Grandma (Ethel Hurst Speas) lived in the happiest place on earth. Nope, not Disney Land, Grandma's house. She shared the charm and magic of Walt Disney, but her budget was much smaller than his. Just as I'll never tire of the original rides at Disneyland, I never grew bored with the simple pleasures at Grandma's house. If you didn't have the joy of spending time in her small Woodville home, you missed out, big time. 
You entered her house through a porch area with a squeaky, cracked linoleum floor. The porch wasn't heated, so it was the perfect place for the big chest freezer, which was very conveniently located so that Grandma could give guests a bottle of freezer jam as they went out the door to go home. She also kept delicious butterscotch fudge in a mason jar in the freezer. She would give us a piece on our way out. I wonder if that was planned so that sticky fingers were in the car, not her house? Come to think of it, this fudge may have been the reason she never replaced the squeaky floor; there was no way you could have ever snatched a piece undetected. I'm not sure I've ever eaten thawed butterscotch fudge, I simply could not wait.
A small bookcase on the porch held a few odd titles, including "Ripley's Believe It or Not" and a stack of old copies of the Friend magazine. A little basket filled with seashells was on the top shelf. Grandma had saved them from a visit to Virginia Beach many years before. They were special to her and a novelty to a little Idaho girl who had never seen the ocean.
On the wall just inside the front room door hung a creepy picture of a cupid with a bow and arrow. That painting haunted more than one dream. It was in an oval frame with concave glass. This may not be it exactly, but it was similar. I had a strange fascination with the cupid, but I never thought to ask what it was or why it was there. Someday I'll ask Grandma. The wall paper over the couch was a busy flower pattern and on the arms and back of the chairs and couch doilies were stretched to protect the upholstery (or cover threadbare areas). A shortening can filled with skeins of thread and tubes of seed beads for making doilies was always kept handy for Grandma to grab and work on in spare moments.
If you visited on a weekday, you would often find the front room filled with a quilt on stands that stretched the pieced top and batting from wall to wall. Quilters on the far side had to sit on the couch because there wasn't room to pull up kitchen chairs on all sides. Under the quilt was a great place to play with Grandma's toys. The toys were held inside the lower doors of the breakfront. Here are a few I remember:
The button bottle: There were many things that could be done with the large jar filled with mismatched buttons. Little hands could string them in interesting patterns on a piece of yarn threaded through a large darning needle. Then it could be tied off with a knot and worn as a beautiful necklace. At the end of the visit though, the buttons went back in the bottle, not home, so they could be used by the next friend.
Buttons and string could also be used to make a dancing button, or buzz saw toy, depending upon if the participant was a girl or a boy. In either case, you needed a button with two eyes and a long piece of string. You would thread the button as in the picture and then, putting your fingers through the end loops, whirl it around and then pull your hands apart and bring them close together over and over again. It you spun it fast enough it would make a whirring sound and would spin into a pretty illusion, especially if you used a fancy button.
String could be a toy all by itself. If you were lucky enough to have a willing cousin there, string games could by played by two. Or, if you were alone, no problem, Jacobs Ladder and other string figures and tricks were fun to play by yourself. My favorite trick was one in which the loop of string was twisted in what looked like a tangled mess around the fingers, and then by pulling a particular string, everything magically untangled.
A cardboard cylinder held pickup sticks and steady hands would remove them one by one from the pile without disturbing the rest.
An old oatmeal box was filled with spools which were almost as good as Lincoln Logs or Lego's for building towers and castles.
Grandpa was usually willing to play a game of checkers, but he hardly ever let me win, so I didn't play much.
Grandpa had access to rubber balls from somewhere and he kept us supplied. They didn't keep their bounce for long, but when they were new, playing jacks was a favorite pastime, either on the kitchen floor in the winter, or outside on the sidewalk in the summer.
The guest bedroom, which opened directly off the front room, was home to a rag doll and a doll sized quilt. This only came out on days when only one granddaughter was visiting.
The kitchen was one step down from the front room, so obviously one of these rooms had been added on. This was the place of delicious smells and delectable feasts. Helping Grandma wash the dishes was even fun, if your hands could withstand the scorching hot water she used. Avoiding the scald, I usually just stacked the clean dishes in the rubber drying rack on the counter.
A framed recipe of Grandma's famous dinner rolls hung on the kitchen wall.
Down the hallway from the kitchen, another door opened into the spare bedroom, which made it possible to run laps - through the spare bedroom, in between the guests in the front room, down the step into the kitchen, around the table, by the stove, and back down the hall. This was the most fun when a group of cousins were there to chase in circles. I bet we wore Grandma's patience thin, but I don't recall her showing it.
The bathroom definitely was an add-on to the original home which only sported a path to the outhouse. Since it was no longer needed for "necessaries", the outhouse was something fun to climb on and useful to reach the strawberry crab apples on the nearby tree.
The side yard held a small orchard of the world's best yellow transparent apple trees, which made oh so good applesauce and apple pie. The vegetable garden was a thing of beauty and bounty. Yum - I loved the cucumbers, baby green peas, radishes, rhubarb, raspberries and strawberries. The flower garden was quaint and perfect. The nostalgic hollyhocks towered behind the smaller varieties.
On the days that Grandpa had the water, he opened the head gates and flood irrigated the lawn. You could get to the front door without getting your feet wet by walking on the raised sidewalk, unless you had to mind to wade in the cool water on a summer day.
I've driven by Grandma's house a few times in recent years, but it doesn't look the same. I had a hard time recognizing it. The flowers are not nearly as beautiful as when tended by Grandma's loving hands. Someone has let weeds grow up around the gate and the low front wire fence. The orchard isn't there. The porch was removed, or renovated into more useful space. Unfortunately the magic seems to have waned. I miss that happiest place on earth.
