Our New Home

Richard and DuWayne Craft
setting on the front porch

The house dad built sat on a hill over looking a small valley, with a creek flowing at the base of the hills. The setting was beautiful. A winding dirt road led down to the house and the house sat, mid ways up the hill.
At one time it was the site of another home, which had burned down long ago.
When dad decided to built a house, my bother-law Dewey, helped out a lot. Dad used blocks to build our home, and some of the blocks he used were from buildings that had been torn down. They were different color, green, pink blue and white.
Well it was like this, dad was a brick layer, and he and my brother-law Dewey did some brick work in the area. They laid bricks and blocks in some of the schools in the surrounding area. Someone had given dad, some used blocks one day and he started building a stock pile of used and new blocks. This is what dad used to build our new home with. It was our job to clean the old concrete off the used blocks; they had to be clean before they could be reused.
One day we were sitting around cleaning off the blocks, and Richard is out in the yard picking up rocks when he let out a big cry, started yelling and jumping up and down, and with each yell, he got louder and louder saying something stung me, something stung me, something stung me, he took off running, finely someone was able to catch up with him and found out that he was stung by a scorpion. After mom and dad got him calmed down, everybody went back to work on the house.
This was a four bedroom home dad was building , it had a living room, kitchen & dinning area together, there was a plan for a bathroom but it never got put in. Mom and dad’s bedroom and the living room were the only rooms that were partitioned off and sheet rocked. Blankets hung between boys and the girls bedrooms. My sisters Lynda and I had our own bed, no more waking up with our sister’s feet in our faces.
We had no electricity or running water.
Dad had dug two wells at the bottom of the hill; we had to carry buckets down the hill to fetch the water and to bring it back up to the house.
We had kerosene lamps for light.
Heating and cooking was done on wood stoves.
Dad had to build a new outhouse, it had two holes, and we were up town now.
It was a grand place to live. There were trees to climb and big rocks to play on and a creek to swim in. It was a big Play ground for us kids.
Time was hard and tough but that seem to bring us closer.
We have a lot of good memories of this place.
My little brother DuWayne was born In March 1958
I believe this is the place where we all bonded together.

The log Cabin

When I was five and a half years old, mom and dad moved into a two room log cabin, with seven kids.
By this time my older sister Lenora, had married and my little brother had not been born.
The kitchen had a wood stove for cooking, an oak table, and my parent’s bed, and in the living room there was a rocker, couch, and two beds. Four girls slept in one bed, two at the top and two at the bottom. The boys slept in the other bed, two at the top and one at the bottom. Sound a little crowded, you better believe it was. It was not much fun waking up with your sisters toes in your face.
There was no running water or electricity. We had and out house, which set a little ways from the cabin and the well, was located in front of the house. My brothers would lower a rope down into the well with a bucket attached to it and pull up the cold water we needed to drink. This water was also used to wash, cook and clean with. In the summer they would place our milk in the bucket and lower it in the well to keep it cold.
Dad heated the log cabin with wood, in a potbelly stove, in the living room and a wood cook stove in the kitchen. Mom cooked a lot of meals on that old stove. In the winter we had to watch out for scorpions, which would come into the cabin where it was warm. We had to check our beds before going to sleep, our shoes, before putting them on, to make sure there were no scorpions on the wood when it was brought in. These scorpions were pretty ugly and had a powerful stinger and if you got stung it would really hurt.
The cabin must have been built in the 1920’s. It had concrete between the logs and it was not air tight. On the inside walls they had put up what they called builder paper. It looked like black roofing paper. If there was any black paper missing off the walls, we would break down cardboard boxes and nail them up, trying to keep the cold air out. There wasn’t any insulation in the cabin. The roof was black roofing paper with small slats of wood attached to the roof to hold the paper on.
We lived in that cabin for nearly two years before dad bought twenty acres and built a new house.
When we moved out of the log cabin, a family of ten moved in. It might of not have been the greatest place we ever lived in, but we were thankful to have a roof over our heads.
I realized it didn’t matter where we lived or what the places look like, because mom and dad always made it a home.
They love all of us, and we knew it.




Nov. 14, 2009
by Vivian Foote

Janice and the Goat

When the family would get together, they would often tell stories, about the family.
There was one I recall, it was about my sister Janice and my brother Les.
It seemed dad had a goat, given to him and this goat only had three legs. Dad thought the goat would make a good pet for the kids, but it turned out the goat wasn’t as friendly as dad thought. Even though he had three legs, he still could run very fast and he would chase everybody and try to butt them with his head.
Janice was extremely scared of him and he knew it.
Every time he would see Janice, he would take out after her and she would run like crazy, in the opposite direction.
One day when they were getting off the school bus, she asked the other kids if the goat was around , but no one saw him.
As they were walking home, out of nowhere that old goat appeared, when Janice, saw him she started running and the goat was right behind her . She ran all the way to house just screaming.
One evening she was in the kitchen setting the table for supper, my brother Les opened the screen door and let the goat in.
Les watched Janice as she turned around, saw the goat, and started running around kitchen table with the goat behind her, she was yelling and screaming at Les that she was going to kill him when she got hold of him.
She ran upstairs into a room and shut the door and just as the door closed the goat hit the door with a bang.
It was a short time afterward mom had dad get rid of the goat .


By Vivin Foote
Nov.1 2009