Froggies

Funny how your mind works . . . Wayne and I were sitting in front of the fireplace reading a wonderfully illustrated Planet Earth book when we came upon the picture of a frog. All of a sudden I was with Sue in the field out behind our house, looking at pollywogs in the water.

Our Greenville frogs were a nice, trim medium-sized frog, not toads like in Utah. I can't remember if they were greenish or brown, but we thought they were cute little fellows.

They had musical voices and we loved to hear them croak in the evening. A little ditch not more than a foot wide ran the length of the field, and in the spring and early summer when there was water in the ditch, that's where we'd find pollywogs.

It was amazing!! I suppose it was Daddy who told us what those wiggly little black things were in the water.

He said after they grew a bit, they would develop back legs, then front legs, finally losing their tail and becoming real little frogs. I remember finding one or two of those teeny cute little guys without their pollywog parts, but not too many.

Sue & I probably made enough noise that they heard us coming and hid before we got there.

When we did find adult frogs, we would look at them and play with them a while, and then put them in The Well on the side of the house, thinking they would be happy there where it was cool and somewhat damp. They could sing us to sleep at night.

Right: This is Daddy, some years later, in the driveway by our house. If you look just behind him on the wall, you will see the door to The Well, where our outside water faucet and hoses were kept. That's where we put the frogs.

Funny how those cute little froggies never liked to live very long in the gravel in The Well where it was dark and there were no bugs to eat, and where it was pretty dry under the house! But we thought we were benefactors to the froggie world by relocating them where we could hear their song. Besides, if they stayed out in the field, something was sure to get them, poor froggies! Never occurred to us that maybe if the froggies could avoid us, they might hide from other animals.

That field with its tall "braiding grass" (sedge) was a great place to play. We made grass huts by flattening down the grass, wove mats out of sedge and braided the "braiding grass" like boondoggle. And we got to watch the pollywogs in the early part of the warm season.

Left: The Field behind our house. We thought it was ours!

Pictures of Ann & Sue -- Top: taken in 1947. One of the first times Mom curled our hair. Usually it was braided . . . or not. I don't know that Mom allowed us to wander too far out of the yard at this age.

Bottom, right: I am guessing we are about 8 and 10 here. The blouse is one Mom bought so I could get my cast through the armhole when I broke my arm. These kids are probably the pollywog/ froggie hunters!