My grandfather had never made a fortune, and their house was far from being a mansion. When the sisters were visiting, the house came alive with chatter cousins got together to explore everything from the creek to the attic. Altogether, my grandparents had nine children.

The house itself was a simple wooden structure with worn, thin, dark brown siding that was supposed to give the house the appearance of a brick home. I don’t think anyone ever looked at it and saw anything more than it really was but that type of siding was popular for a long time in this area.

The front porch was always full of flowers in containers of all shapes and sizes including old coffee cans. My grandmother could take a stem or a "starting" from another plant and before long she would have a wonderful new one that would sit there reaching for the sun! On each side of the porch, there was painted wooden swing. The swings were hanging from old steel link chains that had become rusted with years of use. I remember thinking that my grandfather must have been preparing for some 500-pound person to show up and sit there because those chains were the same size that loggers use to pull trees out of the forest!

Leading up to the porch was two deep but narrow steps that my grandfather had poured using pebbles from the creek mixed with cement. Not a summer went by that I didn't stump my big toe on those steps at least one time.

Near the porch was an old water well that had been long abandoned. Although it hadn't been used for a long time as their main source of water, the old rope that turned the crank to the wooden bucket was still in place and functional. I spent many hours turning that crank and pulling the bucket up then letting it down again as if it were really full of water. I let my imagination run wild there many times. I couldn’t help but think that maybe there really was a handsome prince that had been turned into a frog who was living at the bottom of the well. Being the lovely girl that I was, maybe I would be the one to find him and end up living in a wonderful castle with clothes that were sewn of the finest silk and satin! The only problem I found with this theory was that in the fairy tale the frog had to be kissed in order to revert back to being a prince.... Poor thing! I guess that even if I had found him he would just have to continue swatting for bugs with his tongue because nothing slimy was going anywhere near these lips! Thinking of it now, I would never have believed I could have kissed a dog either, but some of my teenage dates...OOPS, back to the story.

Sometimes if you caught my grandfather in just the right mood and the conversation was cheerful he would do a little dance for us! I will never forget how happy he looked whenever he did that! He would stand up, tap his feet and sort of cross his arms to tap each knee with his hands. He did it with a flowing motion and a rhythm to his step that I’ve never been able to master.

In all honesty though, sometimes the conversation would get pretty heated. Even as adults, siblings tend to remember the very things people want to forget. There were times when I was sure there was going to be a fight any minute. One sister would remember another sister trying to get her boyfriend’s attention. Another sister would remember that someone else had skipped school to do something my grandmother had never known about. One husband might interject that his wife, one of the sisters, had been the only one to accomplish some particular feat and the rest would go on the defensive.

It was then that my grandmother would step into the argument and line them all out! Nothing squelches a heated argument between siblings like the revelations of his own childhood that only his mother can spew forth! She had a knack for bringing up something that would cause everyone to laugh and once that happened the feud was over!

My grandmother kept at least three different cookie jars in her kitchen. With so many grandchildren it would have been impossible to please them all with one kind of cookie. I can almost taste gingersnaps just thinking about those jars. To this day, I love a good vanilla wafer and there is nothing better than a chocolate chip cookie! There would always be at least two kinds of cake after Sunday dinner. One cake would have half-chocolate icing and half-vanilla, another would be half coconut and half lemon or strawberry. I don't know how she stood all of this at times but just months before she died she told me that she wished she had all nine of her children home again! She had to be a glutton for punishment! Just having two has given me migraines and gray hair!

I learned to look under rocks for crawdads and I loved building a dam of rocks to make the water pool up deep enough to form a swimming hole. It was also along that creek that the granddaughters exchanged tales of school, romance and how some of us had pulled the wool over our parent’s eyes. Many of the boys spent long days exploring the creek and the mountainside behind it. We didn't know it at the time but they had a spot on the hillside where they would hide out of our sight and watch us undress to our panties and tops to enjoy the water. I wish we had figured that out because I am quite sure they stripped down to their skivvies when they went swimming too!

I can only imagine the comments that were made and I am sure glad that I didn't have to sit down in the house and look at them knowing they had seen me partially nude, of course, that did explain the giggles everytime poor old flat chested, cousin Ellen walked into the room! A bee sting would have given that girl more cleavage.... there I go again.

It was right there by that creek that I absorbed my first bit of misinformation about adult life. One of my grandparents' neighbors had several children and they learned fast that when the grandkids were coming my grandparent's house came alive! As soon as the cars started parking, the other children started streaming on over.

