The oldest child Kate was often given a supervisory role over her younger siblings, especially her sisters, which didn’t always turn out too well. The following story told by Kate demonstrates how easily things could go wrong when Dorothy and Tillie got together on a project. This event happened sometime after the family moved to the Troop Station house in 1929.
From “Family Ties and Memories”, 1977.
“The girls by this time had their own ideas of how to play. One afternoon Big Mama had gone to an aunt’s funeral, and Kate was quilting using ravelings out of flour sacks as thread. The younger girls (Dorothy and Tillie) came in complaining that they needed a place for a playhouse. Kate gave them permission to burn off a place. Unfortunately, the place they picked to burn was a garden full of peanut shocks. In fact, it was the whole winter’s supply of peanuts that went up in smoke, but it did make a nice big playhouse.”
