There were so many of
us that we would draw names for the person to whom we gave gifts.
My brothers and I slept in an upstairs bedroom with the window open a
couple of inches in the winter time. When we woke up in the morning
there would be snow in a pile on the floor under the window. We had
one floor register about four feet square in the living room and we
would sit around it for warmth. I remember the babies would sometimes
crawl on the register and wet their diapers. My mother would sprinkle
sugar down the flue to the hot furnace dome to get rid of the smell.
Above the register, on the wall, was a shelf which held my mother's
chime clock.
There was a small room upstairs where we had a library. My brothers
had about three hundred books there and there was an army cot there on
which I slept for several years. The library contained the Zane Grey
westerns. These were all lost later when my father moved out and
rented the house for several years during the war. All my possessions,
except for clothes, were lost at that time. After my father remarried,
he and my stepmother moved back into the house.
My brothers built a wooden platform in the backyard and we had a tent
on it for several summers. We would sleep out there when the house was
too hot in the summer time. There were three army cots in it. Dr.
Behan lived on Thad Chapin Street just around the corner. He had
several large farm horses which would get loose and come running down
the street in front of our house.
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