The dash to the outhouse!

 I am up in the morning anywhere from 3:30 AM  to 5:00.  If I lay there any longer my aches and pains seem to kick in to remind me of my age.  This was all well and good back when I lived alone in my one bathroom house, but now I have a son who lives with me and he leaves for work at 5:30.  This means he sneaks very quietly up the stairs and into the bathroom and I do not hear him.  So when I open my bedroom door and see the light under the bathroom door, I know I missed my golden opportunity and I will now be doing the little dance that does no good what so ever, but seems necessary.

So this leads me to the moonlight trail to the outhouse back at 709 North Strong Street , Nickerson, Kansas,  seventy years ago.  While it was still light we all had to go visit the outhouse.  Hopefully that would be the last trip for the night.  Now, in the event we actually had to go in the middle of the night, we were allowed to make concessions.  One of these was if we only needed to go as far as the horse tank if we only had to do #1.  There was a "chamber pot" located behind the wood stove for the little kids to use and Dad.  I do not ever remember being an actual "little kid."  I am sure that after we left the Stroh place Jake, Josephine, myself were all big kids.  Dorothy was a tiny baby and Mary was 2 years old.  That would have meant Donna was 4.  Since they were little they went to Ora Ayres to be babysat while I was in school  She charged 50 cents  a week.    

I remember her kitchen well.  It had  very big wood cookstove that took up the whole kitchen.  I need to interject here that  when her and Jerry(?) were first married they were in a car wreck and Ora had suffered some brain damage.  She was still a functioning adult, but her reasoning skills were rather limited.  She could babysit and she could cook.  We grew up eating chocolate cakes that she baked every day and were used as a substitute for bread.  Now her cakes were a strange green color, but mother said it was because she skimped on the chocolate or used an inferior brand.  But that is neither here nor there and has no bearing whatso ever on anything and I do not know why it stuck in my mind. 

Jerry was an avid gardener and when he harvested his crops were kept in his bedroom.  His harvest seem to consist of mostly peanuts which were boiled and eaten that way.  Gross.  Never understood that, but it really was not any of my business.  The back yard had a grainery and that was where the chickens lived.  The "out house" was located in one corner of a row of ramshackle sheds strung together that surrounded the grainery.  It was a hole in the ground with a wash tub with a hole cut in it and turned upside down.  That was one place no one wanted to go and I never had nerve enough to perch on that with my pants down!  It was breeding grounds (in my mind) to a new breed of giant, poison spiders.

Some times mother sent us big kids to bring the little kids home.  That was always a treat because Ora would give us a piece of the green cake and we actually liked it as long as we did not know the difference.  Entertainment at her house consisted of blocks of wood which were used as cars to travel on the dirt roads we drew on the dirt yard.  

As I write this, I realize that this was our "normal".  If I gave one of my grandkids a piece of wood and told them to go pretend it was a car they would think I had lost my mind!  I can get Jiraiya to walk across a field with me to check on crawdads in the ditch, but a block of wood is just a block of wood to him.  He likes to fill the feeder for the geese, but then the computer games are his weapon of choice.

I miss my life on Strong Street and I can not imagine why I ever wanted to leave, but I did.  My idea of heaven is not a street paved in gold, but the sandy soil of Strong Street and the mud that dried in the puddles and waited for the sun to bake it so we could walk barefoot and feel it crunch beneath our feet.

  That and a piece of green cake will get me a seat at the throne of God any day!

All I see is a pink ball...

It is Christmas all over the world, and contrary to popular belief it is Christmas at my house.  I do not have a tree and all the trappings.  There is no Christmas music wafting from the stereo.  And last night I missed the service at church for the first time in many, many years.  But it is still Christmas morning here.

Yesterday I went to a friends house for lunch.  I dined with Ross Barnhart and his brothers and most of their wives.  His cousin was also there.  It was lovely and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  Today I am staying home.  I have some things I want to do today, but right now I am thinking back to Strong Street.

