Grandma Barnes had a toy at her house that was wonderful. I wish we had it today. It was small red wooden apple, about the size of an apple. It came apart in the middle into two halves. If you put the flat part of one of the halves face down you could put the other half on top, connecting them by putting a small peg in holes at the top and bottom of the apple. The hole on top was where the stem would be in a real apple. This made a table. Inside were a tiny plate, cup and bowl. I think there might have been a rolling pin too, or maybe that was the connecting piece.

One of my earliest memories is playing with my sisters with our little blue metal doll crib and the green and yellow wooden cupboard and the brown square wood table and chair set. In the summer, we moved these outside to the front porch and  played house to our hearts’ content. Here is a picture of our house before it was remodeled, if you can see past the cute girls in front, Cherie, Kathy and Neta. Their mother is sitting in the chair on the porch.

Below are pictures of the 2nd generation playing with the crib, now yellow, at the right of the picture and the cupboard, newly painted and delivered by Santa Clause in 1977 to Heidi and Zachary.

Christmas 1960, when I was 8 years old, I received a big walking doll. Her name was Julie and she had red hair. She came with two different outfits and removable socks and shoes. She was as tall as my 2 1/2 year old little sister, Deanna. We had a lot of fun playing with her. She could “walk” if you held her hand and had a good imagination. I did. But she wouldn’t stand up by herself as illustrated in the picture on the package she came in. Julie was the big sister to all the baby dolls of various sizes. With four girls in the family, there were a few dolls at our house.

If you look on the couch behind Deanna you can see the big paper doll from Santa. We had so much fun playing with both those big dolls. Christmas was on Sunday. You can see that Mom made sure we went to bed on Christmas Eve with clean hair all rolled up in curlers. The slippers I’m wearing were new that Christmas too. I think they were light blue. Behind me is the bookcase with the old black phone sitting on it. To the left is the doorway to the kitchen. The Christmas tree is in front of the window that faced the driveway. See the toy floor sweeper at the lower left and the broom by Deanna’s left foot? I think Santa brought those for Ricky and Deanna so they could clean up. He knew I’d be busy playing with my new dolls.