I always a felt a little bit intimidated by him, yet when he made eye contact with me his eyes twinkled, and he truly was a sweet and kind man. Pretty sure he’s the first person to ever take my nose off! Then he’d push his thumb between his index and middle finger and say, “here it is, your nose.”

All the menfolk would sit in the den on Sundays in Signpost, usually with a ballgame on but how they heard it from all the women being in the good living room going up an octave with each story being told, I will never know, but it happened- every Sunday.

Kitchen filled with cake and desserts and food that Gam had prepared or others brought faithfully, the dining room too, just activity everywhere and so many people. Some of us kids played Red Light Green Light, and Red Rover out in the front yard. Or we headed up the stairs like a stampede to play dress up with Gam’s fabrics and sewing stuff in the big bedroom up there with the tiny closet door. That room had linoleum on the floor that was designed like a rug. I know the very smell of that room, I loved everything about it, little scraps of lace and elastic here and there…some of us on the bed as “judges” whilst others paraded about in our “gowns and dresses” made from anything we could find. The winner of these pageants received a real trophy! Albeit a boat racing trophy, but still!

We never kept the trophies, they were kept in the other closet that ran the whooooooole length of that bedroom and had another closet door on the other side, more so another skinny room than a closet really, but that’s where the boat trophies were. Someone else will need to tell the story of these trophies that knows more than I do, my only knowledge being that Pop and some of the boys had flat bottomed racing boats and they’d have races down at Red Hills.

One winter my dad hooked up one of those old flat bottomed racing boats and pulled us all through Signpost on the snowy roads, a little digging and I can find a photo of a few of us in it and I’ll be on the lookout for that and post a photo when I locate it. ♥

It was this same bedroom that I remember sleeping in with my dad when we first moved into Gam’s house. I must have been 3. There was an iron bed up there and I would always lay really high up with my head touching the headboard because I knew my dad would grab my ankles with his one hand and pull me down, so I was on the right spot on my pillow. It always made me giggle and squeal and that room is always special to me. Its where we played, and our imaginations were free and Gam had great stuff to play with!

How all this came about while telling of Uncle Allen pulling my nose off is beyond me but here we are…