This is my story of Grandma and Grandpa's house of many treasures written especially for you.

Grandma and Grandpa had a house of many treasures. The sewing room on

the south side of the old house was very small. Grandma's old peddle

singer sewing machine stood in front of the long window which looked

out on the front porch then on out to the green lawn and then finally

onto the old dusty dirt road. There were pots with houseplants of

every type and size sitting on the floor and lining the shelves on the

wall. In front of the opposite wall stood a big ugly horsehair leather

sofa with huge oak arms and legs. It was so hard and lumpy that a

person could not bear to sit on it for very long.

Along the north wall stood a tall secretary of dark oak. It loomed

high above me and housed many treasures. It had a door of curved

beveled glass that opened to reveal shelves of smooth dark wood. On

some of the shelves, there were numerous journals that Grandpa kept.

There was one journal for each year. Grandpa recorded daily the

weather, the money he spent and the money he earned at mowing lawns

with his old push mower.

I used to sit at the desk and read those journals, especially the ones

my mother, Virginia and I were in. I read and re-read the journal for

1951. That was the year my mother died. She passed away on July 3,

1951. My mother was just 33 years old. I had turned four a couple of

months earlier in May and my brother, Bobby would be eight years old on

the last day of July.

My mother had contracted rheumatic fever as a child and it had damaged

her heart. So family members, Grandpa and Grandma Hess, various aunts

and uncles took care of Bobby and myself right after my birth up until

she passed away. Sometimes my mother would be well enough to care for

my brother and I. Her good health would not last long , then we were

sent to be cared for by various relatives. Even though I have no

memory of her, I miss my mother so very much sometimes it makes my

heart ache. As much as I miss my mother, if she had not passed away, I

would not have you as one of my sisters. So God, I guess after all,

knows what He is doing.

On one of the other shelves of the dark oak secretary there were two

dusty mason jars. There was one large jar and one small jar. These

jars held seashells that were shiny, smooth, large and small. On the

same shelf, there was a wondrous toy dog made of wood with a tiny

swatch of red felt for a nose and a thin strip of brown leather for its

tail. The dog was all jointed. When you pushed on the button under

the little wood stand the dog stood on, the dog would jump and contort

in all sorts of funny ways., Beside the dog stood a small hard clear

plastic ball. It had a shelf through the middle with a small hole.

There were little colored beads in the ball and the object was to shake

and roll the ball in your hand until you got all the colored beads from

one side of the shelf with the hole in it to the other side.

On the right side of the tall oak secretary was a desk. You pulled

down the lid and it made a large shelf to write on. There were many

small compartments at the top for stamps, paper and envelopes of every

size. It also held the bottle of glue with the funny rubber top with a

slit in the middle so you could glue the stamps on and seal the

envelopes when you where ready to mail a letter. Some of the

compartments held pencils and long wooden pens that you had to dip in

one of the little jars of ink. There was Grandpa's gold watch with a

chain and notes from Grandma with shopping lists for when Grandpa went

uptown. It also held the bills Grandpa made out for the neighbors and

friends he mowed lawns for to earn a little extra money.

Grandpa and Grandma retired to the old house in Osceola, Nebraska from

the farm south of Shelby, Nebraska where they had toiled for more than

thirty years. When my father married my mother, they took over the

farm.

The linoleum on the sewing room floor was gray with a flower pattern

that had long ago faded. It was shiny with all the scrubbings Grandma

did and all the footsteps of the people who walked over that small

floor to look at the treasures in the tall oak secretary.

In the evening, the front porch was a haven from the stifling summer

heat. It ran almost the whole length of the house and was screened in.

Inside the porch, it had painted wood shelves running all around below

the wire screens. The shelves would hold all the pies for cooling

baked by Grandma on Saturday. There were four old rockers on the

porch. Some of the rockers had pillows Grandma had made out of floor

sacks. The pillows were put on the heavy oak rockers so your bottom

would not get so tired while we sat, rocked, rocked and watched the

cars go by on the dirt road in front with the dust a flying.

