Grandma Carol, Gus and Miss Kitty

I wrote this story because I thought it would make a good children book. My mother lived with us for a while our dog Gus would get up in the chair with her and mom cat Miss Kitty would also get up on her lap and all three would fall alseep in her big pink chair. We did find Miss Kitty by the side of the road and brought her home for mom. So this is for all her grandkids and great grandkids and great great grandkids


Love you mom

 

Grandma Carol, Gus and Miss Kitty

Grandma Carol lived alone in her pink house and she was a happy little  lady. She would get up every day, fix her breakfast, clean the house and then take a long nap in her big fluffy pink chair. One day, when Grandma Carol woke up, from her nap, she said to herself, “I think I would like a dog”. I will feed him, love him, and give him a good home. So grandma got up out of her big fluffy pink chair, picked up her purse, and walked down to the animal hospital. When she walked through the door of the animal hospital she met Doctor Ernie. Doctor Ernie took care of the animals at the hospital and he loved all the animals very much. What can I help you with Grandma Carol, asked Doctor Ernie. I would like to adopt a dog, would you have one I could take care of? Yes I do replied doctor Ernie. Doctor Ernie went into another room and brought back a small brown and white puppy and gave it to Grandma Carol. This is the one, Grandma Carol said, I like this one, does he have a name? His name is Gus reply Dr. Ernie. Doctor Ernie got Gus ready to go home with Grandma Carol. He put Gus on a lease so Grandma Carol could walk him to his new home, So when Grandma got Gus home they was so tired, I think I will take a nap Grandma Carol said and she went and sat down in her chair. Gus jumped up beside her and they both went sound asleep in Grandma Carol’s big fluffy pink chair. Grandma Carol was so happy she had a new friend to love and take care of. She would get up every morning, fix her and Gus some breakfast, and then they would go for a walk. She would put Gus on his lease they would walk out the door and down the sidewalk. As they walked Gus would bark at cats, and cars. One day as they we’re walking, Grandma Carol heard something in the bushes and Gus started barking. Grandma stopped and listened, then she heard a sound, meow, meow. Grandma Carol took a peep in the bushes and she saw a little kitten. Grandma Carol picked up the little kitten and then she bent back down to let Gus look at the kitten. Gus and the kitten started to rub their noses together. Grandma Carol was so pleased that Gus and the kitten got along. As they walked home, Grandma Carol would ask the people she passes if they lost a kitten. But Grandma Carol did not find the owner of the little kitten so Grandma Carol continued home with the little kitten. When she got home, she gave the kitten a name, she called her Miss Kitty. Grandma Carol put Miss Kitty on the floor, she started to roll around and Miss Kitty and Gus started to play. Grandma Carol was laughing at Gus and Miss Kitty chasing each other throughout the house. It was time for lunch, and Grandma Carol fixed everyone something to eat. Grandma Carol was very happy she had two new friends to take care. So after lunch Grandma Carol went to sit in her big chair, Gus jumped up beside her, and Miss Kitty got up on her lap and they all fell asleep in Grandma Carol’s big fluffy pink chair.

   By Vivian Foote

Richard my Hero

A year before Richard passed away, I had the opportunity to thank him and to let him known I thought of him as my hero.
When we were kids we had went down to the creek to go swimming. It was very hot and it had been raining, and the creek banks were full and the water was swift. Richard was about 14 years of age and I was about 7. It seems like there were six of us kids down at the swimming hole that day. I do recall being told not to wade out, stay close to the bank. I was playing around and waded out to far, the water started carrying me down stream. As I struggling to hold my head up, I glanced over to my left and there was Richard running along the bank, he dove in and pulled me out of the water.
Nothing was ever said about that day, until last year. Richard had come down to his best friend Fran’s house, to stay a few days. I went up to Fran’s to see Richard, as I came through the door he came over and give me a hug and a kiss. We talked for a while and finely I said, you are my hero, and he looked at me kind of funny, like he didn’t know what I meant, I said you saved me from drowning when we were kids didn’t you? He looked at me and smiled as he said, “yes I saved your little ass.”
I will always remember those words, with that big grin on his face saying, I saved your little ass.
Thanks for the memories brother Richard, I love and miss ya.
Take the opportunity to let people know you love them, life is too short.


By Vivian Foote
July 29, 2011

The games we play

My brothers Jimmy, Richard and Leslie were always making something for use to play with. One day they build stilts out of the lumber that was left over from framing the house. My brothers could walk on them I was never any good at it I would just fall and skin my knees.
We used to find turtles and mark their back with paint and have turtle races.
We play cowboys and Indians. I used pokeberry one time to paint my face and come to find out, it did not wash off very easy. After we decided who was going to be the cowboys and who was the Indians then we would chase each other thru the wood and hills.
We had a gunny sack swing. You may wonder what that is, it is burlap sack filled with straw or leaves, and sometime we would fill it with old clothes. We might even have an old tire for a swing.
We would play tree top tag. We would go to a grove of young oak trees, climb to the top of the tree and get that tree a swaying back in forth till you could reach the other tree top and cross over to it and of course our neighbors would be there along with us to play.
Sometimes the boys would take us when they were going for a walk and we would go through some old home site that had been abandoned. We would find the old green glass jars they used for canning and maybe some tools laying around. We might have walked a mile or two, to these places. Never did anyone ever get a broken bone. We might have got stung by wasps or got cut by broken glass or step on a nail and scraped by barbed wire, but nothing serious.
We saw a lot of snakes, not one us of ever got bitten. We knew to side step or run if we saw one. I guess we had some common sense build in us.
Sometime the neighbors would come down and go swimming with us or play cowboys an Indians; we had a good time with them. We went to Everton school we rode the same school bus. They were the same age that we were.
Our favorite place to go in the summer was the swimming hole, we spend hours their cooling off.
This place holds a lot of good memories and stories.


By Vivian Foote
July 26, 2011

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