In the doghouse....childhood memory

Well, actually, I am sitting a few minutes here and a few there...doing laundry and hanging it out to dry....trying to think of a picture to go with what I want to tell about but don't really have any. I took this picture of this log cabin a few days ago. And we are wondering what is going to happen to it...it has a new roof, but doesn't look too well cared for otherwise. I would give anything to have it...I would love it so!
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Now to the story behind the title of this post. I have a niece whose dad was in the Air Force...she is a few years younger than me, maybe 3-4 or 5 years younger...cannot really think and too lazy to go look it up. Due to places her dad got stationed/things he had to do, there were a couple or three times in her life when she lived near us, and one time they even stayed with us a short while. I think her dad was going to some sort of schooling at that time.

Anyway, we were close back then. We would roam the hills, play in the barn, play I Spy,
and she is the one that played in the hallway at home that I mentioned here...I cannot even think of all we done. But we did a lot...

Now my oldest brother was/is a coon hunter...so he had coon dogs. I am not sure which dog it was, but he built him a heck of dog house. It was probably at least 40 inches wide and even longer than that. It was built for a dog to stay warm in. It had a peak roof...from floor to peak of roof was probably at least 30-35 inches....and I think the walls were about 24. You got to understand I am seeing this through a teen-ager's eyes...not real sure of the measurements.

Anyway, he built it and for the longest time, none of the dogs would even use it. They had rather lay on the ground. So my niece and I used it. We could just barely fit through the door...had to get down and crawl in....

Well, I am not sure where we got the candles, but we would have a candle or two in there, and we would have crackers. We would toast the crackers over the open flame and kind of scorch it. At that time, I had a huge wart on my left hand...I would hold the candle till the hot, melted wax would drip and cover that wart. Hoping to kill it I guess. Or I would sit and pick at that wart and we would just talk...maybe even try to read.

Well, we had made a trip to the neighbor's dump on his farm...I suppose he was trying to fill in that ravine. It was just their own private place to throw junk. We found a shiny, gold trophy. We took that home with us. We thought it was made of metal...to this day that is sort of embarrassing cause I was old enough to know better.

Well, I don't know if it was that day, or another day, but of course we had the bright idea of using it as a candle holder in the dog house. And we were in there, had the candle going, and just stuffing our mouth as full of crackers as we could...stuff you might expect from a boy but not from girls.

The trophy was not made of metal---it was plastic.  The candle burned down to below the rim, and it caught on fire! We could not blow it out because all we could blow was a few cracker crumbs. No room for air in a mouth stuffed with crackers! This was bad. I grabbed it and headed out the door with it...of course I had to get down and crawl....I remember us bursting out of it and after we got out, we just died laughing....and of course we never told our moms. I am not even sure if I ever told mine later in life.

It is a wonder some of us weren't killed...