I know we lived there for several years, but I am not sure how long.  My favorite Christmas is the year I received a pink ball for Christmas from Santa Clause.  Santa always left our gifts on our chairs at the table.  That year I received a coloring book, a box of 8 Crayola's, 2 chocolate candies an orange and a pink ball.  It was about the size of the orange and it was the most wonderful ball in the world!  When I dropped the ball it bounced very high.  I threw it against the house and it bounced back.  It was so wonderful, but of course , that did not last.  It was just a matter of time before the wonderful pink ball picked up a sticker and no longer bounced.  The last time I recall seeing it was deflated and living in a mud hole.  Soon the coloring book was all colored, the Crayon's broken and missing from the box.

The last Christmas I recall was the last one I want to remember.  Jake told me Santa was not real and he knew that for a fact because Momma was going to let him play Santa and give out the presents that year.  I did not believe him, so I asked him what I was going to get and he told me.

"It is a tin doll house with a mother, father, brother, sister and a dog. A black dog." And that was what I got.  Jake had assembled it by pushing the metal tabs through the slots and folding them down to hold them in place.  And sure enough, there was a pink mother and father, a boy and a girl, and a little dog.  It had a couch and chair, a table and 4 chairs, and a tub and stool and sink in the bathroom.  The kitchen had a sink, refrigerator and a stove.  Jake told me he would get me more stuff someday.  But it never happened.

Some how the wonderfulness of the doll house was over shadowed by the sadness the Santa was not real.  All those years, it had been my momma cleaning other peoples houses and saving money a little at a time to surprise me.  It made me sad to think of her doing without so I could have something I really wanted.  I came to hate that gift more every day.  Momma never knew, but I did.

I hated the poverty that was our life.  I hated that my father did not ever touch me or carry me like he did Mary, Donna and Dorothy.  I told myself that he probably did, when I was little, but I do not remember that.  He spent a lot of time drinking when I was growing up and I attribute it to that.  Sure doesn't help these many years later.

So today, I am staying home, alone.  I am alone because I want to be, not because I have no one.  I have 6 children who have mates and children and some of those children have children which means I am a great grandmother.  I have nieces and nephews.  I have very good friends.  I just want to be alone, so I will.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and pray that you all enjoy life to the fullest.  I know I am going to do just that!

Peace!

Jake Smith and his grinding wheel.

Now this is a grinding wheel!  It is not the one in Jake Smith's back yard, but it is pretty close.  His had a bicycle seat on the end where the pedals are located.  He used to set there and pedal which caused the stone to rotate.  He would hold an axe blade against the side.  When the first side was sharp, he would turn it over and sharpen the other side. He would finish by dripping water on the blade and the spinning stone.  When he was finished he had a blade that was so sharp it could be used to shave and he tested it by removing a patch of hair from his arm.

Granted he could not make a living by sharpening axe blades, but it did help supplement the income he and his wife received.  She cleaned houses for some ladies in town to help make ends meet.  He was a retired police officer, or so I heard.  He would occasionally "strap his  service weapon" on his belt and scare us kids.  He was quick to tell us how fast we would be dispatched to the other side if we did not get out of his yard.  And to emphasis that he meant business, he would twirl the pistol on one finger.  Then he would set down in the chair that was located by a tree, lean back against the tree and have his afternoon nap.  

One afternoon, Jake and one of his cronies waited until he was sound asleep and then they crept up and carefully encased the old guy in ropes so when he woke up and started to tip his chair back down, it did not tip.  He pulled the ropes over his head, tipped the chair down.  Sadly when he stood up to walk, he found his feet were tied and catapulted to the ground.  He did not find this nearly as funny as us kids hiding over in the weeds behind the shed did!  Damn lucky he did not shoot us that time.  He knew who did it, but of course we all lied and said, "No!  Jake went bike riding and he is not back yet."

