City Mouse Visits Country House (conclusion)

Being city suburbanites you may wonder what would occupy us other than sittin' 'round watching the grass grow during a trip to Grandma's house out in small town USA. Oh, there were many new adventures in our summer path ... most of which were purely invented with a good 'ole imagination! Squirrel! Did someone mention squirrel? Oh, I do recall on my first trip to grandma's that she went about fix'in us a squirrel dinner the first night we arrived. Being that she wasn't too sure how we'd take to that idea, and also being that she wanted to fix a tasty meal to please her son (my pop), she prepared an alternate meat entree of country style sausage patties too. I quickly informed my dad that I was opposed to eating anything in the rodent family and promptly opted for the sausage (I have a feeling she may have used the same black iron skillet for both meats now that I think longer).

My grandparent's home was a very modest three bedroom one bath place probably built around 1900. Now being that Mom and Dad got one bedroom, Grandma and Grandpa had one, my brothers once again got to share a double bed in the third room ...that left me (pouting with my lip out) to sleep in a single bed out on the back porch (it was enclosed with windows and screens). Directly next to my bed was the cellar door in the floor... and directly behind the head of my bed was a window to my brothers room ... not one curtain was hung on said porch... To my dismay, there would be an occasional thunder and lightning storm roll through at night. The visions in my head of that cellar door creaking open, my brothers' hands often popping through the window to scare me, and the flashes of lightning were enough to give a gal a heart attack! I also afforded every mosquito a free meal at night on any uncovered body parts and would frequently awake with my eyelids swollen shut or my bottom lip out about three times it normal size from bites.

Come Sunday morning we headed to church. Now in a town of 800 everybody knows everybody and their business. So as would be the NORM, the minister would announce that we were visiting and make us stand up before the congregation. There would even be a blurb in the local paper about our arrival.

For a leisurely Sunday after dinner stroll, it just wouldn't be complete without a trip to the local graveyard to checkout the headstones and imagine what the occupant's lives were like. Many were from the 1800's and there were rows and rows of baby graves ... and off in one corner we found a huge monument size marker for the burial of a horse. These haunted walks would be fodder for my brothers' imaginations to spook the life out of me at night as I slept near their bedroom window out on the porch.

Now since Grandma was a lady from a different era, and being that her laundry facilities which consisted of an electric wringer type washer (down in the creepy earthen cellar) ... and a clothes line outside, we opted to use the laundromat. It was another excursion to pass the time, so come evening, we would load up our car with dirty laundry and head two blocks to town. For fun, we would walk through the thousands of crickets hanging around the entrance, watch the dryers spin, grab a Dr. Pepper float at the DQ, and pitch pennies all in the same evening.

One summer the town opened a public swimming pool; heaven to me! This would be the only way to cool off during our hot sticky stay. Off to the pool my brother's and I would walk. Swim to our heart's content ... and trek back home. As a young girl, my mother always taught me to put TP down on the seat in a public restroom. This is a fine idea unless your legs are still wet from swimming. Down I sit ... and out I go ... yes, walking home through town with toilet paper stuck to my backside. To make matters worse, my brothers were walking behind me and never once mentioned that I had ten yards of paper trailing behind my behind!

Oh, the fun of it all ... my children have gone on many nice vacations, but I bet they never had to use their imaginations as much as we did on a trip to Grandma's house.