Page 174 - REALLY What A time Book IX

REALLY SO WHAT
What A Time

GRAND PARENTS

The coal shed had a treasure of National Geographic
Magazines. Every year from 1919 to 1950 and later years.
They were cool to look at and had the only naked pictures of
people I’d ever seen.

The septic tank was on the other side of the house near the
sun room. In between there was a coal shed, kitchen, the
bathroom and sun room off to the side, dining room, with a
pantry with stairs down into the earthen cellar, living room and
bedroom. The pantry held food stuffs, and Grandpa’s medical
supplies. The cellar was for canning storage, and the milk
separator. That’s where Uncle Banatyne knocked himself out
when he slipped going down the stairs. The stairs treads, all
over the house were very narrow, and dangerous.
Upstairs there was a single long room with a couple of
dividers. At the top of the very steep stairs, were two bed
rooms, neither had doors. Mom and Pop slept in the more
separated one. The one with more privacy.

Both of those rooms had flooring. For Joe and me there was a
double bed at the end of this unfinished long room. There
were a couple of wooden slats that we’d walk down to get to
the bed. We never stepped off the slats. Had we, we would
have ended up falling through the ceiling into the kitchen. The
bed had a straw mattress and a horse hair blanket. It had a
permanent scoop to it, from the dozen children that grew up
sleeping in it.

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