Life was so simple back then.  Sorry to say I have not seen one of those wheels in years and the one I saw was in an antique shop and priced far out of my range. Nor do I own an axe.  I do possess a 10 pound sledge hammer and a hatchet.  The hatchet was a pricey little purchase, but there are times when that little guy comes in very handy.  I used it a couple times to separate a chicken head from the body, but I do not do that any more.    My favorite way to butcher chickens was to grasp their feet, step on the head and jerk upward.  It was quick and painless, but barbaric.  Kenny's mom used to tie thier feet together and hang them from the clothes line.  She then streeeeeeeeeeeeetched out their head and proceeded to cut their head from their neck with a butcher knife.  Now THAT was barbaric!  I could scald and de-feather a chicken faster than anyone in the county, but that is history and I now buy my chicken breasts at the local frozen food section.

I just remembered why I started this blog!  I came across my hatchet the other day and noticed that there was a nick on the blade and that the blade was dull.  I have an electric grinding wheel in the garage with coarse and fine wheels.  I used to use it to sharpen my hoe, but since the snakes have taken over the garden, I do not plant any more and that area goes to weeds for the geese.  I am sure at some point in time I am going to have to do something, but for now, I am just going to have my humble breakfast of grits and cheese  and think about something else.

May Jake Smith rest in peace setting in his chair, propped against the tree, dreaming of his bygone life as a peace officer retired and sharpening axes and knives on North Strong Street, in Nickerson, Kansas.

Nickerson on the Ailmore place.

Here we go down memory lane.  This first picture is Roy Keating's house just up the road from us.  Roy raised pigs, and I mean really big pigs.  I have rarely seen pigs that big.  They were black and white.  He also had a chicken house.  I gathered eggs while dad took care of the pigs.  Mother had told him what would happen to him if I got eaten by one of those damned pigs.

Going on past and then taking a left turn would bring you to Bull Creek.  Normally it was dry, but this spring it was almost out of it's banks.  This is the same Bull Creek of that bull frog episode that occurred with sister Josephine.  Made me want to get out of the car and wade like I did all those years ago.

 Right past the creek was the Rumble house.  I was surprised that it was still standing, but houses were built to last back then.  Mr. Rumble told me one time that if I learned the words to the song "Buttons and Bows" he would give me a shiny dime.  That was a fortune back then for a snot nosed kid, but so was the song playing on the radio.  I have since learned most of the words, but sadly no one wants to hear me sing!

 I think this is the Barthold house where I used to spy on the sisters drinking tea in their back yard.  Damn!  I know now what an obnoxious kid is, and I sure think I qualified!

This is all for today.  The computer is not wanting me to do this.  

Tomorrow I will journey down Strong Street and go to the cemetery.  I want to thank you for joining me down memory lane as I confront and exorcise my demons.  This is something I have wanted to do for years and knowing you are with me makes me stronger.

I love you all!

Grocery shopping has sure changed from 1950's.

Back when I was 12 years old Flemings grocery store  and Berridge IGA (?) had contests.  IGA was for a trip to St. Louis and when you bought something you had so many points to vote for the contestant of your choice.  That contest was won by Irene Reinke.  As a general rule, we did not shop at IGA because that was the store the "rich people" shopped at, so mother did not vote for Irene.

Flemings had a contest where you turned in labels from cans of a certain brand of food.  I stood outside the store and pushed for people to buy that brand, then save the label and I would go by their house and pick the labels up and put them in my stash.  Now, the city dump was different than dumps are today!  The powers that be would designate a place as the city dump and if you wanted to dispose of something you took it there and threw it on the pile.  People also went there to paw through the "stuff" and pick out good stuff.  My idea of good stuff was labels from cans, which I tore off and took home to my stash.  My stash grew bigger every day as I waited for the closing day when I would turn them in to be counted.

Now there were 2 prizes in my contest.  One was an English Racing bike which was for a boy which meant it had the bar across the frame.  Girls were open in that area.  The other was a radio.  I had my eye on that bike and nothing was going to deter me.  When the day arrived I took my labels in to be counted and I had almost 3 times as many labels as the boy who came in second place.  In all fairness, he was livid.  He had been beat by a girl and now that girl walked away pushing a boys bicycle while he stood there with a stupid radio.  Yes, I pushed that bike all the way home.  My sisters were so envious.  I pushed it around the block.  I pushed it into town and pushed it home.  I never had ridden a bike before and when I tried to stand with my feet on either side of the bike, it was not happening.  That damn bar was higher than my crotch.  But at no time did I think about trading it for the radio.  I just let that boy eat his heart out as I pushed it past his house.

