We moved from the Otto Weishold place northeast of Nash to the Bill Thornhill place near Sand Creek some time between my birth on Jan 23, 1931 and Lila’s birth on Dec 22, 1932. I do not remember Lila’s birth at all. Willis said he remembers coming down the stairs and seeing this almost black baby lying in a basket. He said he wondered what was going on as he thought maybe she was a black baby. Lila was born early and had a hole that had not closed in her heart. Dr. Galloway from Anthony, KS delivered her. He was very blunt and advised Mama and Daddy that she most likely would not live through the night. Grandma Ellen Clover came to help Mama and most likely helped save her life with her expertise in child rearing.

Some time during the time when we lived in our two story house, Daddy built a morning fire in the old heating stove. Mama was drying Lila and my coats by the stove pipe after she had hand washed them the night before. One of the pieces of firewood had fallen against the hot stove and slowly caught fire after Daddy had gone out to milk the cows. As the fire intensified it caught more of the wood on fire and the flames started up the wall where our coats hung. Willis decided to get up and when he went to enter the room he saw a wall of fire. He ran back to tell Mama and she screamed out of the upstairs door for Daddy to come help us get out of the upstairs bedrooms. Mama kept Lila and I outside with her during the fire. I remember getting very cold and wanting to go back to bed where it was warm. Most likely I was cold because my coat was still inside the house.

Luckily Mama had not dumped the wash water from one of the wash tubs after doing the washing the day before, so Daddy used his axe to break the ice that had formed during the night. He used the wash water to put out the fire. The neighbors down the road heard the commotion that Mama made when she screamed to daddy for help and came over with buckets of water to help put out the fire. By the time they arrived Daddy had it out. Willis said after all seemed OK with the fire being out, he went upstairs and saw red embers glowing through the upstairs floor. He called Daddy back to the house. This time Daddy used water from a teakettle to completely eradicate all of the fire. This left Willis with a floor window in his room.

Mama was so afraid of fire and once jumped through the screen of an open window beside of her bed in later years. She was reluctant to tell us why, until we kept urging us to tell us why the screen was ripped open. She often asked us if we smelled smoke. Perhaps the house fire was the reason behind her paranoia.