FAMILY – AT WORK AND AT PLAY

Although we were now in a home of our own, we were not emotionally removed from the home or the rearing of our grandparents. They were still close by and we spent much of our time with them. Two of my mother's siblings were in our age range and we grew up more as siblings than aunt and uncle and our grandparents continued to treat us as one family.

An event that occurred routinely in our lives was "washday" when my mother and my aunts would gather up the clothes to be washed and we would head out with the cousins to spend the day at the "pond" in the middle of the woods. This was somewhat of a "community wash house" I suppose as there was a big black iron pot set up where a fire would be built for heating water and boiling the clothes. The pot was surrounded by a large area of ground that had been cleared from many a footprint having worked on it.

Of course it wasn't the work that went on on washday that attracted us children. It was the huge trees that bore "Tarzan-like" vines that we took turns swinging over and dropping into the pond as we played the day away while the wash was being done. Before returning home we would have a nice bath with Grandma's homemade soap and don a fresh set of clothes that had been washed and dried at the pond in the woods!

FAMILY - CHRISTMAS REMEMBERED

It was in this home that we had our biggest ever Christmas – between the four of us receiving 17 dolls. There was also a "scooter" and a "rocky horse." I remember taking the scooter down the road for a ride in an early morning fog where you could barely see your hand in front of your face, but I knew the way well to a favorite aunt and uncle's house across and down the dirt road from us. I traversed the trip very well and returned to check out the wooden rocky horse. Being energized from the scooter ride, I hopped on the horse, held onto its head and swung it into high gear for my ride. The ride turned out to be a short one and I was devastated as I beheaded the precious rocky horse. This memory of the rocky horse stirred in my soul when on a recent tour through our favorite thrift store there it sat – a sturdy "pony horse" that had been lovingly, I'm sure, handcrafted by some grandfather for some beloved grandchild. We brought it home and it sat on the garage floor for some time. When we learned we were to become first time great grandparents, off it went to Ohio to adorn the nursery of a precious baby girl!