And then the tires went flat because there are a lot of goat heads on Strong Street.  Mother could see no reason to have the tires fixed because it was apparent by this time that I would never ride that bike.  No one ever rode it until I gave it to a boy named Johnny Isabel who lived in Hutch and I do not remember how I knew him or why, but I  made a deal to sell it for $5.00 which he never paid me, but there you go!

Back to the grocery store, we always shopped at Flemings.  They had a locker plant inside the store where one could rent a small freezer to store extra food that was not canned or dried.  Things, like meat.  Not that we ever had meat, but if we did we could have rented a small cubicle, which we never did because meat was a rarity at our house.  Well, Jake would get a rabbit now and then, but not worth renting freezer space for the short period of time it took to go from dressed meat to the table to digested and forgotten.

There was a barrel for dried beans, onions, potatoes and such item.  You put what you wanted in a brown paper sack and took it up and had it weighed.  We were always careful with the brown paper bags because they were reused over and over.  Milk bottles were refilled.  Pop bottles were returned for a deposit that had been paid when the pop was purchased.  Lots of times we walked the ditch along the highway to find bottles that were discarded by people who were too lazy to return them to the store.  Seems like the deposit was only one or 2 cents, but it was free money and we could buy candy at Engle's store.  The display case there was filled with boxes with tops removed.  We pointed to which ones we wanted and the items were placed in a small brown paper bags.  A nickel was usually over half a bag.  As kids we never worried about "spoiling our appetite"  because evening meals were few and far behind at our house.

Don't get me wrong, poverty sucks.  No food sucks.  Wearing "hand me downs" sucked.  Walking every where was a pain. Easter was the only time we could ever hope to have anything extra and that was Easter Eggs.  We had chickens that were laying hens so eggs were fairly easy to come by.  Sadly eggs were either sold or cooked into something that could be shared among the 8 of us, but at Easter we got a whole egg and sometimes, if times were good, a chocolate something that resembled a rabbit.  I will go on record as saying my mother tried harder than anyone else in the world.  She went to clean houses every day and never asked for anything in return, except that us kids were fed.  She paid the lady up the street 50 cents a week to babysit the little kids.  Dad hung out at the pool hall, but as long as he was there playing dominoes, he was not home screaming at us to shut up.  No television back then, so creeks and haylofts and the cemetery  were our playgrounds.

Damn, I miss that life. .When I can not sleep at night, I run up and down Strong Street.  I spy on Hank Windiate(sp) and Jake Smith.  I listen to Rudolph Reinke singing in German as he did his chores.  I see the chickens scratching in the dirt for some hidden scrap.  I watch Joe Hedrick roping calves over on the corner.  But mostly I just watch for my momma to come home.  I have quit waiting for her and now anticipate the trip I can make to see her again.  I want to see her hazel eyes and hold her thin, long fingers.  But mostly I just want to see her smile when she comes to meet me.  And yes, momma, I am bringing the tomato soup made the way you like it with home canned tomatoes and milk.

709 North Strong Street and the midnight dash.

I know I speak of my formative years in Nickerson as mostly happy, but there was something lacking.  While the majority of the homes in town contained running water and indoor "facilities" the sewer system and the running water had not yet reached our little street.  The running water consisted of a pump in the kitchen, a pipe that led from the sink to the wall where there was a hole that let the water run onto the ground out back.  We had Muscovy ducks which were very happy with this method of ridding our selves of waste water.  Ducks like water and they could always be found in the middle of the mess.  That is what ducks do.  Interesting note here; to my knowledge Muscovy is the only domesticated duck that is able to fly.  At least I think that is right.  I had 37 ducks of different breeds here on South Road several years back and only the Muscovy could fly, which they did with amazing regularity right up to roost on my air conditioning unit.  Nasty damn things.

