
Ruth, Reed, Rosalin
Our house seemed big when I was a little kid, there were un-used rooms upstairs. I first remember sleeping in the room next to the livingroom. I think it could have been the parlor at one time. Later, when Reed and I were older, we each had a bedroom upstairs. My bedroom window was the upstairs window in front of the house while Reed's window looked out in back. There was another empty room upstairs with the little balcony that came out on the roof of the front porch. There was another odd little room with a window facing west and in there was Dad's big scary elk head hanging on the wall. At night, that elk head was especially scary with it's shiny glass eyes staring out from in the dark. I didn't like the doors opened to those empty rooms when I was on my way upstairs to bed.


I recall that Reed & I were left home alone quite a few times tending ourselves while Mom was uptown or visiting girl friends. Mom had lots of friends and she sang in a trio. Mom must have thought we were old enough to tend ourselves. (I remember Mom telling that she and her brothers were left home to tend themselves when they were little too. They rode their tricycles through the house, banging up the mop boards something awful. They also went swinging on the kitchen cupboard doors pretending to be Tarzan.) We had fun but we did stupid things and got spanked when Mom came home. One time we found a mushy, half rotten apple on the grass by the front porch. We thought it probably fell down from Heaven and it should be thrown back up to Heaven. Reed picked it up & took it in the house where he threw it up, time after time, splattering up Mom's wallpaper in the livingroom. We got spanked!
We found boxes of old stuff on the floor in the empty room upstairs! Mom's satin wedding dress and her yellow satin party dress attracted our attention. We sat on them and slid down the stairs lickedy-split. That was great fun! We also snooped in Mom & Dad's closet in their bedroom before Christmas and found everything Santa was bringing. That's was more fun than Christmas morning.
Eventually we got a baby sister, Ruth! Ruth says she remembers laying in her new-born baby bed and crying when Reed sprinkled "Ivory Snow" laundry detergent flakes all over and they got in her eyes and made them hurt. Mom left us home to tend Ruth before she walked. Ruth crawled around and little poop balls fell out of her diaper so Reed wrapped them in toilet paper like little presents and put them up in the cupboard with the dishes. Ruth was a pest, we thought, so we tied her hands and feet with Dad's red hankies and left her in the bedroom out of the way.
Fortunately, we didn't have any really bad accidents except for time when we were babysitting our next little baby sister, Gayla. I was only 10 or 11 at the time and Reed was 2 years younger. We didn't really understand how dangerous it was to have baby diapers and clothes sitting in a pile on the stove next to the burner while we were heating her baby bottle in a pan of water. The diapers caught on fire, so in the panic, we called Margaret Christofferson, the neighbor across the street, who didn't like Mom. The fire was put out but Mom wasn't happy about who we called to help!
Can you see the "rascal" look in Reed's face? Aunt Emma showed up with her camera one day while we were home alone. She found a bedspread & hung it as a background then sat us on the piano bench for our photograph. Actually, Reed was the main rascal, he did a lot of crazy little things such as hit the white ivory piano keys with a stick, leaving the edges all chipped & ragged.
(Years later I replaced the beat up ivory key covers with new-looking used ivory I bought on the internet.) Mom's collection of 78 rpm phonograph records were shattered into bits & pieces when Reed rolled them across the room at high speeds. He must have thought it was great fun when they crashed into the walls and broke...I was the innocent by-stander.