Home Sweet Home-EC Chron

Our little two-room house was called a “boxed” house, no framing, no sheetrock and no siding. The wallpaper on the inside would get wet when it rained and large “wrinkles” would run from the floor to the ceiling. Late at night, V. Allen and I would take a long needle and try to stab the mice running up and down the wrinkles!

The old-timers would refer to West Texas as the land where the “wind pumped the water” and the “cows cut the wood!” Near the windmill was a “well-house.” In the well-house was a fifty gallon water-barrel. When the barrel was full, the overflow ran through a pipe to a “pool.” The pool was stocked with goldfish and “waterdogs!”

Trees were few and firewood non-existent. Cow-chips were scarce, so we burned cotton seed, maize heads and black coal in our little “potbellied” stove. Mom had a cookstove fired by kerosene. Our light came from kerosene lamps.

There was no insulation in the walls or ceiling of our little house. The snow sifted through the cracks and formed little “drifts” on the floor and table. In March, the sand did the same.

One cold windy day, Dad made a special trip to town. He returned with a dozen rolls of heavy tar-paper. Starting at ground level, he literally wrapped the house in the black, sticky material! He nailed tacks through large, shiny disks to hold the paper to the wall. With his pocket knife, he cut the paper from the doors and windows. Now, we had a warm black shack with a tin roof!

The sweetest, most soothing sound in all the world was rain falling on that tin roof at night!