Rental

Playing house as a newly wed happened here.  I have dreamt about this place so many times I have lost count.  In my dreams it is a place of comfort.  I learned how to run a HOME in this small place in Hugoton, Kansas.  It was a two bedroom house with a nice size bathroom that had a large old fashioned slipper tub.  Upon entering the Living room, you could see straight into the large Dining room and to the left of the entrance was a bedroom.

The Dining room had five openings into it and was large compared to the other rooms.  The tiny kitchen barely had space for two people to stand in.  The kitchen sink was in front of a window that looked out onto a fenced back yard.  Since the Kitchen was so tiny, we started with our fridge in the utility room until the hand me down fridge froze up.  Not good with storing baby food and milk bottles.

We made our first purchase borrowing $400 from the local bank to buy a new Sears refrigerator. Having no checking account, Mister Dudley, the Banker, looked at us as if we were from outer space. Who doesn't have a checking account?  I used money orders and the envelope method.

The new fridge would be placed in the corner of the Dining room.  Our eclectic decorating style allowed our fridge to be right at HOME in the corner of the room that had giant maps for the curtains. We also bought on credit a dishwasher, stove and vacuum sweeper.  Got another car and ate pizza.
    
Remembering the first time I walked into the house after Husband moved all our earthly belongings into it, I had gone to visit my Parents with our Baby Son.  Things happened quickly our first year of marriage.  I'd get pregnant on our Honeymoon making our first year together as Husband and Wife full of changes and interesting events.

We married in Marion, Kansas, Honeymooned in a fully furnished Wichita, Kansas apartment as College students, made our baby, and made the decision to relocate back to Liberal, Kansas where we met at Community College so Husband could earn his two year degree.  I had some comfort thinking that my baby would be born in Liberal where I grew up instead of born in a city hospital in Wichita. Baby was a month old when we moved to Hugoton.  I would be celebrating my 20th birthday during the Summer in this little house in a small town.

Husband and I would be 20 years old and make our HOME here.  It would be where our son would take his first steps, learned to talk and be the reason to work hard at being a family.  Husband would do his best to advance in his job and I would busy myself with the everyday details of being a wife, mother, stay-at-home homemaker and make another baby.

This would be the place that we planted a garden.  Like that saying, I will bloom where I am planted. I bloomed.  It would be here that I grew to desire to be closer to our maker and be real.  It would be here that LIFE was harder than I ever imagined.

Life in the Rental had it's place and I sometimes wish I was still there,

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