My Memories of Grandmother and Granddad Pipkin’s House
by Vicki Andrew
1. Watching for the gopher to poke his head up out of the ground by the clothes line pole at sundown from the kitchen window.
2. Granddad’s strawberry garden (built as round tiers like a cake). We’d pick them and roll in sugar to eat. And Grandmother’s homemade vanilla ice cream made with milk, vanilla, eggs, and a bit of flour. We’d pour it in metal ice trays and freeze, stirring every few minutes. This took forever to be ready to eat you know.
3. Working in the garden gathering blackberries or digging potatoes. One time Daddy told me the little “pellets” by the lettuce were rabbit eggs so I stuffed my pockets full and emptied them out on Grandma’s red checked tablecloth in the kitchen. This didn’t go over very well and I soon discovered they were NOT rabbit eggs. This must have been an “early blonde moment”.
4. Watching “Gunsmoke” in black & white, when Chester was still on the show, while eating fresh oven roasted peanuts in the shell hot off the cookie sheet amidst the smell of Granddad’s cigar. There were always peppermints and candy in the far top right kitchen drawer.
5. Going to Ed Gilley’s Store where Granddad played dominoes out back. This was our chance to get more candy. The store had wooden floors and a tall thick concrete front entrance with BIG steps (something you had to overcome to get to the candy).
6. Rolling horse apples down the road or into the pasture to see who could roll them the farthest. Sometimes we’d feed them to the horses if they would eat them.
7. Grandmother sitting me down on the couch one day to talk about God. The windows were open and a cool breeze blew the sheer curtains across the top of her treadle sewing machine. She said that “if you’re thinking of something and deep down inside you know it’s not right and you do it, that’s a sin ~ because your conscience is God speaking to us” and we should listen.
8. Going to sleep on the fold-down couch with 5 or so quilts piled on top to stay warm. The house was very cold at night since the fires were turned down to a low blue flame. I’d watch the flame til I drifted off to sleep. If you had to get up in the night for a “nature call”, the floors were really cold. I remember the toilet had a green chenille cover on the seat that sure helped with that part of the trip.
9. Hearing those pots and pans banging around in the kitchen before the sun even came up! Breakfast was cooking (big biscuits, bacon, eggs, gravy, homemade fig preserves and churned butter) while Granddad went out to check the fishing lines.
10. I’m not sure when this was... but there was a night when the whole house was full of people staying over. We had every bed full and the floors were covered with air mattresses everywhere. By morning, Uncle Homer’s air mattress had leaked all the air out and... well, you can just imagine how tickled he was about that.
11. By the pond was a well with a narrow shaft that they ran a galvanized tube down on a rope and pulley. When you drew up the tube, there was a little ring on the side to pull that would release the water into your bucket for drinking water. This was really cool to see!
12. My oldest memory has to be when Grandma and Granddad lived in the tractor shed by the garden while the house was being built. There was linoleum rolled out on the soft dirt ground and I remember seeing daylight through the wooden walls. In the far back left corner, there was a long wide board set up across a large wooden wire spool which was the “kitchen area”. The linoleum stayed down after they moved into the house and the shed became the garage.
I’m so glad I had these “rich moments” in my life!
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