It had originally held four large rooms, or “pens” as they were called. There were two rooms down and two up on either side of a wide central hallway. The front door was on one end and the door to the back yard, the kitchen, smokehouse, and apple cellar at the other. For some inexplicable reason one of the previous owners had cut off the roof and turned the two upper rooms into an attic. The windows had even been boarded over. With the loss of the upstairs, succeeding residents started expanding to the sides and the back. The smokehouse and apple cellar had been torn down to make room for an indoor kitchen and a huge wrap-around screened porch. When my grandfather Sterling and my father purchased the farm they added more bedrooms. It was also thanks to them that we had electricity and indoor plumbing. To say the result of all these architectural additions was a hodgepodge of style was a great understatement. But somehow, through it all, the house maintained a certain elegance and beauty and I dearly loved every little nook and cranny.
