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We were cleaning the yard early that fall day. We had worked an entire morning, and part of the evening, digging the hole for the trash and cleaning the yard. We had dug a hole in the yard for the refuse, and had it nearly full. We had found trash near the basement of the house, and out in the back yard as well as tree cuttings, and debris that had blown in from all over the area. Dad and mom were raking the yard, as we picked up the trash, and it was looking really good. We lived about seven miles outside if Kennett in the countryside of Missouri.
We had a large house with four bedrooms, but you needed that with twelve children of varying ages and sizes. We also had an upstairs in the house, but the floor wasn't covered with wood floors. All of its flooring was just rafters, and among the rafters was electrical wiring for the house. Ronnie Lynn and I could walk across those rafters almost as easily as if we had floors. But you had to watch because the ceilings of the rooms downstairs were there as well. You could easily fall through the rafters to the downstairs below, but we were careful. Mom had told us not to be playing up there in the rafters of the house, but sometimes we did.
So we played mostly in the yard. There was plenty of room outside for us to play in. We had more than two acres with the house. We had room for a large garden which we planted every year, and also we had lots of Cottonwood trees to play in that suited us very well. In Cottonwood trees the leaves were huge, and you could make hats or even shelters for yourself in the rain. We also had chickens, which lived in their own coop out in the back of the house. Even though they had their own coop, we would search high and low for their eggs in the evening hours. And we had one dog. Dad said that he could not keep but one dog, because he couldn't afford to feed him very well.
We also had a storm cellar. There weren't very many storms in our area, but they did come around us sometimes, and Dad wanted us to be free of severe weather. We had lived in Arkansas, the year before we moved here and dad was still afraid of tornadoes. The last one we had lived through had taken the roof off of the house that we lived in. Dad did not want to be a part of that again. You see, we had no television, we lived way out in the country, and the only thing we had as a weatherman was our dad. But he didn't really want to be a weather man at all. He just wanted to live in a tornado free zone. That wasn't quite where we lived at all. We'd had several local storms in the area. But there were only a few severe storms which happened from time to time.
Anyway, our storm cellar was concrete. I don't know how they made it, but the roof was covered in concrete too. It had a small window in the back, and it even had a door. It was large enough to accommodate all of us at once. And it did not flood in the storm cellar. Water did not stay in the storm cellar; it drained out through a hole on the middle of the storm cellar. We were pretty happy about that.
Sometimes Ronnie Lynn and I would play mail carrier. Ronnie Lynn would ride his little tricycle up and deliver mail to me. He would come up to me with a piece of mail and say "here is your mail today" "he would also ask me, "how I was doing." We would also play house, Ronnie Lynn and I would be mom and dad and set up our little house in the storm cellar. Sometimes, when I was in the cooking mood I would make mud pies, and plates of food for Ronnie to eat. We made mud biscuits, and mud pancakes, and everything that we could think of in our little playhouse. It was the nicest and best place to play.
There was a small hill on the hilltop, and we really loved having that hill to play on. Sometimes, we would just put a stick inside of a rubber bicycle tire, or a car tire and just run with it to see how far we could go. It was lots of fun. Other times we would get our bicycle out. The bicycle had no chains on it, no pedals, but an iron bar on which to stand. We would stand on one side of the bicycle and ride down the hill on that bicycle. It felt like we were going thirty miles an hour on that bike just rolling down the hill.
But today Ronnie Lynn and I were jumping across the junk pile. We were using our rake and broom handles to jump with when I jumped across the pile. I didn't make it across the pile. My foot went down inside the junk pile and I crossed a can lid with my bare foot. I knew immediately something was wrong with my foot, because I had felt the sharp slice on the instep of my foot. I quickly pulled my foot up and looked at it, but Ronnie wasn't looking and I quickly walked to the inside back door of the house.
I found an old shirt that they were using for rags, and I covered my foot up with it, trying to stop the bleeding. I just sat inside the house wondering what I was going to do now. Well, after about thirty minute's mom and my sister came in. They had found me where I was at by following the bloody trail that my foot had left. They asked me what I thought I was doing there by myself with my foot bleeding. I did not want to tell them I was watching it bleed. But I told them I was doing nothing, just sitting there.
Well mom wrapped my foot up really good. We left for the doctor after mom and dad had applied kerosene onto a rag to clean out the cut and to stop the bleeding. They took me to the oldest doctor in town. You know it took seventeen stitches to sew my foot back together again. I had a scar for a long time, but you can't tell now that it was ever cut like that. They said I was lucky to have my foot still on since I had nearly cut it off. But I thank God, my mom and dad knew how to treat it.
Mom and dad finished cleaning up the yard that night but it was late when we covered the hole. I never did go back to the doctor to get the stitches taken out, Dad asked me if I wanted him to do it and he cut out the stitches for me. He cut the stitches right out with his scissors. I was healed and happy three weeks later. I went back to doing all the things I wanted to do again. Sometimes, I think I want to go back and see it again, but then I think no, I don't think so. I like my life now.
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