Any way, that was the set up for the running water in our house.  Bathroom facilities were an entirely different matter.  That little job was taken care of out the back door and down the path to the little wooden shack that was perched over a deep hole.  The cool porcelain of city bathrooms was replaced by a wooden bench with a hole cut in it and the white roll of "toilet tissue" gave way to the Sears catalog.  Sometimes it was a Montgomery Ward.  Sears was favored for it's absorption, well all the pages except the ones which were colored because they were slick.   Oh, and sometimes we were real lucky and had a corn harvest that produced soft corn cobs, but that was never.  And there was always the danger of  "picking up a sliver " if one moved the wrong way while on "the throne."  That combined with my fear of dark places and black widow spiders was enough to keep me in a paranoid state most of the time and my bowels in a locked state. Those are just some of the hazards of life in poverty Ville.

Using of the facilities in the daylight was one thing, but at night it was an entirely different matter.  Living in the country brings a whole new set of problems.  First, there were no street lights on Strong Street, or the next street over, or the highway either.  Flashlights were unheard of at our house.  There was a kerosene lantern which we could use if we could find matches.  Now I want you to know that no way in hell was I going out to that God forsaken place alone, and neither would any of the other kids.  The river was not far away and sometimes we could hear a cougar or mountain lion calling.  I think there might have been a panther at one time or maybe a panther was a cougar.  Coyotes yipping in the field behind the outhouse was a regular occurrence.  Mother assured us that coyotes were more afraid of us then we were of them, but I was not sure about that!

So I learned early to not drink a bunch of water before I went to bed and thus maybe avoid that trip in the middle of the night.  I think the sisters found it easier to wet the bed than walk that lonely walk.  It seemed like it was a very long ways to the bathroom, but reflecting back, I do not think it was that far.  I think it might have been 60 feet, but it sure seemed a lot farther to my little body.  If there was a moon then the shadows scared me, and if I had the lantern the shadows scared me.  If an owl hooted then right there was the end of the trip!  If I could stay on the path it was alright, but if I veered to the left just a tad I was in a cactus.  If I strayed to the right I was in the chicken fence.  I do recall how bright the moon used to be out there in the middle of the night.  And the stars!  There were millions of them.  I could pick out the big dipper and the little dipper.  I look at the sky at night now and it is very pale.  I am glad I have those memories.  Kenny and I were in Utah once and lived in a campground.  I could see the stars then.  I wish I could go back there and appreciate it.  The Utah sky is bigger than the Kansas sky.

So, anyway, there you have the drawback to the Strong Street life.  But, I survived.  I know there are some of you that are reading this that think how horrible that was, but it really wasn't that bad.  It was an inconvenience for sure, but it was what it was.  I am very glad that I have indoor plumbing now because I am terrified of the dark.  I have a night light in the bathroom and if I leave something in the car, it will have to keep until morning.  I do not think there is anywhere left in this world where there is not indoor plumbing, but if there is, I do not want to go there.

As I write this, I can see that path in my mind.  I remember the neighbors had a concrete floor in their outhouse.  Hank Windgate did not have a door.  The Ayers family just had a tin tub with a hole in it over a bigger hole.  So all things considered, I guess we had it pretty good.  My daughter, Debbie, has a saying that seems apropos here:  "What doesn't kill you or make you bleed, will make you strong."  So there you go!

Stick horse, comic books and baseball cards.

