Where did you live while growing up?  I lived a few miles out of a small town called Jewett, Ohio until I finished the sixth grade.  We lived in Cadiz, Ohio while I attended junior high and until the end of my sophomore year in high school.  After living there we moved to a farm nine miles out of Cadiz, Ohio.  This farm bordered on Tappan Lake.  We loved it there.  I loved living in the country.

What was your house like?  In Jewett, the house we lived in was a small four-room house.  At that time there were four people living there...my father, mother, brother and myself.  Also living with us was my cousin.  She was six months old when her dad was killed in a coal mine explosion.  Her mother needed to go to work so my folks took the baby and kept her until about time for her to start to school.  Its sounds like it would have been crowded living there, but I don't remember at all of every feeling that.  We were happy...the amount of space we had didn't matter.

We had one bedroom, (no bathroom) outside toilet, no electricity (for several years).  We placed our milk, butter, jello and such items in a spring to keep from spoiling.  While living in Cadiz during my junior high plus years, we had a real nice house with all the modern conveniences.  We enjoyed living there, but really wanted to live in the country on a farm.  So, during my high school days we moved.

We moved to a farm by Tappan Lake.  We loved that.  We didn't have our cousin with us anymore (her mother remarried and took her to live with she and her husband).  We got a new baby brother soon after we moved to the farm.  This was a bigger house and we kids each had our own bedroom.  We had electricity and water in the house...a pump that we primed, but we were happy with that situation.

We lived in this house for a few years, then moved to another farm on down the lake further.  This house did not have a bathroom or running water.  My dad dug out a basement and also piped water from a spring down over the hill into our house.  We loved living there.  We had a lot of friends (they all lived in the country).  Many times they came to our house to play basketball, make fudge/popcorn.

What was your school like?  The first six grades I went to a one-room school house.  When I was in the first grade, I walked to school.  It was over a mile from our house to the school building.  This was a country road and so many times we couldn't see the road because of so much snow.

We had one teacher.  She taught all subjects to all eight grades.  We carried our drinking water in to the school from a well located behind the school house.  The school was heated by a store. We ran around that stove to keep warm in the winter until the room was warm enough to take off our coats.  I walked to school for a couple years, then there was a bus that took us to school.

We lived in town when I was in junior high school.  I was very nervous and anxious when we moved into Cadiz, Ohio where I went to junior high school.  I had come from a country school, then moved into town with the kids who had grown up in town--there was a lot of difference in us.

When I was in high school we moved to the country again, living on a farm which bordered Tappan Lake.  It was beautiful and we loved it.  In the winter it was dark when we got on the bus to go to school.  In the morning it was dark when we got on the bus and dark when we got off the bus in the evening.  It was a long way to our high school.  I worked in the fields.  My job was to drive the tractor.  I drove the tractor out in the hay fields.  It was very hot, but that was okay.  We had a lot of milk cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, horses and a cat and a dog.  We had big gardens to plant and hoe the weeds out.  We did a lot of canning of the vegetables from the garden for us to have to eat in the winter time.  We were all were very happy living there.  I lived there with my parents until I graduated from high school then worked one year before coming to Anderson to attend Anderson College.

What is your favorite memory?  That is a hard question.  Our family was a close family.  We were a happy family.  We worked together to get all the milking, feeding and all the other things you do on a farm done.  We played games around the kitchen table.  My brother built a ping pong table in school so we played ping pong in our basement.  We all worked together to get the work done.  After the farm work there would be homework to do.  We went to church together on Sunday.  Many times we went home with some one else for Sunday dinner or someone came home with us for dinner.  In answer to the question, I would have to say that my time living at home with my parents and my two brothers was all a favorite memory.