One of the big things in my life was Harvest time when the thrashing machines came.  We did not have any wheat.  However, Papa would sometimes go help the neighbors at thrashing time.  It was a very fascinating thing for me to see a thrashing machine go down the road, that big old engine that seemed to me to have very wide wheels with cleats on them.  It was steam self powered and had a piston on the side and would go chug, chug, chug with the cylinder, piston rod and big wide fly wheel on the side.  That was really something.  It was quite an experience for me!  The field where they set up the thrasher was on the Edwards place North of us.  I remember watching the thrashing machines pull in and set up.  They would pull the separator in and set it up.  Then they would back off and face the separator with the engine and belt up with the long belt and start her up.  It seemed to me that the belt was a block long! it.  I think that I acted as water boy and carried water for the men.  All the flying chaff would get down my neck and make me itch.  I remember playing like I was a thrashing machine engine running around working my arm and hand in imitation of the mechanism of the engine.  I remember how the tracks of the thrashing machine on the road in front of our house fascinated me.  I would go out and walk in the tracks. 

                                                                                               

I wore overalls.  I think I can remember having one suit.  We took a bath in a wash tub.  To have had a modern bathroom would have been a novelty.  We never had one up until 4 years after we were married.  Virgie and her family took their baths in a tub like we did.  When you were small, you could sit in it but when you outgrew it you had to stand in it.

 

I used to be interested in wild animals.  One time on the Oklahoma farm, I caught a ground squirrel.  I kept him loose in our house.  I got him tame enough that I got him to take a grain of oats out of my hand.  (We must have raised oats too).  He would set there and peel it and eat the kernel.  One time a screen door slammed on him and broke his back and killed him.  I would also catch a rabbit once in a while, (a cotton tail),  and keep him as a pet.  There were not any jack rabbits, at least I did not see any of them.  While I was over on the Edwards place during thrashing, I thought I saw a rabbit laying in some stubble and I made a grab at him and he turned out to be a big rat.  He set his teeth right on the end of my index finger and would not let go.  I had to take my other hand and pry him loose.

 

I really can not remember anything about Uncle Zenas and Aunt Caroline at an early age .  We always had pictures of Uncle Zenas so I remember what he looked like.  He often wrote me letters which I don't think I ever answered.   

 

When Ruth was born, I was shunted off to Smiths to stay there for the day while Ruth was born at our home.  I thought it rather peculiar, when I came back home, I had another little sister.

 

There were times when Papa had to go to Guthrie either to sell Cotton or bring a bale home or do some business at Guthrie.  I don't know what this was but I remember one time he was there, of course that was an all day trip and he would get home late at night.  I remember the cows got in the corn and Mama heard them so she left me to watch Mabel and hold baby Ruth in my lap while she went out to take care of the cows in the corn.

 

I remember one time when Papa was gone, and Mamma and I were sitting around the heating stove which was in the corner of the room.  We heard a scraping sound under the wall paper back in the corner behind the stove.  One of us got the poker and we punched a hole in the paper where the noise was coming from and got out a big long centipede.  It was not a little thing but probably 9 inches long.  We killed it with the poker.