Me, mom, grandma Rouse 4 Generations: Kim, Bethany, Sarah, mom Cooper & grandma Rouse - April 2015

Grandma Zelda Rouse, her daughter:  Elsie (Rouse) Cooper, her daugher:  Kim (Cooper) Bollinger, her daughters: Sarah Bollinger, Bethany Bollinger, Abi (Bollinger) Nault, and her son & daughter:  Asa & Nova Nault.  

Though Grandma is suffering with some effects of a stroke and dementia, she is an otherwise healthy 98 year old living in Fredericktown, Missouri.  She is indeed quite an amazing woman who bore 6 daughters and one son, (all living but one).  I remember spending nights at grandma and grandpa's farm where we used an outhouse until I was an early teen!  They drew water from a well until indoor plumbing was added sometime before I entered high school.  They had a wood stove in the kitchen where tea kettles of hot water were always ready and a fire place in the living room.  Those cold winter nights often found us tip-toeing to an "indoor" chamber pot grandma kept in an unheated porch room just off the kitchen!!  We slept in an attic that also had little heat in the winter and no air conditioning in the summer.  We made due with lots of blankets when it was cold and fans when it was hot!  Grandma's chickens and grandpa's pigs were a highlight, giving us plenty of entertainment at feeding time.  The barn was probably our favorite place to sneak around and explore, offering feed sacks, grain barrels, harnesses, saddles, farm equipment and of course, many bales of hay to make forts and hide in!  My grandpa was an interesting man, with plenty of hobbies and interests, including making sorghum molasses, working with wood, collecting tid bits of rock, lead and crystals from the mines he once worked in, hunting and fishing.  He used to make sling shots out of forked branches and pieces of rubber!  He even once had a pet raccoon named Pete that everyone loved. Oh, to push re-play!