Polly's Contraption

About the Book

I am Dale N. Sonney. I don’t know how I got the idea for Polly’s Contraption but maybe it was because when I was young I too had a problem. I went to Cook School, it being only one room. It was hot in the summer time and extremely cold in the winter. When I was in the eighth grade I started home one day and the polio bug bit me. It was a mile home and not being able to walk I crawled most of the way. When my arms got tired I would roll. I started yelling when I was near home and Ma heard me and found me. Getting a wheelbarrow she got me in it and pushed me home. I eventually overcome it and all the effects I carry with me are a leg some weaker and smaller. Polly too had a problem. She has a foot that turned club when she was in her junior year of high school. She was clever enough to continue playing her favorite game, volleyball by devising a contraption that allowed her to continue playing. The will to participate stays alive if the will is stronger than the problem. I hope all who read my tale will enjoy it and will understand that when your back is against a wall, BUILD A LADDER.

About the Author

I am seventy-six years old and still live in the house my parents bought in 1937. The house was in the country and run down but fixable. Pa brought home skids from General Electric Company that we tore apart and nailed to the outside. There was no water in the house; we carried it down from the well. A slop bucket was under the kitchen sink drain and Ma raised the devil if we let it flow over. Just as she did about the pail we had upstairs so we didn’t have to trek out to the out house. It was a treat to get store bought bread as Ma baked all our bread. She threw everything in by a pinch and a handful; she always got in the goodness. I went eight years to a one room school house. The school was heated by a pot belly stove. In the winter we all pushed our seat up near it to keep from freezing. I started home, taking a short cut through the woods, when my legs stopped working and I had to crawl the mile home. I had polio. Ma made me a bed down stairs and every four hours she put boiling hot compresses on my legs. On Saturday Ma and Pa went the eight miles to town to stock up. My friends would come over a put me in a wagon and pull me to the woods and to the swimming hole, a mile away. I contribute this, to my beating the dreaded bug. I joined the Navy after high school and on leave one summer I rode with my brother who picked up milk for the farmers. We drove into Burton Thornton’s farm and I noticed a backside sticking up out of a bean patch. We were married a few months later. Over the next fifty five years Betty has given me nine children, four girls and five boys. I’m retired now and spend my time in a large garden and writing. I’m still very much partial to bean patches.