One of neighbors that always showed up was Gina. She was a few years older than my cousins and me but not on the mental level that she should be to hang out with the older kids, so she became a part of our group. The creek bank had become a dumping spot for my uncle's wrecked cars or ones that just simply gave up on running. It was always a race to see whether the boys would claim them for the day or the girls would get there first. We were still at that age, I guess about nine, when the boys hung together and the girls hung together seldom getting together for anything but dinner.

One day, my female cousins and I had gotten there first and claimed an old, red, Plymouth for our pleasure. I climbed in behind the wheel, pretended to shift gears and tried hard to get my feet to reach the pedals while I could still see out the spot that used to hold a windshield. Within minutes, Gina appeared. She motioned for me to slide over and I could see how aggravated my cousins were but she was older and larger. I think we may actually have feared her a little. That is exactly what she probably enjoyed about hanging out with us. In such a large family, she had no one to feel superior too.

Like I said, we were all younger than Gina and although I am sure we all knew that "something" went on in our parent's bedrooms, we had no real idea of "exactly" what it was and weren't really ready to find out at that point. Suddenly, while pretending that we were all headed on a long car trip, Gina asked, "So are y'all gonna screw your husbands when you get married?" There was no more excitement in her voice than if she had said, "Look at the tree over there!"

There was not a sound coming from any one of us and she went on, "I hope y'all know that's whar babies come from!"

Completely dumbfounded, we were just staring at her and she was watching our expressions in the rear view mirror that was still hanging in the car. "I'll tell y'all rite now, if ya don't want no babies, you better get up soon as he's done wrestlin' with ya and jump up and down five or six times. I seen my mammy do that many times! She don't want no more babies round our place!"

I can't help but wonder if any of the girls that were there that day ever actually tried that! Can you imagine the look on a man's face when the woman he was just intimate with leaps out of bed and starts hopping about like a kangaroo?

My grandmother's name was Opal but I didn't know that for a long time because my grandfather always called her Okie. What bothered me, was that I always liked helping her in the kitchen but as luck would have it, any time she needed anything from that cellar, lucky me was chosen to go "fetch" it! I would always try to get out of going after the home canned goods but because they knew how much I hated it, the other grandkids would volunteer me every time.

They just liked to see me amble my way down there, squirming with every step, and taking forever to build up enough courage to go inside. Getting out was even worse because going in I couldn't see him, but coming out, he was in plain view. There was no choice but to go under him to get to the door! I had this image in my mind of him swooping down and in one fast move, snatching off one of my arms or a leg! I could just see my grandfather asking me, "Well, what did you do child? He wouldn't have done that for no reason!" You have no idea how many times I prayed that my grandmother wouldn't want to have green beans with dinner on the day that we were visiting!

The girls were not allowed to have parties and were allowed to attend other parties only rarely. My mother told us that until she was in her teen years she had thought you could get pregnant just by holding a boy's hand. When boys did come to call on one of the girls they had to sit together in the front room with my grandfather right there! It's a wonder they ever landed husbands at all!

Once while my grandfather was supposed to be out of town for several days, my grandmother agreed to let the girls have a small party. They were allowed to invite their beaus and the younger girls could just hang out and listen to the music. My oldest aunt had managed to land a job and saved enough money to buy the first real phonograph the family had owned. My grandmother had scrimped enough to help her buy two records to go with it and they felt as though they were in high cotton!

Paper decorations were hung around the front room, a big bowl of punch was made, and the girls had dressed up in their Sunday finery with a little borrowed makeup even! My grandfather would never allow them to become "Jezebels" so they never owned makeup of their own until after they married.

Anyway, not long after the party started, someone got the bright idea to play spin the bottle. My grandmother saw the game being played but thought that simple kissing was harmless enough and didn't try to stop it. In fact, she laughed when the girls would get excited when someone they didn’t like landed them on.

Just as my mother had the bottle to land in front of her, and she was really not supposed to be playing at all, my grandfather walked through the front door! My grandmother swore until she died that his eyes turned red and there was actually steam that blew out of his ears!

My mother, not willing to miss her first chance at a kiss, nearly knocked the young man over when she pounced across to him and locked her lips on his! Here was this poor boy trying to run for his life and my mother had jumped him like a mouse after cheese. His arms were flailing wildly as he tried not to touch her. He was struggling to squirm away from her but she was holding on for all she was worth!

My grandfather grabbed him by the neck and yanked him to his feet. My mother was still refusing to give up her kiss and my grandfather had to pull her away before he booted the young man out the door! It didn't take long for everyone to make a fast getaway, and my grandfather died years later without ever taking another overnight trip away from home!