When I was small and Cleo was still at home, Cleo, Lolly and I slept in the same bed in the west bedroom. (The pink room.) Being the youngest, I always had to sleep in the middle. That was okay in the winter, because having a sister on each side of me, I kept warm. However, in the summer it was quite uncomfortable. Many times in the summer we took our mattress outside and slept under the stars. (But invariably we ended up inside before morning, when the room had cooled down – also we were afraid a snake might crawl on us). Most of the time there was a nice breeze from the south window of the bedroom, and sometimes the bed was placed there. I used to love to listen to the wind blow around the corner of the house at night. It made a lovely sound. I also used to love to listen to the sound of the teakettle’s hissing sound when it sit on the wood burning kitchen stove. Sometimes our hands would get very chapped because we worked in the cold outside milking cows. You had to wash the utter before you milked to get the dirt from them because they would have to lie down on the straw and manure in the winter. We didn’t have hand cream, so to sooth and heal our hands, we rubbed lard or tallow into them. Lard is the fat from pork and tallow is from beef.
One night I can remember snow falling off the roof of the kitchen and we were very scared. We thought someone was outside and going to “get” us. Daddy had given mother an oak china cabinet for a wedding gift and it sat in the kitchen on the west wall for many years. The rifle was always kept on top where children could not get to it. It was not kept loaded, but the box of bullets was kept next to it. You had to stand on a chair to get to it. I now have this china cabinet.