The old farmhouse

My mom had 16 children, 8 boys and 8 girls. We were raised on a nice farm. There was plenty of play space for us. We had a big back porch and a smaller front porch. There were two furnaces, both were coal fired. One was in the kitchen and mom used that for baking. The other one was in the living room and that heated the upstairs and of course the living room. We used to pick apples from the orchard and then put them in the top of the furnace till they got soft. MMM... they were good! The kitchen stove was something like one of the stoves Country Cupboard had on display, except it wasn't fancy. Just practical and black. We used to love to sit behind it when we came in from the cold. We didn't have a refrigerator, we had a pantry. There wasn't any heat in there and that's where we stored leftovers, etc. As you can imagine with a house full of children like that, there wasn't often leftovers. We had a basement, but we seldom went down there. We had an outhouse! NOT COMFORTABLE! We didn't have a telephone.

Our dining room had a buffet and a china closet. They would sell for big bucks today if they were still around. Our table was extra long to accommodate all of us. When we got company we would hide the kids gloves, etc. in the buffet so they couldn't leave. Of couse, after a while one of the adults would get angry and we had to hand over the hidden goods. At first, there was only a door between our kitchen and dining room. I still remember my grandpa coming one day and cutting out this BIG hole in the wall then it was more like one big room.

Some of my fondest memories are of picking berries on the berry hill. We used to have to walk a ways and then either vault over a creek or walk through it to get there. There was a tree close to where we would cross. We called it our "Monkey Tree". My older brothers carved all of our initials somewhere in that tree. Another thing we used to do for fun was to find a branch, cut a nick in it, tie string on it and go fishing. I don't think I ever caught anything, but it was fun walking!

Mom made the most delicious blackberry pot pie. That's one of the reasons we enjoyed picking berries! Oh, to sit down to a feast like that with my mom again!

There were four bedrooms upstairs and a closet. There was an attic also and we used to play soldier up there. Of course the older ones were the big shots and ordered us little ones around. Still, it was fun.