HERE HE IS

Our Great Little Silver

Ole Silver was one of the greatest little chums a guy could have.   This picture shows more than the four cousins or the pony. 

To the right, behind Silver with Milton, Donnie and Yvonne is the old stone house.  The one they lived in when they came in 1900.  To the left is the other stone house.  They were each just one room.  The second one on the left, had originally been farther to the right, toward the other one.  When they came, it was a half dugout, in the area where we had a garden.  But Grandpa and the boys or men, had dug it out and rebuilt it where is now sets.

When we moved there on January 31, 1941, the square room had no roof.  But had an octagonal wooden wall around it.  The walls were six or eight feet away from the stone walls and was covered with wood shingle roof.
Those are the two buildings involved in the evening of the Halloween party and the ghost.  When we moved there the wood walls and roof were in pretty bad array.  Within a year we had torn down the wood roof and walls and put on the roof you see in this picture.  Just on the outside east wall, there was a pile of old lumber and some pieces of corrugated iron roofing.  In front of the Stone house is the cistern, right behind me.

Daddy had a pair of little rat terriers.  Oh, they loved to hunt mice and rats.  As we began pulling those boards apart, there was plenty of activity and fun.  Immediate caution sized our throats when Daddy lifted the end of sheet iron and an eighteen inch rattle snake struck at him.  I guess we didn't imagine at that time what was in store for us all.