This week I was thinking again about growing up down Douglas Road. What came to my mind was appreciating having a closet.
Well, well Astrid made the High School Soccer team. Now if Ingrid made the collegiate Volleyball team, I will be happy.
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The boys had the middle bedroom and the girls the back bedroom. Mom and Dad had the front bedroom. Each of the rooms were connected by a door. So each bedroom had two doors and a window excepting Mom and Dad's bedroom. That bedroom had a large window and a small one giving it more ventilation. We had no privacy really. The house had no hall. In front of Mom and Dad's bedroom, there is a small living room and in front of the other two bedrooms a large eat in kitchen. I think the house is 28' by 36' feet with a 6 ' porch on the back and front. The front porch only extends 14 feet so in front of the bedroom there is no porch. The back porch goes all the way across the back of the house. It has a cistern under it which always leaked. We carried our water from a spring inside a cave about a sixteenth of a mile from the house on what we call the "rock quarry". There was a smokehouse that took up about a third of the back porch. Dad later added windows to it and made a bedroom there after he took the middle bedroom for a bathroom and laundry room. There was a small hall in front of the bath. That is where the washer and dryer sat. Momma loved the washer and dryer. The bath and washer and dryer all happened after I went to college. In 1968 when I left home for the last time, we had no running water, no bathroom, no automatic washer or dryer.
We heated the house with a wood stove that was in the living room. When Daddy smoked he threw his cigerette butts on the stove board and Momma had to clean it all up. I think surely when we got to be teenagers he did not do this anymore, but when was young he did. He quit smoking but I do not remember the year. He immediately took up chewing Good Money tobacco!
Daddy started working at the Feed Mill in town a couple of years after his nervous breakdown. That happened in 1960, he went to the Veteran's Hospital in Fayetteville when he broke as it would take him because of his service to our Country. The straw that broke Dad was finding out Momma was going to have Gilbert. He had Debbie who was handicapped. He had a Holstein dairy that was not making a cent. The milk was not even paying for the feed and he had borrowed to buy the cows and build a new modern barn which we still call the "new barn" even though it is falling in old now. When Daddy came home, I think in early 1961, we had an auction sale and he worked out because the sale of the cows did not pay off the mortgage. He worked and paid it off. I think in 1962, he went to work milling feeds for Eldridge in Green Forest. This Mill was right by the Library and only a few blocks from Grandma Powell's and Green Forest Schools. I was in the 4th grade when Daddy built the new barn, in the 5th grade when he had the breakdown, and in the 6th or 7th grade when he took the job in town.
Daddy wore a uniform (khaki's but they were gray if I remember right not tan) to the Mill. I can't remember if they sent them out to wash or if Momma did that. He got paid once a week. After he started working for wages, Momma went to the laundromat on Saturdays and washed our clothes there. We did not have water enough for a washer at home. Momma never had a drivers license but she drove the car to town on Saturdays and parked behind the grocery store or laundromat to buy a week's groceries and wash our clothes. Momma loved to wash the clothes. She wanted the house and our clothes to be clean. The few times I have been without water in the house for a day or so I have marveled at how she was able to do all she did with so little. One of us would usually go with Momma on Saturday. I now realize why she only allowed one to go. When she drove it was scarry! She would gun the car and she never mastered the art of shifting gears! I bet she tore the transmissions out of several cars.
We did not have one closet. I used to dream of having a closet like other people. We drove 10 penny nails in the wall and would hang our clothes on the nails. I recall trying to rig a broom handle in a corner to hang stuff on and once using a curtain rod to make a hanger. I guess it is good that we did not have a lot of clothes as we had no place to put them. Growing up I can never recall my Mother having more than 3 dresses at a time. Never more than a single pair of shoes! I would like to talk about undergarments but will not as it will make me cry.
If you read this, you are surely thinking we had a pitiful life, but you are absolutely incorrect! Somehow my parents were able to teach us that we were a class above most of the world--no the highest of all people. How do you teach this to a family? I do not know but my parents did.
Maybe I will write more about what I remember later. I recall during those early 1960's a highlight of our week was receiving a letter from Sister Patsy. She lived in Sacramento, California until about 1965 or 66 I think. I think she went there in the summer of 1961.