I have been away from 709 Strong Street long enough that I am pretty sure most of my memories will go unnoticed and the people who helped create them are long since dead and buried.  As long as I do not name people, no one will know who I am talking about.  It is nice to know I have out lived a lot of people so I can tell the stories as I remember them and no one can say "Nope!  That is not how it happened."
One of the girls in our neighborhood liked to ride a stick horse.  So did her mother.  Sadly, this was also the woman who babysat for Mary and Dorothy when mom worked.  Her father was a farmer of sorts.  He raised peanuts and pumpkins mostly.  Also pigs and a goat or two.  Her mom had a bit of brain damage, but managed to still cook and clean.  They had a wood cook stove, but so did we.  Hers was fancier and had enamel on it.  There was also a water pump and a sink right in the corner, so they did not have to go outside for water.  I  was envious of that.
She would make a chocolate cake every day and the daughter always tried to get me to eat it, but I just could not bring myself to do that.  For some reason it had a greenish tint to it.  I think it was probably the cocoa she used, but I was never sure.  She was always frying something, or boiling something.  Seems like parsnips were cooked more than potatoes.  I just figured out the other day that parsnips are actually very good.  Lagree's had some on the mark down shelves and I bought them and brought them home.  I peeled them, boiled them and then sauteed them in butter.  Yep!  Parsnips are now on my eating list.  They have a sort of sweet, nutty taste and I really like the browned parts.
There were 5 in the family.  Mother, Father, son, son and daughter.  The oldest son was already grown and gone when I met the daughter.  The father just farmed.  He planted things and harvested things and fed his pigs and butchered his pigs.  I never knew him to ever have a friend.  I heard rumors that they had been in a car wreck right after they were married and the mother had brain damage and the father felt guilty.
The daughter only wore jeans and flannel shirts.  Her shirt pocket was always bulging with baseball cards she collected.  Same with the pockets on her jeans.  I never saw her in anything else.  When the mother needed to go to town, she and the daughter would mount their stick horses and ride the 6 or 7 blocks into the grocery store.  I never knew either of them to ever ride in the pickup the father used for hauling his produce to market.
The house was sturdy and very well built.  I expect it is probably still standing.  I forgot to look last time I was home.  It had no indoor plumbing and that was not unusual.  All the houses on Strong Street had the out house going on.  Theirs was the worst though.  It consisted of a shed in the corner where two rows of chicken houses met.  A big hole had been dug and a metal wash tub with a hole cut in the center had been turned upside down over said hole.  The proverbial Sear and Roebuck Catalog was at the ready.  Man, I have been in some scary places in my life, but that one was the scariest thing I had every seen.  There was no way in the world that I could ever bring myself to even go inside that let alone pull my britches down and crawl on that tub.  No way in hell!  Never had to pee that bad!
The grandma lived in town in a big house with a bathroom and running water and all that good stuff.  The  brother went to live with grandma leaving just the 3 of them on Strong Street.  When I was 17 we moved away and I never heard of them again.  Years later I heard that the daughter had married and had a couple kids.  The mother died and then the father.  The daughter died when she was 50.  I often wondered how their life went.  They were just such isolated folks back then, but looking back no ones life really touched anyone elses.
We all lived on Strong Street until we left.  I sometimes wonder if mine was the only life that is changed by that little dirt road.  I never heard my sisters ever talk about it.  Was it because they were too young, or in Josephines case, too old?  Did that life shape me for who I am today, or did I escape?  Who knows.  I do know I take solace in the girl I was back then and I think she is buried some where beneath my callous exterior.  When I drive down that street now, I can not recognize the places, but when I close my eyes at night I can see the stars, hear the cougar down on the river, and I can feel the hot, humid air on my bare arms.

I am home!

Probably just lucky that damn hog didn't eat me!

Thinking back to the "good old days" is mostly just a matter of perception.  Today I am remembering Irene who lived next door.  She is the one that slipped on the trailer tire....oh wait.  I may not have told you that little story.  See, back in that time dad had horses and they were used to pull trailers, hay racks, corn wagons and mainly eat everything in sight that was green.  So this one trailer (and I can not for the life of me remember what it was called.) that was just a box and dad could put side boards on it so it held more, or leave one of the side boards off and we would pick dry ears of corn and toss them in the trailer.  The board on the one side was so when we tossed it, the ear of corn would bounce back into the trailer.

