In Grandmas’ house there were three rooms with an added bath, one living room, one box-car kitchen, and one bedroom just big enough for two double beds, forty years later and toward the end, three tiny walls, and a slip of a ceiling, with just enough room for one more double bed.
There were two doors, one at the front of the house and one off the kitchen. These were good doors, solid doors, that fit the slots like gloves, and snapped their hinges into the door frames. For more years than can be remembered, when Grandpa was alive, these skeleton keyed knobs were rusted, no special key would fit, and there was a small glass bowl in the roughly painted glass cabinet, that held about a half dozen keys, black, rusted, and never moved.
When Grandpa passed away in 1975, an uncle made the trip to the lumber yard, purchased two knobs, with each a dead bolt, and three keys for the pair.
Grandma and Aunt Sis held on to the keys, clicked each bolt in at night, and walked away with the house unlocked no more. Grandma lived to be 98, the Aunt to be 84, and no one ever turned those knobs from outside when they were locked.
Ralph Peck
Photo by Ralph Peck
Washington Irving Trail Museum,
NE of Ripley, Ok
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