Grandmother Young gave mother a house to live in (it had been her house which she had "rented out"). I remember entering this house (it was so cold) for the first time then.
Grandmother Young lived 2 doors east of us with her step-brother "Uncle Will" and his daughter Jessie, an unmarried school teacher. (their last name was Armstrong).
I was taken to the above Armstrong house and held up to see a man lying in a coffin. I remember thinking "That isn't daddy- he's gone." and squirmed to get down. Some woman said, "she just doesn't realize". This reaction on my part was surely the result of the incident (or vivid imagination) I told mother about before we left Montpelier.
It was decided that mother should go to Snow College, which was just across the street from our house. She would taken Home Economics so she could take in boarders (to help with her living expenses). I was to stay with my maternal grandparents. Don and Reva would start in 1st grade, freeing mother for her classes.
The house had no bathroom, or water. Water came from an outdoor "hydrant" about 20-30 ft. from the outside kitchen door. Baths were in a round galvanized "wash tub" and cleanups with a "washbasin and pitcher". The "privy" (toilet) was about 40-50 ft. from the back door in a clump of large bushes. In very bad cold weather and some nights we used a "chamber-pot"- very common in those days. There were coal stoves in the kitchen for cooking, heating water, and heating that area of the house and a coal small stove in the "parlour" for heating in the winter.
Mother warmed "flat irons" (used to iron clothes) on top of the coal stoves during dinner and until we went to bed, at which time they were wrapped in towels and taken to bed to keep our feet warm (and warm the bed a little).
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