Grandma’s house
By:Tamara Sue Neff
Grandma’s house could be found, down a long and winding country highway, and a short drive along a rutted earthen lane. Grandma’s house was not much to look at, in reality just an old 1930’s one room shack that my Grand Father built with his own two hands. It was my favorite place in the entire world.
At Grandma’s house, there was a big, red, moss-covered, barn at the very end of the lane, where we parked the car. With a gate just off of its enormous door that lead out to the pasture. There were cattle, chickens, pigs, and sheep. You had to walk around the barn, through the gate held closed by a piece of thick twisted wire, and into the pastures to get near most of the animals. I loved hearing the rooster’s crow early in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon if company was coming, and the cattle lowing in the fields.
At Grandma’s house was an old wood frame screen door hung on rusty hinges with a coiled spring to help keep it closed, which made such a racket. God I can still hear the sound, as you entered the house. Straight ahead of the front door was the old upright potbelly stove, unlit in the summer months, but in the winter stayed ablaze 24 hours a day, as it was the dwellings only source of heat. In the winter with that stove full of wood, you could catch grandma herself bent at the waist with her dress hiked up in the back to warm her backside.