Playmates

Jerry and Kathy

Growing up in the country as my brother (Jerry) and I did, we didn't have a lot of close neighbors to play with.  There were not any little girls, so I played with the boys and didn't think anything about it.

Actually, the best playmate was my brother and we  played  together all of the time.  We were good buddies, Mother said that we didn't fight and never had bad words to say to each other.  We were all we had and were only 18 months apart, so we grew up close and stayed close as playmates.

Kathy

I can remember Jerry got a tricycle (blue) before I did.  He got his for Christmas and rode it in the house.  Around and around he went, but I didn't have one to ride.  That just didn't work for me!  Then came my birthday in January.  I  got my red tricycle and then there were two of us riding around the inside of the house.  We banged holes in the woodwork in every doorway that we traveled through, but Mother didn't say a word about it.  Secretly I think she was glad to see Spring come that year.

Once outside we could ride up and down the driveway, through the mud puddles.  My doll got to ride with me.  Jerry had to put his new holster and cap-gun on to ride his.  We played house and cowboys and Indians a lot and spent a lot of time playing with miniature tractors, wagons and farming machinery.  We made little mounds of hay to put in our pretend barns, anything that Daddy would have done we did.

We had playhouses in old chicken houses that we cleaned out. Mother would give us old cast off things that just delighted us.  We made curtains out of feed sacks, had old dishes with cracks, washed tin cans.  We even used to stir up flour and water, put in the sun to dry then pick strawberries and put on the dried flour and eat it and think it was a great food.

One time I wanted to have a play house in the back of the barn and Daddy told me I couldn't because the Milk Inspector wouldn't allow it. Determined to have my play house, I went to check when the inspector had been there last and told Daddy he wouldn't be there for a while, so Daddy told me I would have to move my stuff by the end of the week.  I was cleaning out a spot while Daddy was milking and there were cobwebs hanging from where I wanted a light bulb, so I took a metal spoon with a wooden handle and I cleaned out the cobwebs, but in the process I hit the socket and blew a fuse. Everything went dark and the milker stopped! Daddy called my name and I knew I was in trouble.  I answered him and said, "Here I am."  Daddy came in to make sure I was alright and then took me by the hand to the fuse box.  After he inserted a new fuse, we went back to the cows that had milkers on them, then to my to be playhouse to see what I had done.  He explained to me that if that spoon hadn't had the wooden handle I could have been killed.  After that, I decided I didn't need a play house with electric lights!!