WE NOW HAVE MOVED: A CONTINUATION

Wouldn't it be good, if we found some old diaries or letters? If there are any, I don't remember hearing about it. How much money would it take to make that kind of move, with that many people and all their animals? Maybe they had to hang on with their toe nails until they got some crops planted, harvested, and sold. It wasn't until 1906 that they built the house. I don't know if they did it all at once, or in segments.

They must have pretty soon dug up the stones from the old dugout and built the stone building that sets there now. When we got there, the barn was down the hill south of the house. I remember it seemed pretty complex (to a boy of three). Under the stanchions and mangers I found a goose nest. It was full of feathers. The deeper I dug, the more eggs I discovered. I don't remember a flock of geese, but I know there was a flock. Maybe family members took them away, more likely the coyotes dined on them. There was one old gander who lasted a long time. He was a character we'll talk about later.

Thanks to Pallie! She has news from the past. Daddy told her that he and Mother, "were to move there and take over the duties of Grandpa, January 1, but Grandpa died prematurely on Christmas Eve." Pallie thought "prematurely" was a strange word to use for a man who was already 92 years old. I tend to agree. January 1, 1941, makes sense to me, because I always thought Donnie was not sitting alone -- the reason I needed to hold her as we drove. She would have been about 3 months, three weeks old.

When we moved in, Grand Ma's old black cast iron wood burning cook stove set at the east end of the long room in the main house. We had a four burner kerosene cook stove. They were all in a row. At the right end of those burners was the oven. I think Mother cooked on the wood burner for a while after we were there. Probably for heat in the room. But the first remodel job as spring came was to move the cast iron stove out and to cut a window opening directly behind where that stove has set. I remember how dark it was in that part of the room. The south wall of that room had two doors onto the porch with a window between them. So the window of the east door was the only light for that end of the room and there was a roof out over the porch to cut off some of the light.

The next project was to tear the porch off the two-roomer that set east of the cistern. Then that two room section was jacked up and sets of truck wheels were rolled under the building. The rooms were lowered onto beams attached to the frame work holding the wheels in place. The rooms were pulled a little distance to the southeast. There they were set down on foundation posts and stones, to become the feed bins for a new barn that would be built on in the near future.

It didn't occur to me at the time, but as an adult I finally realized that Daddy never did have just one job. He was a farmer with dairy cows. He had a four man shearing crew. They were gone about 4 weeks every spring shearing flocks of sheep on ranches through the Texas panhandle, the northeast corner of New Mexico, the southeast corner of Colorado, the southwest corner of Kansas, down across the panhandle of Oklahoma and home again. Then we had Papa's flock of 200 ewes to shear, the fleeces to tie and tamp into bags and ship to market. On the farm we had a feed binder and hay baler. In addition to our own work, we did custom work with those for neighbors and family. Daddy was also the finest of carpenters and cabinet maker. There were always outside work of that type calling him. And the constantly expanding projects of building improvements on the farm. And the bee hive inside the kitchen.