How To Make Gum

See, we didn't have much money to buy ice cream cones, or gum and things.

And they said, "We have a recipe how you make gum."

I said, "You do?"

And they said, "Yes. You go out there on the ditch way out back, and you pick those milkweeds, and you bring these milkweeds in, and you cover them with water. And you have to let them set four days under that water. And then after they've been under the water four days, you lift them out and drain all the water off and you rinse them good. Then you unfold them all, and you have to let the sun dry them."

They gave me the complete recipe. I followed it! All the way through! It was terrible, and I was SO disappointed. They said I'd have gum in seven days! And on the seventh day, I went out there, and they still looked like milkweeds!

That's what they did to me, all the time.

Childhood memory as told to and recorded by her son, Steve Nickle. A practical joke by her brothers Elwin and Clarence.