Gram and Pap's house sits on a hill that slopes from the wooded mountains on the right, down to the creek road on the left. When we walk up the grassy path from the road toward the front of the house, we see our big field that runs along the left, passes the left side of the house, and then goes behind the house and covers a few more acres back there. The grass from the path goes on and makes a steep yard on the right side of the house that ends at the wood and barbed-wire fence up by the woods. It's right up there in the woods, just past the fence, where Aunt Helen takes us to pick the hazel nuts when they're ripe.

There is a covered porch on the house that runs clear across the front and then goes around to the right side and all the way to the back corner. We have a swing and an old, green-painted wicker couch on the side porch and that's where we sit a lot of the time. If there isn't room to sit on the swing or the couch, we can sit on the porch floor or else on the two-by-six rails between the posts that hold up the porch roof. There isn't always room to sit on the rail by the swing though because the people sitting on the swing like to put their feet up on the rail and sometimes they put their beer bottles or coffee cups there, too.

1952 - Mom on the porch; Linda, Sam & cousin, Billy McCormick

When we're sitting on the side porch, we can look to the left and see part of the big field behind the house, and we can see where it goes up to the wooded mountains. We can also see where a little spring comes out of the hill and runs between the field and the back of the house. Dad said the house used to be a "Speak-Easy" during Prohibition and that means that when it was against the law to drink whiskey, people had to sneak to places far out in the hills to drink whiskey, called Moonshine, that someone made. And the people who owned Gram and Pap's house then used to make the Moonshine right up there in our little spring.

If we look to the right while we're sitting on the swing, we can see down the grassy path to the garage that is real close to where the road is. Once in a while we see The Trespassers go by, and we don't like that, but mostly we look that way when we're watching for the men to come back from fishing. Sometimes we can hear Dad whistling before we can see him. Then, pretty soon, right by the garage, we'll see Dad and Uncle Bill and Pap and Uncle Foxie, sometimes with Sam and Billy, walking up the path toward the house, usually with their hip boots on, carrying their fishing poles and the string of fish they caught.

They never wear short pants, only long, and Pap and Uncle Foxie always wear plaid flannel shirts over long underwear, even in the summer. Dad wears a ball cap all the time, even when he's asleep at the farm, and Pap wears one a lot, too. But Pap likes to wear his backwards, with the bill pointing down his back.

Uncle Foxie and Pap let me help clean the fish on the big flat rock under the tall trees by the front porch. First we check for snakes around the rock and then we just stick our finger in the fish's mouth, scrape off the scales and fins, cut off the head and then slit its belly open and clean it out. But Mom won't let us kids eat the fish because there might be bones that could stick in our throats and kill us like happened to someone Gram knew about one time.

The side porch faces the steep yard and when we look way up we can see the thick woods over the fence that look like they touch the sky. In the yard inside the fence, there are two wooden sheds. One used to be a chicken coop before Gram and Pap bought the place, but I don't know what the other one was for. We don't use either one for much of anything and we can't go in them, or even get close to them, because of the snakes, maybe millions of them. But we can get to the fence without getting by the sheds, so, if one of the men is there, we're allowed to put paper targets or tin cans up on the fence posts and practice shooting the twenty-twos from the porch.

Mom thinks there are a lot of wood ticks in the two, big, long-needle pine trees that are up in the yard and she doesn't want me to get under them. My hair is long and thick and I always get wood ticks in it. Every Sunday when we get home from the farm, Mom has to brush my hair and look at it real good under the light to check for ticks. Once she didn't find one until a couple days after we got home and by that time the tick was all pink and swelled up as big as a marble from sucking my blood. Another time, she found a big lump on my head and saw a fat wood tick buried in it, probably sucking more blood. When we find a wood tick, on us or on the dogs, we pull it off and stab it with our fingernail, or else we light a match and burn it up. Once in a while we just put lighter fluid on them and they die, and sometimes we put the lighter fluid on and then burn them up.

Sometimes we're out on the porch by ourselves, but it's better when Aunt Helen and Mom and Gram are out there with us. The men are in and out because they have a lot of work to do, but all the time the big people talk about the family, even the ones who are dead, or they talk about when they were kids, like about the cow that gave purple milk because it ate so many blackberries. And they tell us all kinds of things about plants and the wild animals, and also about snakes.

Even on the porch we have to worry about the snakes. We can never go in the grass at the edge of the porch because there are probably snakes under the porch. I don't want to take any chances, so I always stay away from the cracks between the boards on the porch floor that look big enough for a snake to get through. Even when I dropped my new pearl bracelet that Gram brought me from Connecticut through one of the cracks, I didn't say anything because I didn't want anyone under there stirring up those snakes.

One time on the porch when I was real little, Aunt Helen told us that she heard on the radio or read somewhere that a big hawk could pick up a little pig or a dog, or even a small child, and carry it away. She remembered the story when we were sitting on the wicker couch and we saw a big hawk flying around in the field on the left. We watched it for a long time and I was really scared that it was going to spot me at any minute and take me up in the sky. It was pretty far away, but I felt really sick every time it started flying toward us. And for a long time after that I would wake up in the night scared and crying because I dreamed that I was walking in the woods by myself, wearing a brown plaid coat and a red wool scarf with fringe. The giant hawk would swoop down and grab me by my coat and carry me away while I was screaming and holding on to my red wool scarf.

