Places our family lived (part 1)

My first memory of a home  is a place in Greensburg referred to as "the big house." We lived there until I was about 5 years old. From my perspective, it WAS a big house. My recollection is of stairs coming up to the porch.  The stairs were big enough to use for photographing the 8-10 children who would attend birthday parties. The front door opened into the living room and there was a room off to the side that I think was a play room.  The dining room was toward the back of the house, and the kitchen was off to the side of the dining room. Bedrooms and the bathroom were upstairs.  Washing machine was in the basement. (I started to say "laundry facilities," but the washer was in the basement, and the dryer was outside!  Good old Kansas sunshine and wind.)

We lived there during the time that we (Mom, Ginger and I) had scarlet fever.  The house was quarantined and all of our toys that could not be fumigated were burned.  That, of course, was all of the stuffed toys.

 We had a record player in the living room, I think it had to be cranked with a handle.  Daddy taught me the words to "Pistol Packing Mama" and "Sioux City Sue."  I am sure there are others, but I still remember the words to those. I would sing "Pistol Packing Mama"(substituting "Katherine" for "Mama")through the vents from the upstairs (at Daddy's instigation) and Mom would pretend to be mad and slap the steps as though she was coming up the stairs.) I would run to Daddy for "protection!"

We had a pony named Jip, or maybe Gyp...I never saw the name in print and I couldn't read.  He would bite and I was afraid of him.  Ginger, however, was not.  A family story is that when she was riding him (actually, Daddy was leading him) and he bucked, she just held on and said, "you won't let me fall, will you Daddy?"

We also had a dog, Lindy, that I think was mostly husky.  Daddy built a little cart for me to ride in, and he would fix it so that Lindy would pull me.  Daddy would go to the end of the block and call Lindy, and I would ride merrily along.  Lindy got into George Welch's chicken house and we did not have a dog after that.

Daddy had his own business as Perry Welding Service.  I don't know any of the particulars as to why we moved, but after Roy was born in 1945, I expect that Mom was worn out with three children under five, and that big house, and carrying all the laundry from the upstairs to the basement and then up the basement stairs to hang out on the line, then back upstairs to the bedrooms. Remember, only cloth diapers were in  use then.

We moved into a trailer house (it was NOT called a mobile home!) that was probably about the size of a travel trailer.  And then we moved to El Paso, Texas.

This effort is really getting my memory bytes into order!