Everybody needs a house or shelter of some kind where you can kick off your boots and wiggle your toes. It don’t have to be fancy or even too clean, but you’ve got to have a lid.

When I built my ol’ shack I was tryin to get somethin’ I could halfway afford and still be livable. It ain’t the most metropolitan place I’ve ever seen, but it’s what I like.

Now the wife — that’s a different story. She thinks it needs a little fine-tunin’ like central heat and air.

I tell her we’ve got it. In the summer it’s hot from one to the other, and in winter it’s cold.

But it’s not cold like lots of the ol’ pads I’ve seen. My goodness, the water never freezes in the kitchen.

Here a while back I was out at the little rock house — you know, the one out on Drunk Branch. Well, it was cold that day and rainy, the kind of winter day when everything has that cold gray look.

I was drivin’ by the rock house and the door was standin’ open, so I decides to visit awhile.

It has been years since I’d crossed that threshold, and I thought I’d just take a little peek as no one lives there and the place was empty.

You talk about little! It makes my shack look like a castle.

I walked in on the concrete floor with them frozen lookin’ rocks for walls and I wondered how anybody could have lived in such a place. How could you ever heat it?

I’ve known of families, big families livin’ there and they were as happy as a pig in mud. The place was so small that I don’t know where they all bedded down.

They must have stacked the kids like firewood because there wasn’t room for everybody to stretch out. When you think of a close family, they sure had it.

After my short tour through the house I went out to the couple of pole barns that are still standin’, but just barely.

In my mind I could see an ol’ starved-out team of bay horses standin’ there eatin’ corn stalks tryin’ to get enough energy to pull a few poles for firewood and still make it until grass.

The horses had it worse than the people.

I’ve got it figured out. The next time the wife complains about this ol’ shack, I’m goin’ to get me an ol’ wooden-wheeled wagon, find me an ol’ starved-out team with harness patched with bailin’ wire.

I’ll throw a bed, two straight-backed chairs and a king heater stove in that wagon and move her to the little rock house out on Drunk Branch — but not as long as there’s a 747 leavin’ Lambert field, I’ll bet.

COURTESY of Tom Runnels Publications. Copyrighted and registered by Tom Runnels and Saundra Runnels Revocable Trust. Printed in The Banner Press: May 26, 1988.