More about the first house

Pat 

The lilac bush at the corner came from the old Sodergreen ranch. Mom and Mickey dug them up and transplanted them, one at what was by that time the bunkhouse and one at our house.

That's Corinna standing in front of it. She must have been around two years old.

The stairs went up to the attic where Mom and Wanda and Gay went to explore one time. All they found was a nest of hornets and no one ever went back up there that I know of.

The corner was the outside of the kitchen. I loved that old kitchen and always wanted one like it.

The well was just to the left of where Corinna is standing, where we kids pumped water for the house. 

The Milk Cow

Bev

 

Looking back through the veils of time, I remember when daddy acquired a milk cow. She was gentle Guernsey we named Lady. Early in the morning, before work, daddy would walk out to the pasture and find her. He'd cut a willow branch along the way and swing it, sometimes slapping her gently along the flanks as she ambled back to the barn. Occasionally, my sister and I, and sometimes one of our younger brothers, would go with him, our bare feet getting soaked by the dew on the grass. The sounds of frogs  croaking, along with the meadow larks singing and blackbirds trilling was music to my ears.
The sun would rise up over the horizon, just a sliver at first then jump up like a giant orange ball and fill the land with pale yellow sunlight that warmed the earth.
Lady would go into the milk barn, as we called it, chewing her cud as she went straight to her stall. She knew good grain was waiting for her. Daddy would put the kickers on her so she couldn't kick over the milk bucket, then caution us to be quiet when he began milking.
The swishing sound of the milk going into the bucket was a comforting sound, somehow, just as the smell of the milk barn, with its mixed scents of grain, hay and cow manure was comforting. To this day, I like the smell of cows and hay and grain, the smells mixing together like a comforting potpourri.
After he'd milked her dry, daddy would clean Lady''s teats and bag and turn her out to pasture again. He'd then pour some of the milk into a pan for the barn cats, and head home with the rest of the milk, where mom would strain it through a cloth into gallon jars. That was the beginning of the day.
The picture provided by Morguefiles

Kitchen in the First House

Pat

The photo is one of us in front of the first house we lived in when we moved to the ranch. It was a big old log house with only four rooms.

There was a big wood burning stove on the north wall of the kitchen, with a hutch on the west and a dry sink on the south. In the center stood a large table with drawers in it where we had our meals. Those things hardly covered half the room.

There was a linoleum in the middle of the room but the outside edges were painted wood and splintery. Charlie was crawling then and Mom had to keep overalls on him to help keep splinters out of his knees.

The well was outside the south window, which is a story for another time. It was a good, solid old house and left many good memories in my mind.

Going to School

Bev

 

My older sister and brother used to have to walk up around the bend in the road where it followed the Big Laramie River. They would cross the big bridge then go up a small hill, which we dubbed The Little Hill, there to meet the bus.
I remember sitting on the porch in a swing daddy put up for me and watching them walk down the road. Pat was so pretty with her long, brown hair hanging down in ringlets. She wore a pretty pink jacket with a hat to match. Jim wore a shirt and jeans with suspenders. I wanted to be walking with them, but was too young for school. But I got to hear the Meadow Larks and Blackbirds singing throughout the day. I got to spend time with mom as she baked bread, swept and mopped the kitchen floor and tidied up the house. I got to spend the whole day with no worries.
Then around three o'clock, I would wait for them to come back, down the Little Hill, across the river bridge and back around the bend. That was one day that would be repeated over and over again until the bus began picking we children up at the house.
These are some of my first memories of the ranch, the simple life we lived and the love we had for that life and for each other.