Right from the get go, the kids and teachers at Bigelow Elementary School had all started calling me The Little Southern Girl. As if anyone from south of the state of Ohio was Scarlett O'Hara and made her dresses out of curtains. My face still burned when I thought of how they’d teased me about my green-and-white flowered dress my mom had cut down from one of my cousin Janice’s, who was pretty and blond and the head cheerleader at her high school in Healdton, Oklahoma. I’d studied my sneakers as if my life depended on it while two red-haired brothers with freckles snickered at my new white Keds and socks, not daring to open my mouth. I never knew I talked funny or had an accent. I didn’t even know what an accent was—well, unless it meant you came from France or Russia or someplace far away like that—until we came here.

I looked out over the endless field. 640 acres. One square mile—my dad said. It was going to be a long spring. And an even longer summer.

My little sister traipsed behind me carrying the entire Cartwright clan in a banged-up cardboard box. My mom had bought the Ponderosa toys at a garage sale for $1.00. She must have done her wheeling and dealing thing because $1.75 was what was written on the top. The 4-in-1 Wagon could be changed into an Ore Wagon, Ranch Wagon, Covered Wagon and Chuck Wagon, she’d explained, reading what was left of the pamphlet. From the scratches, dents, and scuffs, the Cartwrights looked like they'd all seen better days.

“How about here?” my sister said. She pointed to the scrap lumber we’d hauled over from one of the unfinished houses on the cul-de-sac to build the Cartwrights a fort. I was going to answer her when all of a sudden two girls about our age appeared in the yard next door and came walking towards us, stopping just at the demarcation line between their lime-colored grass and the deeper blue green of ours. I nudged my sister in the ribs.

The girls’ eyes were glued to the Cartwright’s 4-in-1 Wagon and its team of plastic horses. Like they'd never seen such a thing before. They didn’t say a single word, just wriggled their bare toes deeper into the grass. And waited.

My sister nudged me back. We whispered back and forth. You do it. No, you do it. I don’t want to, you do it.

You’re older, you do it, my sister finally hissed, giving me a pinch.

After what seemed like an eternity, I ventured, “Hey.”

The larger sister smiled. "Hey," she said. She clasped her younger sister’s hand. They girls were blond and tan in their red and white matching short sets, red terrycloth headbands in their hair.

Emboldened, I drawled, “Ya’ll want to come play with us?”

“Sure,” they said.

My sister was so excited she dumped the entire Ponderosa out of the cardboard box onto the lawn. Little Joe The Full Action Man with his bandana. A black horse. The plain brown horse I always talked my sister into using. Little Joe’s beautiful pinto. Hoss with his vest. Ben had only one hand, my sister explained to the smaller of the two girls. And The Villain was missing half of an arm. We showed them the cracked trunk for gold, the skillet, the pots and pans. Only problem was—no girls, I said—because Jane West was way too tall for the little plastic men. I pulled her out of the box to show them. (She towered over the Cartwright men like I imagined the lady did in the Attack of the 50-Foot Woman movie, the one that was always listed in the TV Guide but that I never got to see because it came on way past my bedtime. But I kept that to myself.)

The Cartwright men, my sister and I, and our new friends traversed the length and breadth of both backyards, now officially The Ponderosa, until our parents called us in for dinnertime. Missy and Melanie and their mom and dad had just moved to the neighborhood from the great state of Texas, and they never once said a word about my accent.

Sources: Bonanza—The Website; Big Red Toy Box; The Completely Unofficial Bonanza Collectors Gallery