Outside in the front yard to the north of the porch, there was a huge

cherry tree. It held the best cherries in the world. They made the

best cherry pies if I would only stop eating all the fruit off the

lower branches before Grandma had a chance to pick them off the tree

for her wonderful cherry pies.

The walk by the front porch door had daffodils and tulips in the

spring. There were also purple iris and gladiolas of purple, pink,

yellow and white. There were white lilies of the valley that lined

both sides of the walk in the summer. Sometimes I would weave their

long tough fronds and make place mats out of them. Grandma would place

them on the big round oak dining table under the plates for supper.

The flowers lining the walk led out to the road. There were two wood

planks placed closed together that lay across the small ditch in front

of the road. There were curved pipe railings on each side that Grandpa

had painted white to hold onto while your walked over the planks to

step on to the dusty road. Sometimes, when Grandpa or Grandma weren't

looking I would hang upside down from my knees on one of those pipe

railings.

The yard was huge and took up most of the block. The side where the

cherry tree stood also contained all the dead baby birds we buried in

their old shoebox coffins. We had funerals for those poor baby birds.

They had to have crosses made of Popsicle sticks. They stood there in

silence until a rainstorm or big wind knocked them down and blew the

little crosses into the ditch in front of the road.

Outside the sewing room window to the south stood an old iron water

pump about twenty feet out on the lawn. Grandpa had planted asparagus

all around it and placed big stones around the plants in the form of a

square.

Way in the back yard by the small grove of plum and apple trees,

Grandpa plowed out a large garden every spring. He had rows of corn,

green beans, radishes, huge red tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, potatoes,

carrots and my favorite, green peas. I ate so may of those sweet round

peas right out of the garden that I can't remember Grandma serving them

very often for supper.

On hot summer evenings, we would sometimes sit on the front porch and

clean the abundance from the garden that day. Sitting with a big tin

bowl in my lap full of green beans, I would break each end off and toss

them into the round wood bushel basket on the floor between the rockers

Grandma and I sat in. Before I knew it my bowl was empty and the

basket was full then it was time for bed.

The bedroom I used when I was there for the summer was on the northwest

corner of the .old house. It had two big tall windows. One window on

the north wall and one window on the west wall. They let in the cool

evening breezes. The long sheer eggshell colored curtains blew in the

wind. It had a big oak bed high off the floor. It got easier to get

up on the bed, as I grew older and somewhat taller. The sheets on the

bed were so cool when my bare skin first touched them. The old quilt

that covered the bed in the daytime was turned down at night. It was

seldom used until early morning when the first glimmer of light was

coming in the windows and the coolness of early morning made me crawl

down sleepily pulling the colorful quilt up around me. I would lie on

the soft mattress in a dream state listening to the songs of the wipper

wills and the cooing of the morning doves outside my windows.

Grandma would come into wake me.

Grandma with her gray hair, tired face, smiling and all kisses for me

had been up for hours. She sat on the bed beside me, her heaviness

weighing the bedsprings down making them squeak. She usually wore an

old faded housedress with a bib apron. Her stockings rolled up to just

above her fat knees and heavy black shoes with a small heel. The

oatmeal was cooking on the stove in the kitchen. Grandpa had to have

oatmeal every morning of his life. It smelled so good even though the

kitchen was far away from my room I could hear the pop, pop as the

bubbling oatmeal boiled away in the three corner pot on the old black

iron stove.

In my bedroom stood a tall oak dresser. It had six large drawers that

my daddy kept things in for when he would visit. I could not reach the

upper drawers, but in the bottom ones he kept his pajamas, socks and

underwear. In the drawers above he kept the new white shirts still in

their plastic bags. I did not see my daddy very often. He came to

visit once or twice in the summer by himself. When he was there I

slept on the sofa in the parlor. In the morning I would wait quietly,

sitting by the closed bedroom door for daddy to wake up. He would wake

and dress then he would open the door. He was what people called a

"Spiffy" dresser. Suit pants pressed to perfection, shoes shined until

they gleamed and when he took a new white shirt from the dresser drawer

he always gave me the large white cardboard sheet that held the shirt

for me to draw on. He would go sit at the dining room table and

Grandma would bring him a big steaming bowl of oatmeal with cream and

some sugar, some toast with a pot of her homemade plum preserves with a

big cup of hot, black coffee. I would sit by him and draw pictures on

the white cardboard shirt backing. He would stand up kiss Grandma

goodbye, pick up my drawing, pat me on the head and then he would be

gone. My world would go back to revolving around my Grandparents

house.

