the boys room, Dee and Edward in the hall. Eileen and Phyllis in Wanda’s room. On weekends when Wanda and Merritt came home, Merritt slept in the big room with Mama and Papa. Eileen and Phyllis put a mattress on the parlor floor.

The next summer Dianne spent many hours riding on the tractor with her daddy. He fixed a place for her to sit, she would sleep there too.

She was such a happy baby, we never lacked a baby sitter. John and Kate Dean lived where Wayne and Laura live now. John would walk up and ask for Dianne, take her and a change of clothing and she was off for the day. They had raised a big family and now were alone. They had a high chair and had her stay for supper. Then on Sunday, in church, she would spy him in the back seat and he would hold her all through church.

As soon as she was old enough to go to the barn, she could find all kinds of places to play. She would swing on the pipe dividers, go under the cows, and also walked on their backs. The cows were used to her and Alice, who sometimes followed her.

She got burned badly when she tipped a dish of freshly poured chocolate pudding down over her chest. It was a bad burn, but it healed nicely.

She enjoyed entertaining the two baby nieces, Linda and Sandy, who arrived when she was three.

She was just a small girl when I promised Jeannette and Bernadene and her I would buy them new Easter dresses. We walked into Dunhams, and before any of us reached the dresses, she walked over, touched a very pretty pink dress and said “This is mine”. It was more than I had planned to pay, but who could say no. Jeannette and Bernadene picked theirs out – I think one was blue and one yellow.

When she was 5 or 6 years old, she was chosen from her class to be the mascot for the Senior Class at C.H.S.

She always liked to climb and do all kinds of tricks from the iron pipe bars, between two maple trees. She had a pair of small stilts that she learned to walk with, then a large pair, she would walk around with them, going up and down steps too. She had a hula hoop and learned to do that real good and, of course, she was good at jumping rope. We had an old Maxwell truck, and when she was nine she drove it to pick up corn ears through the corn field, here and at Jay’s. One day she drove our car home from Averys, to bring me home, when she was nine.

She went down with King Rose and spent a few weeks with Helen and daughter at Ocean Grove. She was quite sick for a few days, got better and finished out her vacation there. Every summer she and Berwyn spent a couple of weeks with Wanda. She took them to a Park there, they rode the rides, saw a big pond full of gold fish, went swimming and had a great time.

Dianne had a paper route for a long time. She had several pet pigeons, but one was very smart and followed her around the house. If she was in her bedroom upstairs, he would sit on her window sill. If she came downstairs to play the piano, he came around and sat on the window sill by the piano. He went with her on the paper route, flying ahead and sitting on the next mail box. He liked to light on people’s heads too and on the cows back when I was milking. I can’t remember too many adventures. Bill Smith took her to a circus in Elmira. Carollyn Williams and husband took Dianne and Berwyn to dinner at the Penn Wells. She went to Silver Lake to Church Camp.

She and I had a flower garden on the north side of the toilet. We planted a package of gourd seed and they took over.
We had gourds running all over the toilet, the gourds were every shape, really pretty.

One afternoon when she made her paper route, she opened the screen door of Elwood Robinson’s porch, their doberman dog grabbed her arm. Dr. Prevost took care of it, swearing at dogs all the time. Her arm was torn quite badly, but it finally healed.

Dianne was good at machinery, she cultivated corn with tractor. She mowed hay, raked and baled hay. She unloaded the bales in the barn. She had several bad experiences. One on Jay’s farm when she was driving the tractor with Berwyn loading bales, a pile of the bales slid off with him on them. He would have been run over, if a bale hadn’t held the load back for a minute or so. Also on Don Warren’s hill, she had to hold the brake on the tractor until Warren’s came to help her. The only time I ever saw her give up was when the binder wouldn’t tie the knots, she finally gave it a kick and walked to the house.

We got her an accordion and she became a good player. She also learned to play the piano. She was always active in the Church, Sunday School and M.Y.F. She helped with the outdoor Christmas Pageant for years.

She was an All American Farm Girl.