When I was about 9 or 10, Gramma Nora and I took the train t

When I was about 9 or 10, Gramma Nora and I took the train to visit Clifton and Sylvia. We left Beaumont going east on the Southern Pacific Sunset Limited. We changed trains in Oakdale and went north to Many (pronounced man-e) where Clifton and Sylvia picked us up and took us to their house.

This house was a ‘shotgun’ house, so named because it was narrow and deep and it was said that someone could shoot a shotgun in the front door and hit everyone in the house.

No indoor plumbing. There was a well out back and a little farther away a two holer outhouse. I became fully put off by outhouses during my week with the Browns.

There was not much to do. One day I got into Sylvia’s sewing kit and made a vest, pants, hat and tail cover for their old yellow cat. What a patient and tolerant animal that cat was.