The Parlor was right outside my bedroom. It was on the northeast

corner of the house. It had a large sofa with pillows on it. One of

the pillows was a deep mauve purple material like for rich, heavy

drapes. It had long gold fringe all around it. On the front of the

pillow was printed MOT HER in large gold letters. My Uncle Leonard

had sent it to Grandma when he was away in the Second World War. The

most wonderful thing in the parlor was the large light oak table. It

stood between the two tall windows on the north and the east walls. It

had one big drawer and a huge shelf about four inches from the floor

that was covered with old wood photo albums. I could barely lift the

albums because they were so heavy. I would pull one down to the floor

and then lay on my stomach on top of the worn, faded rug, supporting my

chin with my left hand turning the wood pages one by one with my right

hand. Each page was made up of two light pieces of balsam wood. One

side had a large square cut out. The picture was inserted behind a cut

glass window and the two pieces of wood were glued together. The

people in the pictures were dressed in funny old clothes. The ladies

had their hair drawn up on their heads with combs and large hairpins.

They had solemn faces, never smiling. These were the portraits of my

ancestors. In the drawers were hundred of loose photos, letters and

post-cards. This room in the house of many treasures occupied many hot

summer afternoon.

The heavy French doors separated the parlor from the dining room and

stood open except when an uncle or aunt was sleeping on the parlor

sofa.

The front door from the porch opened on to the dining room. There was

a small wooden box shaped like a house placed on the doorframe of the

front porch side. Grandpa had nailed it there and attached a string

with a pencil on the end. The little house's front door opened to

reveal a small pad of paper. It was just a very small pad about two

inches by two inches. Just enough for someone to write a note on in

case no one was home when they came to call. When I had grown big

enough to reach it on my tippy toes, I would sometimes write funny

notes to Grandma and Grandpa. I giggled when they would open the

little door thinking that some grown up had come to call and left them

a note while we were away. Grandma would smile as she read my note but

Grandpa would frown and grumble that it was a waste of good paper. He

would smack the little flag that was on top down and stomp into the

dining room.

The dining room floor had the same tired worn gray linoleum with the

faded flowers as the sewing room. The big dark oak round table with

big claws for feet and heavy dark oak chairs took up much of the room.

Along the south wall was a large old buffet. On the shelves, Grandma

kept her "good" china and in the drawers the "good silver. These only

came out for holidays or someone's birthday. Against the north wall

on the other side of the dining room there was an old plastic covered

couch. It was tan colored and hotter than hades if you were unlucky

enough to have sleep on it.

Through the doorway to the west of the dining room was my Grandma and

Grandpa's bedroom. It had a big old iron bed, a chest of drawers and

one old wood chair that had been painted white. The chair stood

against the wall by the door that led down to the cellar. I never saw

my Grandma in that bed. She was always up long before me and went to

bed long after I did. But Grandpa would lie on the bed in the

afternoons when he had time to take a nap. I had to be very quiet and

would often look at the albums in the parlor during Grandpa's naptime.

When I was very little probably two or three years old, there had been

a baby crib in my Grandma and Grandpa's bedroom. Grandma put me in it

for my naps. I remember her telling me to go to sleep like a good

little girl if I did perhaps the bunny would leave me some candy corn

to eat when I woke up. On the wall above my crib was a plaster bunny.

It was all white except pink pants and blue waistcoat. It hung above

my crib from a large nail. I would wake up, be really quiet and try to

catch the bunny throwing candy corn down on my pillow. The bunny

thought I was asleep but sometimes if I was really careful and just

barely peeped. I saw him throwing that candy corn down to my crib.

When I got older and the crib was taken down there stood a small

dresser where the crib had been. The door by the dresser opened to

reveal a flight of steep creaky wooden steps leading down to the