Grandma Thelma's house and the antic's that happened there...... Recipe four.

I don't know when but shortly after my Grandma Thelma's death we moved into her house.  I can remember the long hot summer days we spent there.  There was a set of twins the lived next to us, almost no one could tell them apart but I could and often wondered why no one else could, to me that didn't even look alike.  Their mom as a comfort to my mom, I think, they spent a lot of time together.  My "Auntie" visited a lot too, she isn't really my aunt, actually the cousin of my mom's cousin but she was/is "Auntie" to me.  We lived right next to a veterinarian on one side, the highway in front of the house, across the road was the stock yards, behind the house was the train tracks and behind it the fair grounds.  We lived on the outskirts of town, but now the house is gone and a pizza hut stand where it once stood right in the middle of a big growing town, but I digress. 

Between the house and the train tracks was a garden and a compost bin, it was a great structure of pumice blocks.  We weren't to get into it, but we did, mostly when we were playing hide and go seek.  I remember one day being out there when Silver got the idea the we should go to the fair grounds but there was a train in the way, idling on the tracks.  We decided we would crawl under the train en route to the fair grounds.  We climbed under the train but half way across the tracks we decided we would lay under the train in the cool and wait for it to drive away over us.  We laid really still under the train on the tracks, we was Silver, Red and I.  We laid there for what seemed like forever and finally lost interest in laying there, we decide to return to the house for mom to get us some water, yes a little kids we drank water and enjoyed it.  The Lord be praised that our patience didn't last as long as that train had to be stopped there.

One day mom and "Auntie" were in the house with Sister, she was a baby and didn't get to spend time out with us.  We were playing in the car in the front seat, we weren't to do that either, but that really didn't stop us.  We got the cubbie door open and there was a button to open the trunk in it.  Silver pushed the button and the trunk came open.  We got out of the car, closed the door and crawled into the trunk.  Red pulled the trunk door closed on us, we were stuck.  It was dark, hot and scary in the trunk.  It didn't take long and we all started to cry, but no one came for us.  We screamed and no one came.  A long time after we got locked into the trunk, mom's voice came front the porch.  She yelled for us and we answered thinking that we had been saved and help was coming.  Well, it was but it was not to be imminent or any time soon.  She yelled and we answered.  Her voice moved away from us,  she yelled from a long ways away and we answered.  Her voice came past us yelling frantically for us, we answered but her voice past us and went a long ways the other way.  This back and forth went on for what she said later was about 45 minutes.  She had gone to the railroad track, the fair grounds, the stock yard and the veterinarian's looking for us with no luck. She only found us on accident because she said it never did sound like our voices were coming from the trunk.  She finally found us and we were very happy little ones.  Our faces were all red,  with mud and tears all over them, and we wanted water, we were so glad to see her it took a couple of days before we were naughty again.  I, to this day, can not abide being in a dark, hot, small space. 

I don't recall any recipes that my mom made in Grandma Thelma's house, as I have said before my mom could not cook, good thing my dad could, so she was in her learning phase and obviously nothing stuck in my little mind to come to mind.  I do recall two things that I will say are my food recipes.  One was that on paydays, mom would take us to the store and buy us a treat each.  We got a pop (which we usually shared), usually mountain dew or sometimes A&W root beer (which we got at the root beer stand) and snowballs.  Rootbeer was something I had a long history with at that time.  Mom always told of when I was about 18 months old they had stopped at the root beer drive-in, they brought us out a tiny mug for me and a regular ones for my mom and dad.  I would have none of it, I got the big mug and mom ended up only getting the baby mug.  Anyway.  back to the snow balls,  they were, if you have never had, one of the worst thing ever invented, but my momma loved them.  She also likes malt shakes which are just as bad, and sometime we got those instead of the root beer or mountain dew.  I have no idea why she never knew that I hated those, snowballs and the malts, but maybe she just thought since it was her very favorite thing we must adore them too.  Who knows. 

The other thing we did was make compost.  Grandpa (the girls grandpa) call it lasagna gardens the way he does it, and it is similar.

We would layer the grass clippings, the leaves and the discarded food stuffs from the house with dirt. 

1 layer of grass clippings
1 layer of dirt and a spray of the hose
1 layer of leaves
1 layer of dirt and a spray of the hose
1 layer of food
1 layer of dirt and a spray of the hose

about once a week dad would stir it all together, he said it had to cook.  We thought he meant really cook so I guess to a 4 and a half year also most 5 year old it was cooking.  I am glad the Lord kept us safe while we lived in Grandma Thelma's house, maybe my mom was still distracted, or we were just too much to handle, but without his love we probably wouldn't have survived. We only lived there a few months before it was too much, living there in her momma's house for my mom, we moved to a fifty acre farm, no more trains, highways or whatever's to get into, well that was the theory.......