Her grandmother Martha came out and thanked him for that. He told her the winter before he had bought new tires for one of his farm equipment and hadn't gotten rid of the old tires. He thought about using them some way and hadn't thought of any way.
Stephanie's grandmother Martha told him that spot by his garden would be a good place to put them and plant herbs or flowers in them. He told her that was a good idea Stephanie remember she was ten that summer. That fall her mother worked the fields with other temporary farm help.
Her grandmother Martha helped in the house making breads, pies, jams for sale at their little road side market plus bags of herbs that was grown in the couple's old tires of all sizes garden. The farmer's wife enjoyed Stephanie's grandmother's company.
That fall the farmer found a bunch of rats in his barns where he wasn't able to store any of his grains so he went to a friend and got several cats. Three for each barn including the barn behind Stephanie's house. One cat was so tiny. It was a calico. Stephanie named her patches.
The farmer told her she had a job taking care of that baby until she turn a year old. She kept the kitten on her covered back porch. She knew that her mother hated the kitten but left it alone and made sure Stephanie took care of patches.
Patches kept the field mice and farm rats away from Stephanie's house. The next year Stephanie asked her mother if she could help at the farm . you would have thought she had committed a crime of some kind. Stephanie was starting to wonder if there was something wrong with her mother.
The next week she found the kitten dead in the trash burn pile. Every one said the cat wouldn't have jumped into a fire by itself. When her mother Marsha caught Stephanie crying over Patches she got onto her and called he a crybaby and told her it was just a stupid cat any way
Marsha started hanging out with the younger group of farm hands who loved to drink and party. and staying out late at night. When Marsha did come home she would wake both Stephanie and her grandmother Martha up demand them to fix her something to eat.
One night she was so mean she threw a lite cigarette into her mother's lap. It caught on fire. Stephanie's grandmother Martha tried using her hands to put the fire out Stephanie knew that her grandmother was having trouble walking. Stephanie dumped a glass of water onto her grandma's lap.