Original: more_not_so_fond_memories.odt

Last Edited Feb 18, 2013

One day Charles came in the house and asked mama if he could start a fire. I don't recall what he was wanting to burn. She said no, since there was some wind blowing. After a bit, we noticed smoke and he had started a fire. It was in the back yard over by the side pasture and moving towards the corner of our big old barn. It was almost to the barn and the wind changed directions and the fire went away from the barn. We were thanking God for protecting the barn.

Another scary incident happened to Ardith, Barb and I. We had gone back in the field with Mr. Fruth in his car. He was hoeing weeds. We had been playing and it started to rain. So we got in the back rumble seat of his car that had the seat removed. Since it was raining we put the lid down, but we were holding the lid, so it wouldn't latch. Our hands slipped and the lid latched shut. We could not get it open. We yelled, but got no response. It was so scary for each of us. When Mr. Fruth quit hoeing and came to the car, he heard us and opened up the lid. What a relief! He said that he heard us, but it was muffled and he just thought that we were playing. That experience left a lasting impact on my life. I had a hard time being in a small closed in area after that.

We had an ice storm one winter that was bad. We were shut in. When we opened the door, the ice was crackling and noisy. It was on top of quite a bit of snow. The trees cracked and groaned. Limbs were falling down, 2 trees in our front yard fell down and half of a big tree in our back yard fell down. A transformer blew down the road from us. It was shooting flames all over. When we looked out our window it looked like the house down the road was on fire. Every window that we could see looked like it had flames coming from it.

We had rats in our granary. Charles used to take his gun out to shoot the rats.

When I was very young, I had tonsillitis. My mother took me to Dr, Broadwater, our family doctor. His office was on the south east corner of Front and Broad streets. He said that if I had any more problems that he would take the tonsils out. Actually, his process was to burn them out. I sure didn't want that. I did end up having them out the the summer of 1960, when Nancy was a baby. This was after having a bad case of tonsillitis that didn't respond well to the medicine.

We were playing on the living room floor that was usual for us. We had toys of some kind all over. My mother got up from her chair to cross the room and stepped on something that made her fall. She landed pretty hard. She wasn't real happy with us for so much stuff around. It probably hurt her at the time, but nothing lasting.

It was usual for my brothers and I to get along well together. One day my brothers got into a fight. One had picked on the other one too many times. My mother just let them fight it out. When it was over, the brother doing the picking learned his lesson. They got along quite well after that. It was scary for me looking on.