As I ponder ......what made me....ME......I go back to my 7th year....My first year in school and beginning to associate with people....I had to move to 7 schools in the first grade....my father was a foreman for the Bell Telephone Co. and constantly on the move. The folks made the decision to settle down so Jo and I didn't have to keep that up...they bought a ranch in mother's home town of Mancos Colorado.....and a whole new world began for me......
No electricity.....running water......no inside bathroom .....ride school bus.....no central heating.....
but when you are 7.....life is good......an "out house".....is an adventure.....cold in the winter and hot and smelly in the summer...TOILET PAPER???...The Sears Roebuck and MONTGOMERY WARDS catalogs!!!....Winters were bad but the Spring an Summer you could leave the door open and enjoy the sun and thumb through the catalog.....Brush your teeth came afew years latter when we moved to town and got a real in-doors bathroom. A bath was on Saturday .....a big tub was brought into the kitchen ....hot water heated on the coal stove and all the kids scrubbed down....I have no idea when my parents bathed....or if they did those five years on the ranch...I guess when you are seven etc......things like clean parents is not your concern.....The house was heated by the kitchen coal stove and a pot belly stove in the front room and when it was cold no one got up until daddy had both fires going and the house was warm......There was a ditch infront of the house and they used that water for washing dishes or our hands.....but you had to carry water from a little spring behind the house down a little hill to drink or cook with....Mom took the laundry into grandma's as she had electicity in town. Dixie Lee was born during these five years of farm life....so a baby in diapers was an extra burden on the need for water.....she grew up alone in a play pen and consequently no one to play with,,,,,,made up her own family to talk to and play with...She had another mother and several friends.....when mother called her to dinner she always had to ask her ....other mother......thank goodness she always said....yes. To iron...and as I got older and more aware fitting in and looking nice I would iron my own cloths....put the ironing board on the back of two chairs and stand on a stool and.....to heat the iron you put it on a hot stove to heat it....they were heavy and did not stay hot long....I am using them as book ends now!
Sunday was a special day.....we killed two chickens and we all loved fried chicken....and I mean ....went out to the chicken pen grabbed a couple of inocent little chickens....put their heads on a log and with an ax chopped off their heads....they flopped around a few minutes.....then MOM stuck them into a bucket of boiling water to loosen their feathers and you all helped pluck the feathers.....which were saved for pillows and feather beds!.....Then into the house to be cut up and be fried...we all fought over who got the liver...heart...gizard?.....Then there was usually some fun desert.....Did I ever paticipate in these rituals.....YES....I could kill a chicken and get it ready to fry by the time I was ten....One thing is a bad memory still....washing the milk seperater.....I'm not even going to try and explain that chore.....Good times too...sleeping in the hay barn with the Kellers.....Daddy bought some "doggie" lambs and I feed them all summer by bottle ...when they were grown he sold them and gave me the money to pick out a new bicycle...it was red.....I don't regret my time on the ranch...I see how hard a rancher works...it taught me how to work.....but daddy's decision to give up farming and move to town and work at the Diamond Match factory about the time I was 12......was very welcomed by all the family....WOW...an in-door bathroom at last and real toilet paper!
