It was mine-all mine. First, there was the farmhouse with its tall roof and many gables. When I was old enough to read Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, I was sure the house in the book must have looked like mine, but when I ran outside to count our gables, I was disappointed because my house didn't have seven. It had three chimneys, though-one for the fireplaces in the parlor and living room, one between two bedrooms, and one for the big kitchen stove with its warming oven and its roomy water reservoir that gave us a never-ending supply of hot water. A hall ran from the dining room all the way to the front door, and what a magical place that was. I was an outside person, but if cold or rainy weather forced me to stay inside, the hall became my road, my playhouse, my store, my schoolroom, or my field for races or playing ball. In fact, it could be just about anything I wanted it to be!

Next came the room where I wanted most to be, the one in which I wasn't allowed. That was the place which was kept spotless for unexpected company. Before Mama answered a knock on the door, she hurried to open the door of the taboo room so she could usher a caller into a homey looking place with bookshelves holding all those books that Daddy collected over the years: books of poetry, books about the Bible, ten little books of Sherlock Holmes stories, a series of little red books containing a hundred of the world's best short stories, and even a shelf filled with books on public speaking. Some of my books were there, too, but others were in my bedroom or in the living room where Daddy or Mama read to me when they had a little spare time or when it was almost time for me to go to sleep. A series of books about a goat name Billy Whiskers were favorites.

In one corner of the usually closed room was an old pump organ. Mama and Daddy could get beautiful music from this instrument; however, when I managed to slip into the room, I produced ghostly sounds on that organ, sounds that I loved. When I was older and finally allowed to read some of the books, I discovered pencil scrawls in many of them, proving that I had managed to get into that room more times than Mama wished.

We had no secret tunnels or hidden doors, but there was one terrifying spot: the door between the dining room and the kitchen. If anyone knew how I felt that door, and if they asked me why, I would have been unable to explain. All I knew was that I couldn't walk through that entrance. Both the dining room and the kitchen had doors opening onto the back porch. To get to the kitchen from the dining room, I went out onto the porch and back into the kitchen door, and when I wanted to go back to the dining room I again went out onto the porch. Why didn't I take the short, easy way? Why didn't I go directly from one room to the other? I had no idea, but I knew that unpleasant chills ran up and down my spine each time I even started toward that door. It was a strange feeling that said, "You've been here before," and, of course, I had. I saw that door every day of my life, and it made me very uncomfortable. I can't remember that Mama or Daddy ever questioned me about why I went the long way around, but surely they must have noticed that I had some sort of phobia, for it seemed that they noticed everything else I did.

Years later my sister Gladys helped solve the mystery for me. A neighbor once told me that sixteen-year-old Gladys refused to look at me when I was born, and that she seemed to be angry or jealous. Gladys married before she finished high school, so I remembered practically nothing of once sharing a home with my sister. The neighbor said, "I was the first person there when you were born. I bathed you and held you on my lap. I talked to you and told you what a beautiful baby you were. I tried to get Gladys to come to see her pretty sister, but she wouldn't even glance toward you. Instead, she ran away to her room."

As to my phobia, Gladys told me about the event that happened when she was caring for me while Mama milked. She became very angry with me and threw a dining room chair, hitting the door hard enough to leave an indentation in the wood and terrifying me so much that I feared that spot for many years.