Three Brothers Share'n One Bed

Our family was not all that big, just six of us (Peggy, Jimmy, Jackie and Sammy) with mom and dad; all in a four-room house. I first mentioned this in an article I wrote for Wikinuts entitled Our First House and I will summarize that article rather than copy it for use here…

When our family moved from Virginia into our first house in Tennessee, it consisted of only four rooms… with a little toilet out back, all situated on a one-acre corner lot. I was just eighteen months old so I don’t remember anything about the move, just remember hearing my family talk about it over the years. The four rooms were roughly equal in size and the house was divided into four quarters, each quarter representing a room. In the front of the house was the living room which mom said we would reserve for company when they came to visit, and mom and dad’s bedroom. Right behind these were the children’s room on one side and the kitchen on the other, which later became my sister Peggy’s room after we remodeled. There was a coal furnace that heated our little house and since the modern refrigerator was not available at that time we had to use an icebox to keep our milk and eggs fresh that was service twice a week by the ‘ice man’. I looked forward to him coming because he would give all the kids in the neighborhood chips of ice after he chipped out the blocks that he would place in each family’s icebox.

The remodeling consisted of adding two more rooms on the back of the house over a garage, which housed our first car. One room was to be a new kitchen with modern appliances for mom and another large family room, which we never finished and just used as a closed-in back porch.

As you can see we were just an average family. But we were cramped in our first house. We had to remodel and we did. After remodeling we were still cramped, but we made it work. Peggy at least had her own room and mom & dad had their own room and we three boys - well we had our own room too, but only one bed. Jim and Jack shared a fold out bed, but after I reach 4 or 5, I joined my brothers in the fold out bed, which was a couch in the daytime, and at night we took off the cushions and folding out the bed. We sounded like the Waltons each night as we all had to say our good nights to each other.

Jim & Jack complained that I rolled over against them and they couldn’t sleep. I had to sleep in the middle because mom was afraid I would roll out bed and get hurt falling to the floor if I slept on the outside.

We boys eventually broke that bed and we had to get rid of it. My brothers suggested bunk beds, but mom said we would have to place them side-by-side until they could figure out what to do with me. Guess who still slept in the middle… I called it the ‘crack’ in between the two mattresses on the bunk beds.

Dad started working nights so that emptied his bed at night. Jim and Jack could finally place their bunk beds together, Jack got the top bunk and I was more than willing to sleep in dad’s bed and keep it warm for him to sleep in after he had worked each night.

Problem finally solved, but I still remember the times we three brothers had when we all had to share one bed…

© 2010 SamSonS