I (along with my brother and sisters) grew up on a farm in Southwest Kansas, just 4 ½ miles west of Kalvesta. The land is flat in Southwest Kansas and you can nearly see forever. The flat land and few trees provide spectacular sunsets and pretty scenery. Our farmhouse was old and set right off of the highway. The rooms were large, only 2 bedrooms but they were big. It had a living room and a nice big dining room, front porch, back porch and of course your kitchen and bathroom. Mom had yellow rose bushes in the front yard. We had a barn with a big carrel and a big garage, granaries, the hen and pig sheds, a water house and a big windmill. And lots and lots of space to run and play. We had horses and cows and pigs and chickens and lots of cats and dogs. We loved to ride horses and were always outside doing something. We each had our own horse, I had Little Joe, and Tommy had Comet, Linda Eclipse and Dee Old Bill. We had several horses but these are the ones I remember best. We loved to ride and rode every day. From time to time daddy would buy horses that had never been ridden before and we would help break them. We would get thrown off and get right back on. We had the pigs to feed and the eggs to gather from the hen house. The hen house sat behind a row of trees and my brother Tommy would tell scary stories about those trees, how they would grab you with their claw like branches if you didn’t run real fast. The bad part was that you had to wait until dark before you shut the door on the chicken house and you had to go through the trees to get there. Chickens are pretty smart; they will go in their house by themselves, but not until dark. We each had to take our turn so you had no choice but to do it! It always scared me when it was my turn. One evening I ran so fast I lost my shoe and just left it out there until the next day. I loved to eat fried chicken but I tell you when I saw how we had to catch the chickens and prepare them for a meal, it is a wonder I could ever eat chicken! Daddy would make a wire with a hook on the end and catch the chickens’ foot. Then he would take the chicken and put its head under a stick, he would stand on the stick and quickly pull the chicken’s head off. It was awful! The poor chicken would run around the yard without its head! I think that is probably where the saying came from “running around like a chicken with its head cut off”! We would all help in plucking off the feathers and singeing them by holding the chicken over fire. We had a big mean rooster that would strut around and I didn’t like him very well. He was a big old thing. One day he came running at me and knocked me to the ground and started pecking me and flogging me with his spurs! Mom had to come get me and she put me in bed. It was really scary! I had bruises on my body and my head hurt. I think he probably wound up in a pot of chicken and noodles. There were times when the pigs would get out of their pen and we would have to try and catch them and put them back in. The little pigs were like trying to catch little greased footballs! They were so fast and so slippery you could hardly tackle them. We always had a lot of cats and dogs too. One dog was a huge old sheep dog named Towser. He was so big I could ride him.
