She was born in Indiana at the beginning of the twentieth century.  Of course, I wasn't around then, so I'm taking her word for it.

Whenever I think of my grandmother, I remember the stream of yellow sunlight coming through the window when I'd wake up in the morning.  I'd be lying in the bed in the side bedroom.  No heat seemed to get into that room because there was a heavy wooden door between us and the wood stove.  I'd snuggle down into the feather bed and pile all the quilts on top of me.  I'd be warm and cozy and I didn't want to get up and have my toes tickle that cold wood floor. 

My grandmother didn't like me sucking my thumb.  She was always trying one method or another to break me of the bad habit.  She put all sorts of awful tasting liquids on my thumb and finger.  I'd just suck it off and merrily suck away through the night.

One day Grammaw's father came to visit.  He was a cranky old man, and he complained about the eight children running around the place.  "Mildred," he said.  He always called her Mildred because that was her name.  "Mildred, why do you have so many children?"

I think that was probably the days before you could buy birth control products at the corner pharmacy.  In fact, I think that was probably before the days of corner pharmacies. 

Grammaw caught one of the boys as he ran in the back door on his way out the front and told him,

"Go tell all the other boys to keep running in here like you've been doing.  Have them run in over and over because your Grampa wants to know how many children I have."

So the boys did just as they were told, and Mildred's Dad went home that day thinking his daughter had a couple dozen children, at least!

I don't remember my Grammaw ever going to church.  At her funeral, though, the church was packed with people.  I believe my Grammaw had a love and respect for God, and she did whatever she had to do to take care of her responsibilities.  I know that I've had a deep love and feeling for God from an early age.  I can remember my Grammaw talking about the man upstairs.  I always knew she was talking about God and not one of my uncles (who slept in the attic).

One of my favorite memories of my grandmother is when she'd feed the chickens.  My grandmother worked very hard in a family with not much money and a lot of mouths to feed.

We would bring our Cocker Spaniel, Puddles, with us when we visited my Grammaw.  Puddles loved chickens, and she would chase them all over the yard.  Grammaw would chase him with a broom and try to keep him from running the chickens to death.  We depended on the chickens for eggs, and we only ate one of them on rare occasions, like when Grammaw didn't catch Puddles with the broom. 

My grandmother baked and cooked most foods from scratch.  I never knew where she got the scratch, but I knew it was hard to come by.  She had a cow, and we drank fresh cows milk after she skimmed off the fat.  Then she'd take the fat and make butter out of it.  It was like magic when the liquid fat would miraculously change into a solid. 

One day Grammaw was making a bunch of pies.  We had company and there were lots of people there.  Just when all my uncles and aunts came, we would have a crowd of people, plus all my cousins.  I tugged on Grammaw's skirt to get her attention, and asked, "Grammaw, when you finish with the pies, would you bake the leftover crust with sugar and cinnamon?"

Grammaw stopped talking to the tall person next to her to assure me, "Yes, I will.  Now run along."

Later I came back to fetch my crust, and there wasn't any.  "Where's my pie crsut?"

"There was enough dough to make another pie, so there was no leftover crust," she said. 

I was heartbroken because she had promised me.  Now I realize that she had to stretch every bit of flour as far as she could because wheat was something they didn't grown on their farm. 

When my Dad was fourteen, my Grammaw got tuberculois.  That was the days before medicine had an effective treatment for the disease.  So Grammaw had to go to a sanatorium becuase TB is very contagious, especially to children.  Sometime around then, she had one of her lungs taken out. 

When I was three, we went to live with my Grammaw at the farm that my Dad had bought for her.  My Dad was overseas in the army, my baby sister had just died, and our trailer had burned.  Grammaw took us in and we were part of the family. 

Grammaw didn't have water in the house unless somebody went out to the pump and filled up a bucket with some.  She didn't have a toilet in the house, if you don't count that white porcelin pot that she kept under her bed. 

Grampa was there, too, but Grammaw did all the work.  He would sit in his chair and watch wrestling on television.  She'd even untie his shoes and take them off for him. 

Grammaw started the fire in the cooking stove in the kitchen.  Then she'd cook dinner for more mouths than she had food.  Afterwards, she'd heat the water on that stove to wash the dishes.  We have a big pan on the table, and she'd pour scalding hot water over the dishes after they were washed.