The last house we lived in before we left West Virginia was built in January out of green hemlock: two little rooms. The front door was a barn door. It was made out of green lumber. They put up two corner boards here and two over there and two over there and the roof was sloped one way and no studding in it, and we swept four inches of snow off the floor part of it and put a roof on it of lightweight tarpaper, and we moved in. And they just nailed the green hemlock up and down and then one by four over the cracks.
And one place in front of the front door where it was kind of cut cross grain, why Ethel woke up one night and pow, scared to death. And she wanted to know what it was. I said that’s just a board seasoning and cracking. And her dad had given us a big old wool rug. And she woke me up one morning, she said what’s that cat doing?
And it was laying right up close to where the stove was. It had come up under the house, raised the rug up, the cat was laying there asleep. In front of the front door there was a piece busted out in one of the floor boards about that big, it was kind of wedge shaped, and the cat went in and out of that hole.
Homer Toler
Intereviewed by Harry Robie, August 1990
http://spider.georgetowncollege.edu/HTALLANT/border/bs9/robie.htm
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