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making mud cakes with old spoons and tins. Another favorite pastime was to play in the puddles after a rain. Alphy made little toy boats with scraps of wood. He shaped the wood so that it looked like a sailboat. The wood was sanded smooth all around; then he tied a string to it. The younger children would spend hours playing with them. Sometimes in the summer, after a warm rain, Eileen and Joan would strip down to their underwear, and go running through the puddles. They’d laugh and run to see who could make the biggest splash. They would always be covered in red mud by the time they

were done.

There was very little money for toys, so the children made their own. Sometimes they would get scraps of wood from Alphy’s workshop and use them for building blocks.

One day Joan and Eileen were playing with their friends next door. There was Joan’s buddy, Bobby Boudreau and his sister, Debbie. Debbie and Eileen were approximately the same age, and they were also best friends. The children had played house at the Boudreau’s earlier, but later in the day, they decided they would go to the Doucette’s workshop to get building blocks. On their way the children engaged in a race to see who would get there first. By this time they were near the workshop.

All four of the children started running- through the open door of the work-shop, and up the steep stairway. Joan, the smallest tried her best to keep up with the others. As the children were scrambling up the stairs, Joan lost her balance, and fell headfirst over the side of the stairs, which were open and without a handrail. When Joan fell, she hit her head on a wooden plank, and was knocked unconscious.

Alphy and Margurita were in the workshop and heard the noise when Joan fell down. They rushed to the stairs to see what

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