Do it yourself

We raised 8 of the "little darlings" and although there were times when we would have liked to have run away from home, it really was a fun time for the most part. There were 4 girls and 4 boys. Every child had a job depending on their age level and I can still see the twin girls when they had to take the clothes in off the line. One would stand on a chair to reach the clothes pins and then hand the clean laundry down to her sister who would fill the basket. It would take the two of them to carry the filled basket into the house to be folded. They were about 5 at the time. I used to do just like my grandfather did for me and bring home some piece of junk for the boys to play with by taking it apart to see what was inside. There were certain rules regarding the care of their tools and cleaning up the mess. One of our sons found one of my wrenches which was a 1/2 by 9/16 and spent the whole day playing under his mothers car. Only when she started the car sometime later did she learn that he had removed the entire exhaust system. Clayton was 4 at the time. It took me several hours to put it back together again, and I still don't know how he did it without breaking half the clamps. We raised our kids out in the country and there was always wood to cut, gardens to work, canning and freezing to be done, not to mention the planting and picking involved. The cord to the TV would mysteriously disappear during the summer and most of the school times only to be relocated in time to watch the Christmas specials after which it would get lost again. My wife bought an incubator and there were always baby ducks and chickens to be held, loved and cared for. Of course there was also the chicken house to be cleaned once a year but that was all a part of the learning curve. We had pigs that they would name and get attached to and shed a tear or two over when it was time to take them to the packing house, but they were quite eager to sample the bacon, ham and sausage that returned. I suppose what I'm really saying is that we were so poor during those years that the only thing we could afford to give the kids was some of our time, and in the end it turned out to have had the greatest value. Dale