A bad cold referred to as the LaGrippe or just Gripp called for the most interesting ritual. We were wrapped in a quilt in front of the kitchen cook stove with the oven door open and our feet in a tub of hot water. Every few minutes, if we hadn't fainted, the quilt was parted slightly and more boiling water added to the tub, to keep up the steam I think she said. If the cold brought a cough or congestion in the lungs, there was the mustard plaster. If the plaster was a little hot, make no mind, someone knew what to do for burns. If it didn't burn it could be left on all night. I remember one put on Saturday night and at bath time next Saturday it was peeled off as a dried shell.

Incidently, the old number three galvanized iron tub referred to as the tin tub, served as the bath tub, and the kitchen became the bathroom. In the Summer, of which there was always three or four weeks or a little more, we boys transferred from the tin tub to the river. Mother said we didn't bath, we merely changed dirt.

Mother saw to it that we had a pleasant yard; we called it the "Lot." At the front and on both sides of the house grew a thick mat of grass consisting of a variety of grasses, some white clover and an undue number of dandelions. This grass was marked off by cottonwood poplars spaced in exact perpendicular lines making exact squares. The distance was just right to support home-made hammocks or swings or tent ropes or clothes lines and even for staking the riding ponies, which served as the lawn mower. These trees grew high enough to support high safe swings.

I don't remember ever seeing mother in a swing but she would chide us in derision when we were afraid to swing high enough to see over the barn. "I liked to swing when I was a child." She would say and add "It was never high enough until the swing came to or passed the ninety degree angle which resulted in a free downward fall for a few inches, enough to result in a bump as the ropes tightened." Mother certainly had few fears. She told us of running down a board leaned up against a house and of how she had to run a great distance before she could regain her balance. She must have been a dare-devil and when any of her children were not over-cautious at times, she should have rested assured that they came by the tendency honestly.

Even with these antics, she was blessed with few accidents and enjoyed good health. Once when she was still a child she evidently had a serious mastoid infection that went unattended, but she later referred to it as being very painful. The infection miraculously ate through the bone, drained and then healed itself. In later years she suffered a fractured collar bone which had to be wired into place with a silver wire. It was during one of these visits to the doctor that he discovered evidence of this old mastoid infection.

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