Free Farm Girl by Karen Jones Gowen Page B

but others thought she was a hermaphrodite, a half-man, half-woman.
    I never heard anyone in the area mention her very highly, until a young doctor came to town, to Red Cloud. His wife, Mildred Bennett, was very literate and thrilled about living in the town where the author had grown up. She wrote a book, The World of Willa Cather , that helped to raise the status of Willa Cather in the local area.
    When one of Willa Cather’s books would come out, the community gossiped about who might be in it. My dad had told me about a young man infatuated with a young married woman and they were shot by the husband. Willa put that in one of her books, and my dad remembered the incident well, knew the people involved and when it had happened.
    In One of Ours , Willa described the George Cather home, and of course, everyone in the New Virginia area was very familiar with that home and with the young man killed in the war portrayed in the book. Willa would change the names, but everyone knew who they were, as she’d keep the stories close to truth. People recognized the characters and loved to gossip about what was in the books, identifying the different characters and happenings.
    Despite the high interest and the gossip about her books, they never thought very highly of her, I suppose because she was so different. Now all that has changed, and Willa Cather is big business for Red Cloud. There’s a Willa Cather Seminar every spring and people come from all over the world for that. Many tourists out West stop over in Red Cloud because of the famous author. There’s the Gift Shop, a museum in the old bank, the house where Charles Cather moved to when they came to Red Cloud. You can get a map and tour places like the New Virginia Church and the George Cather home.
    My mother worked for George Cather and his wife Frankie for a couple years before she married my dad. The Cathers had a large farm and a lot of hired hands. Their home, huge and very elaborate for that area, had four or five stories, with a sub-basement, a walk-in basement, a main floor, a second floor and the attic floor. George Cather was quite a wealthy man. I remember him, a dapper old fellow with a big moustache, back when men didn’t wear moustaches, the kind that came out and then turned up a bit.
    Mother told me about working there, that Mrs. Cather didn’t know much about housework. She knew all about flowers and read lots of books. She had girls there to clean house and girls to cook. Back in Virginia they probably had Negroes, and when they came to Nebraska, they hired Scandinavian girls to work for them.
    Mother said that one time Frankie Cather didn’t know what to have for a meal, as there wasn’t any meat ready. They always had milk, bread and eggs, so Mother suggested having French toast. They served French toast to the family and the hired hands, and Mother said Mrs. Cather thought that was such a good idea and so delicious.
    In high school, my senior English teacher was Elsie Cather, one of Willa’s sisters. Oh, she was hard on me. She didn’t care much for anything I wrote and it was in her class that I got to thinking I wasn’t a very good writer.
    There were two boys in the class whose writing she really admired. Whatever assignments they wrote, she praised so highly and read out loud, or had them read it to the class. She thought they were such good writers. On my work she would just say, “Okay,” when she handed it back. I worked so hard in that class to please her and get praise for my writing, but the highest grade I ever got was a “B.” I left her class with the idea that I had no writing talent.
    Another of Willa’s sisters was Jessica Cather, who married the banker Bill Auld. The Aulds lived in a beautiful, large, yellow brick house with white pillars that we saw when we drove into Red Cloud. That house is now the building for the Webster County Historical Society.
    They divorced when he left her for a younger woman, and Jessie moved