So one day the trailer was just setting there and 4 of us girls decided we wanted to "drive the trailer" to town.      The way we accomplished this was one girl got on each tire, hung on to the side, and walked on the tire causing it to roll.  Looking back, I am pretty sure it would have been a lot easier to just walk into town and leave the trailer set, but they do not call them the "good old days"  for nothing.  It was indeed a time of innocence!  Oh, and did I mention that the tail gate and the front tail gate (please do not ask me to explain why the front gate was called a front tail gate.  I am just here to relay the story!)  were held in place by a steel rod which came to end with a very sharp point?   It had to be sharp to go through the hole in the bed that held the tail gate and the front tail gate in place.  There, the scene is set.

So I got on one wheel, Irene on another, Delores (Irene's sister) on one, and I forget who was on the fourth.  Usually it was steered by whoever was driving the horses.  Pull on the left rein and the trailer went left.  Pull on the right and it  went right.  Pull back on both reins and the horses stopped and this stopped the wagon.   We had none of those finery's!   We had only our feet.  We knew if we wanted to go left it would be necessary for the two people on the left side of the wagon to walk backwards so the left wheels would not turn.  We were so busy testing our theory and celebrating our genius that we forgot what we were doing and Irene's foot slipped off the wheel..  The only thing that stopped her from falling off was the steel rod buried in her thigh.  I remember very little of the particulars of that afternoon.  I know there was a lot of screaming.  A lot of cussing and a hurried trip into Hutch in some body's old car.  I do remember seeing her leg and the wound from that rod.  What is uppermost in my mind is the amount of yellow fat that was exposed.  Man that was gross!

We all stood around looking at the offending trailer and you should know we got in more trouble over that then about anything we had done before.  We were lectured for hours about the hazards of playing on the trailer.  But we were determined that there must be a better way to get around than to walk.  Next came a metal 55 gallon barrel (I think that is right).  Hop up on that and start walking and the barrel, of course rolled.
         
Close your eyes and picture that!  The faster you walked the faster the barrel rolled.  Best part was, there was no stopping that damn thing.  The only way to escape the rolling barrel was to jump off of it!  If you could do that and land in the soft dirt of a field or ditch you were very lucky.  Believe me when I say, I was never very lucky.  After you leapt off the barrel  it continued it's journey without you and usually there was someone in it's path that was going to get bowled over.

Another favorite past time was pig pen jumping.  I know that does not sound intriguing to you, but listen!  Mr. Reinke raised pigs.  He had pens in back for each pig.  They all were joined in a row; the pens, not the pigs..  Each pig had it's own house which was kind of an upside down "v" roof and about 8 feet long.  What we liked to do was start at one end of the lot on the first roof and leap to the second roof without falling in the pig pen.  Now I know this does not sound like fun to you, but remember, we did not have television, the only radio was WSM Nashville Grand Ole" Opry on Saturday night,   and the chances of getting a new brother or sister was a lot better than the chances of getting a board game to play!  And we had rules.  Someone was always designated as the one to run for help if somebody slipped and the hog attacked them.  Luckily no one actually fell into the pen, but the old sow was there grunting and hoping!

After dark we played "kick the can, if we had a can.  If we had a can it usually meant we had eaten that day.   To say that we grew up on the wrong side of the tracks would have been an understatement and to say the people on Strong Street were "strange"  would have really been stretching reality.  Strong street and the people who lived there were what made me who I turned in to today.  I never tire of remembering my childhood home.  The last time I went back to Nickerson and Strong Street, it had all changed.  My house was gone and in it's place was a double wide trailer.  Reinke's, Smith's and Hank Windiate's houses were deserted as was Goodrick's and Ayres.  I am sure by now they are either gone or replaced.  But that does not concern  me.  They are still in my mind.  They will always be in my mind.

Sometimes I think I may have selective memory.  Maybe we weren't poor, but I am thinking that 7 of us living in a 2 bedroom house could have been a clue.  But we all grew up and did not starve.  When we left Nickerson, Mother left the 3 legged kettle we heated wash water in for so many years.  She vowed that our new home would have a hot  and cold running water and one of those indoor bathrooms.  Know what?  She was right!