When I was in eighth grade, mother and I tore down the house down the street. Mother wanted the wood to build a house out in the country. That house never got built. We had some fun times and crazy times bringing it down. I even stepped on a rusty nail and had to miss some marching practice. 
 
  We got a lot of good wood out of that house, but the best wood was the floor. The strips were 18 feet long and only 2 inches wide. So we didn’t take this wood out to the land that my parents had bought out in the country. We kept it in the garage. We never did any building out at that land and mother began talking about using that flooring to put a floor down in our attic. 
 
  One weekend mother went up to a church camp retreat for Preacher’s wives. She left early Friday morning with some other ladies. That left my sister and I at our father’s mercy. We had learned early in life to find things to do, so he would not. His ideas tended to get us into scary situations. 
 
  So I went into the attic and took a look to see what I needed to do. The attic was 30 ft long. And about 15 ft wide. It was obvious that I needed to lay down some boards across the rafters, so that I could have something to lay the flooring on. The rafters went long wise and there were wires that lay across them also. Out in the garage we had a bunch of 2 X 2’s. All I had to find out was if they were long enough to cross the attic. They were perfect. I brought them up and nailed them all down. 
 
  Now the fun part. Getting those 18 foot long floor boards up in the attic.  I drug them out of the garage 3 at a time and leaned them against the house outside of my bedroom window. Then I had to go up to my room and reach out the window, grab one and drag it inside. Next I pulled it into my big closet and had to bend it so it could then go in the attic door at the far back corner of my closet. I nailed that first board down as soon as I got it in there. By the time that dad got home from work, I only had a little less than 3 feet of flooring nailed down. Daddy heard me pounding away as soon as he came in. He came up to check on what was going on. I had lost track of time and suddenly I realized my father was standing there on what little floor I had put down. He was smiling. When he saw me looking at him, he just nodded without a word and left the attic. I nailed down a few more boards before quitting that evening. Once I got done with my bath, daddy had supper ready. 
 
  Saturday, I got back to it right after breakfast and worked all day. I suspect that daddy spent time dragging more flooring strips out of the garage and leaned them against the house for me. About every few hours he or my sister was up there looking around and then leaving without a word. 
 
  Sunday morning we went to Church over at Amity where daddy preached, then came home and ate. I was back up in the attic after that meal and worked real hard to get that last 4 feet done before mother got home. 
 
  It was just before 5pm when I was finally done. I was filthy and sweaty. I came walking down the stairs into the living room wearing only my jeans and shoes. And there was mother with two of the ladies that she rode home with.  When she saw me, her jaw dropped. 
 
  “What have YOU done?” That was the first of many things out of her mouth as she showed how humiliated she felt. This is when my father walked in and began to soothe her. But that didn’t help. My father is the kind of person that takes his time in giving good news to someone upset.  Especially in a situation like this.
 
  The two ladies suddenly came up with reasons to leave and I quickly left the living room and took a bath. 
 
  Daddy finally got mother upstairs and I could hear her making more remarks when she saw all the stuff from the attic in my room. She didn’t finally calm down until she saw the finished attic floor. After that for about a week, I was the best kid in the world to her.