Memories From Childhood for Pat

Pat Winter, a wonderful stitcher and beautiful person, has a blog called Gatherings. She has posted a bit about herself as a child and wishes to know about the childhood memories of others of us out in blogland... I think it's a great idea... so here we go...

Mom and Dad divorced in 1953 (or thereabouts) and as a result, my brother and I spent a lot of time with our grandparents. Mom's parents had 15 children (two younger than my brother and I) and Dad's parents had 11 children...the youngest of them only about 5 or 6 years older than us. We never lacked for anyone to play with...grin The fact that I was the only girl around most of the time dictated that if I wanted to play, it would be with the guys. Baseball was the number one game, followed by marbles and cowboys and Indians.

We spent a couple of years with fraternal grandparents living in the country in South Central Oklahoma. Larry and I would wander around the two ponds, always accompanied by the Husky mix dog that Grandpa loved and named Sandy (who could sniff out a snake in a heartbeat). After one particularly bad storm, one of the tall trees at the edge of the pond had broken off about 4 feet above the ground and fell over. With the trunk still slightly attached and the top laying on the ground, it made a perfect "horse"! We made a bee-line back to the barn for some "tow sacks", slung them over the highest part we could reach and tied them on with binder twine. We had to climb up the trunk and then walk the tree down to where we had put the saddle. It was well worth the effort because once ensconced in the saddle the tree would give a bit and if you rocked back and forth the "horse" would go up and down... What a delight!

Grandma always kept chickens. There was a tiny little house that she used as the "brood" house... this was where she would put the hen that was setting on the brood of eggs until the eggs hatched. Of course, this little house was only used once a year or so... so for the rest of the year it was unoccupied. One summer, Larry and I decided we needed our own house... We spent all one day cleaning that little house...using buckets with hot water and sweeping what seemed like for days... Then we asked if we could use a broken hutch for our cabinets (we had found it somewhere in the barn). Permission was granted, so we lugged, pulled and carried the hutch from the barn to our new house. Bear in mind that this was only the top part of the hutch and one side was broken, so we hunted until we found some bricks to use to prop up the broken side. Now we need beds (they could also be used for sofas). Back to the barn for "tow sacks"..today we call them burlap bags..grin We stuffed them with hay from the barn, tied them up with binder twine and brought them back to "our house". Ok...we have sofas and cabinets...we need dishes. Back to the house...Grandma collected the cups, saucers, glasses etc. that came in the boxes of oats. We were given a few of the old chipped things she had around and back we went with our treasures... Oops...we need a table! Somewhere we came up with an old orange crate of some kind... I talked Grandma out of a piece of cloth (probably an old cup towel) ... and we were good to go! Back to the house for cold biscuits...nothing to go with it but sliced onions (believe it or not, it was good!) , cups of water and we were set.

I can't remember how long we used our house...but putting that little house together was wayyy too much fun. It's a memory I will always treasure. Maybe next time I will tell about using the "syrup buckets" for life preservers when we went swimming...grin