Janet Beaulieu - Walk to School
"I was born in a little town in Michigan. The name was Chattum. There wasn’t much around or anything. We were pretty desolated. We had a real small school. We lived on a farm. We always ate good. If there was a storm or anything, we always had food at home. I have two brothers and three sisters, myself and my Mom and Dad. We always had dogs and cats because we were on the farm. I used to walk to school because there were no cars that could get through to our road, so we always just walked to school. Sometimes we’d get all the way to school and there would be a bad storm. We had no phones or anything. We would go to school, and the school would be closed, so we had to turn around and walk back home."
Janet Beaulieu - Shots
"I can remember getting shots up there, and they would make a line. The whole school would line up and go, and every time I would get to the front, I would go to the back. (laughs) And then I would just keep doing it until there was nobody left, and I finally would have to get one."
Janet Beaulieu - One Room School
"We had a real, real, little school. I graduated with a class of 24. My brother had 12 in his class when he graduated. The classes were all kind of altogether. You were really kind of learning a couple of grades at a time, because you were listening to what was going on. One teacher taught. That little building is now a real beautiful house. They made it into a house. Really, really nice. We used to have swings and trick bars, and all kinds of stuff there."
Janet Beaulieu - Mouse
"Me and my brother Isaac were the closest. My brother that was two years younger than me. He was kind of a little devil. I can remember walking to school with him one time. He was, well like I said, a couple years younger than me. I can remember when his hands and feet got so cold that he passed out and so I had to go sit with him in the sick room. They called it a sick room because it was just a little tiny room where people went when they didn’t feel good. We got in there and I went and sat with him. He was real, real, real, good until he saw a mouse. He was chasing that mouse around! You would have thought he was a monkey or something. I told him, you’ve got to behave yourself you’re supposed to be sick and he said “well, there ain’t no mouse that’s going to be running all over me!""
Janet Beaulieu - Baby Pig
"Being on the farm like I said, me and my brother one time had a little baby pig. It was the runt of the litter. I don’t know what we were thinking, but I guess we thought it would come alive, so we buried it in a cigar box. We actually put it under the ground, and a couple of days later we unburied it, thinking that the pig would be alive. We sat there... and I think we did that 2 or 3 times, and finally Dan said, “The pig is done.” I thought, ‘’Ohhhh”. But we just thought he would come back to life, I guess. We just didn’t think animals should die, I guess – even though a lot of cows and that were killed for meat – and even pigs. We eat them too."