*The page above is from a scrapbook I am making for my Grandma Alma-this photo above and the photo at the end were taken at a wedding she went to with my Grandpa Ed. The stories below were semi-secretly recorded and transcribed word for word by me, so these are the words of Alma Leona (Popp) Lech. Enjoy!
Hot Springs Hotel! …And we went in a Brand New Chevy Truck, all us kids, in the back, Dad put a mattress in the back…and on the way there, we were picking up beautiful stones in the mountains, you know, pretty things to pick up, and laid them in the truck. And coming home, we left on a real cloudy morning, and some elderly woman ran into us. She was going right we were going left, and we plowed…we slammed into one another. Well, nobody was seriously hurt. My Mom hurt her knee pretty bad. I was just shocked…I was a little kid. They took us back to our Hot Springs Hotel, it was outside of Hot Springs . We stayed there for weeks until the case was settled. My two brothers hitchhiked home to Kansas , so they might be able to sell something in Dad’s shoe shop, you know, or whatever they had. And, um, we had a blast. I met two other nice girls, and my Dad…we didn’t have any money, my Dad would…I used a lot of bobby pins, in those days, to curl my hair, and when he was walking around town, or the swimming pool, if he saw a bobby pin, he’d bring it home to me, so I could fix my hair. He was a real loving Dad. And…got to know these girls, and one night, we got permission from my parents to go downtown to this Indian Jamboree they were having, you know, Indians were always fascinating. So many Indians from South Dakota …real, they were costumed and everything. And…was this big hall where they had food and drinks and dancing, I was fascinated by all this cause I’d never been on a dance floor. I don’t know if I was twelve, no, I was older than that, I think I was thirteen. Yeah, and, those girls promised Dad they’d have me home by a certain time. Well, they didn’t know my Dad. We didn’t get home at eleven I think it was closer to twelve, and he’s sitting out in front of the hotel room on a bench, and he grounded me for a week. And this girl just pleaded,”Dad, it was my fault, I’m the one that talked her into staying downtown.” He wouldn’t give up. Anyway, it worked out alright, but he was strict, you said you were gonna be home you better be home. And, the swimming pool, it was the Hot Springs Pool. And Richard was a little boy, eighteen months old. Ginny wasn’t even born. And he learned to swim, like a fish. He…they’d take him up in the tower, and jump…there was always somebody down there to catch him, he couldn’t drown. And he loved it, he just loved it. He was a swimmer from then on. And, inside they had an indoor pool. It was open up to the outside. And I couldn’t swim, I was never a good swimmer. My Dad, one night, I wanted~I was so proud, I’d been practicing during the day. I wanted to show him how good I could swim, I could swim across the pool. So, he’s on one end waiting for me and I’m over here. And I start across. And I look up, he’s looking…panic! “ Alma ’s going down, she’s going down!” I never did learn to swim, never did, no, never did. Can you swim? It’s funny, isn’t it? My Mother couldn’t swim either. All my brothers and sisters are good swimmers, but me. I don’t know why. My Dad was a good swimmer, but my Mom, she just… And then, Neva …she met a cute little boy, little romance, little kids…he took us, he wanted us to meet his Mother, to a house on a hill, they lived up in the house. His mother was a real modern woman, and my Mother was old~fashioned, and so I knew they weren’t gonna hit it off. They were fine, but nothing came of it. Anyway, years later, they had carved, Neva and this little boy had carved their initials in the stone of the pool. And, years later, they came to Kansas , and she was so disappointed, cause he was so cute as a little boy and I guess he was still nice looking but wasn’t that cute anymore. And I guess they corresponded for awhile. So when she and Vernie went back there, years later, she looked for those initials and she saw them. She found the initials. So, finally, when we got out of there, I think I was a sophomore in high school, I must have been fourteen or fifteen. We got back to Kansas and I had to go back to school. That was hard, my brothers hadn’t done too great and getting any money together. I felt sorry for them anyway. Two young kids hitchhiking home, and…oh, in those days, everybody did it. In those days, a bum would come to your door, you’d call him a bum, because they’d ride the rails, they’d hop the cars, railroad cars, and they’d just look for work. And so they’d knock at the back door and Mom would answer…”If you have any work to be done I would love to do it for a meal.” So she’d have them chop some wood or something that had to be done out in the yard. She’d fix them a meal. But, these days, you don’t open your door to strangers, it’s a different world. There’s not that trust because of the weird ones that run around.
