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Looking up towards the moon from the porch on a summer night my grandmother would point out that there was a ring around the moon. She would tell us that this meant there would be rain soon. Sometimes with a wind blowing her skirt and hair softly she would announce that tonight there would be a storm. She was right at least as much as the weathermen of her time. My grandmother was a good part Indian and she grew up in the country. She read the signs as she called them, this might be a leaf from a plant, or a cloud formation on the horizon. It could be the way the birds acted or how the cattle came in from the back pastures early or late. The color of the sky, the brightness of the stars and how the flies gathered on the doors all were signs of change. Her life revolved around God, family, friends and nature.

Growing up in Eastern Oklahoma I had the privilegeof getting to visit my grandmother fairly often and spent many a happy summer's evening listening to her stories about her childhood and early years with my grandfather. She had eleven children, only one daughter out of the bunch, all born at home. She cooked and washed in the old ways with a woodburning stove and a wash pot of boiling water over an open fire. She had no running water or modern conveniences until many years after I was grown and married. Although she owned a television in the late 50's she seldom watched it. Grandmother's domain was the front porch near the flowers and the back porch where she could see for miles. Her water for drinking was hauled from her son's home a mile east. It was pure and sweet and I remember we drank from a dipper and a bucket often.

Grandmother saved rain water to wash her hair with; she always said the rain water made her long auburn hair softer than the hard well water on the farm. I know my grandmother was a very clean woman but she did not have a modern bathroom. In her home the wash tub was filled with hot water from the kettleon the wood stove. Your bath was in the kitchen as close to the oldwood stove as possible becauseher housewas very drafty. The house was three or more feet off the ground built on rock pillars and very unleveled. Cold winter winds blew under the old house and through the old window frames. Funny how few times anyone ever got sick though. In the summer when my sister and a cousin or two were all there visiting we tiny little girls would get water from the pump into a wash tub.This endeavor would take all of us to lift a tub and fill another

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