I know carpets are really a dirty item to have in your house,  but I really would hate to do without them.  I can remember getting up on a bare floor and freezing my feet on the linoleum covered floor.  Then running to the living room and warming my behind by the wood stove and rotating to warm the freezing side.  One learned to dress in a hurry back then. One side of a room could be scorching hot and the other side freezing.  No one EVER needs to remind me of the "Good ole' days!"  I can remember when Wayne and I did not have a washer or dryer.  I used to freeze the backs of my legs hanging diapers on the line (Before Pampers too) The diapers would sometimes freeze stiff and whop you right in the face.  I also froze my little fingers on both hands and I still have problems in the cold from that.  Wayne bought my first washer about the time Danny was born in 1953 !!  The dryer came a while later.  I was in "Hog heaven"  I can not imagine now, hanging clothes for 7 people and one a baby.  Of course my mom did her wash on the board, so I had it easier than she did.  We did not have electricity until after I left home.  Seems like mom and dad got it in 1951, or near that time.
The bad things I remember about my childhood was the cold blizzards far worse than I have see since then and the hot steamy days with so darned many gnats and flies and not forgetting the mosquitoes either.  I really did not feel we were so hard up.  I knew we were,  but I did not feel that it was so bad.  we entertained ourselves by listening to the radio, reading and visiting neighbors each week.  Most places that we visited, we played music, such as the piano, guitar, mandolin, violin, banjo and such. Most all of us sang.  It was fun and so enjoyable.  Sometimes some played cards.  We kids played with our friends in the trees and each girl always had a playhouse out side.  I remember mom had an old Captain's chair with the back off.  She used it  to set her  wash tub on.  I could envision a grand piano when I looked at it.  I painted a keyboard on the top and had MANY concerts on it for several years.  I literally pined for a piano and finally dad and mom found an old untuned one in a community hall in Cherokee.  they were trying to get rid of it and gave it to us. Dad tuned and fixed it up and it was mine.  We never heated the living room where it sat and during the first winter I would go in there and play "Chop Sticks" over and over. That was all I knew how to play. I remember my daddy, who NEVER got the least hostile,  told me if I did not quit playing that "DAMNED" song,  he was going to get rid of my piano Ha!  He finally taught me the notes and where the keys were on the piano and I learned to play on my own.  I learned to play "Under the Double Eagle" a song that I heard Gordon Smith play that I loved. He was bachelor that lived with his mom and was a great friend of my parents. I loved it when we went to their house every week and he would play especially for my requests.  The Caywoods were all very musical.  Daddy could play any instrument that he picked up.  He learned to play the piano not long before he died.  He learned while mom worked and we did not know he was doing it until one day he asked Lila and I to come in  to the living room.  He sat down to the piano and we just sat down and looked at each other,  until he played a beautiful melody and shocked us !!  We have a movie of him playing,  but no sound. Oh,  how I wish we could hear it now! Daddy rarely ever raised his voice to us,  but when he did,  we respected him and were so very ashamed of what we had done to make him angry.  He once threatened to break the only record we had that we played over and over on a hand cranked phonograph.  The song was "No Body's Darlin' but Mine Love"  It might have been by Earnest Tubb,  at least the voice was sort of like that
at the end Ha!  You had to crank it up quite often or the tone was slow and low.  We did not care,  rather I did not.  I just loved plain music !!
 
 

Lois Caywood Guffy
Byron Oklahoma.
THE GUFFY FAMILY WEB PAGE
cmark@socencom.net