On Saturday afternoons the men, usually Pap or Uncle Bill, use the lawnmower to cut the grass in the yard. They always have to be real careful not to cut down Gram's pink peonies- We say "pineys"- but they have to keep the grass short because if it gets too high the snakes will get in it and hide. And we don't want that. Dad and Uncle Bill cut the fields with the tractor, but not every week. The tractor always has something wrong with it and they have to work on it a lot. Everyone says Uncle Bill has the biggest muscles so he always has to lift it while they work on it.

We really like for the fields to be cut because then there might not be snakes there and we can cut across them to get to the road that goes down the creek where we go for walks, or else to fish or swim. And we can see the groundhogs better out the kitchen window if there aren't so many weeds. One time Dad saw one and he ran over and caught it in his ball cap. We took it to our real house and put it on a chain, but we had to let it go because it bit and we could only hold it if we had on Dad's leather welding gloves.

In the evening, after the grass and fields are cut, we eat our supper out on the porch. Uncle Bill makes a fire in our cooking spot in the yard, and then he cooks us hot dogs or hamburgers on a rack from our stove that he covers with aluminum foil. He's always real clean about everything and he makes us wash our hands before we eat, which we never have to do at home. Aunt Helen makes coffee in the big, white coffee pot and then we're allowed to cook our marshmallows on sticks.

After supper, when the sun goes down and it's almost dark, but we can still see just a little bit, we sit on the porch and try to be real quiet so we can hear the whippoorwhill. Maybe there are lots of whippoorwhills but we think there is just one and it won't make the sound if we talk. We always like it when Dad is there because he'll whistle like a whippoorwhill and the whippoorwhill will answer.

When it gets dark we go into the house, especially if there are mosquitoes, which might give us polio. We don't have a television and our radio doesn't work too good because we're so far out in the country. But no one cares because we always play cards in the evening. We play "500 Rummy" or "Fish" or "Cinch" at the table in the living room while the big people play "Cinch" at the big oak table in the kitchen. Once in a while they let us play with them and we like that. It sounds like there is a lot of fighting, but we don't get scared because that's the best part. Gram yells and cusses at Pap like she hates him but we all know that she doesn't.

The men always use the outhouse for a toilet when we're out the farm, but the rest of us mostly use the white pot in the house. It's either in Gram's room or in Aunt Helen's room and it has a lid. It's really a mess when somebody spills it, especially if it's on Sunday when it's all filled up. It's hard to go on, but it's better than the outhouse. Honeysuckle and blackberry bushes grow all around the outhouse and there are black snakes there every time I look; they like honeysuckle and blackberry bushes and they like to be in the sun. Sometimes they are stretched out on the the walls of the outhouse, inside and out. The men don't seem to care about the snakes, but sometimes when Mom doesn't think she sees any snakes she'll make us go in. I always think that the snakes could be in the hole and bite us while we sit there, or else one could drop out of the ceiling and get around our necks and squeeze us. Uncle Foxie says that black snakes are constrictors just like pythons.

And there might even be pairs of copperheads in the outhouse, too; you never know.

We already had a gas stove at Gram and Pap's place, and then we got electricity and a refrigerator so we'd have lights and so we wouldn't have to haul ice for the icebox. The last thing we got was cold running water in the kitchen. We used to have to pump water from the well in the front of the house, but the men fixed it so we can turn on a spigot in the kitchen and get water that way. But I still don't like the water and I'm always glad when we have pop to drink. I used to always think that the well water tasted and smelled like something dead and then the men really found dead things in the well when they were working on it. So, I could never trust the water after that because I know it has dead snakes in it.

We never take a bath out the farm, but we don't worry about being dirty. There's no hot water or bathtub but we don't think about it because we hardly ever take baths at home either. We feel the cleanest of all when we go swimming in the creek, even though we don't use any soap. The water smells sort of rotten sometimes but we're used to it and don't care what's in it. But we do like to go where there is a little bit of a current because Mom doesn't want us by the water that doesn't move because it could give us polio.

The only sink out the farm is the one in the kitchen. Even with the water hooked up, somebody still always puts a little basin of water there in the morning so some people can wash their faces. Then they can dry off on the towel that's there on a nail for everyone to use. And if they want to they can also use the comb in the soap dish by the sink that has lots of hair in it.

In the corner to the right of the sink there are a couple of shelves. On the shelf below the one with the snake bite medicine there are some toothbrushes, but I've never seen anyone use one. Maybe they are for Gram or for Aunt Helen's family because they are all clean and always take baths and brush their teeth at home, which Sam and I usually don't.

I know that Gram thinks we're dirty and she is always trying to tell us things to make us cleaner. For awhile she tried to get us to put some of the Dr. Lyon's tooth powder in our hand and then use our finger to clean our teeth. It made me gag because of having to rinse with the dead snake water, so Gram finally gave up. But she never lets us get around the food because we never wash our hands and we don't know how to be clean. She gets the maddest of all at me if I wipe my mouth or hair with the dish towel when I dry the dishes.

Billy and Becky always wear pajamas out the farm but mostly everyone else just sleeps in their clothes. For one thing, that makes it easier when they go soft craw hunting late at night after we're done playing cards. Then, whoever is going can take a little nap and then jump up at midnight and head right on out with their hip boots and carbide lights to catch the crawfish right when they lose their shells and are real soft and will make the best fish bait for when they go fishing early the next morning.

The house out the farm only has a kitchen, a living room and three bedrooms, but there is always enough room for all of us to sleep. Gram and Pap have their own room at the the back of the house and no one else ever sleeps in their bed, even when Gram and Pap aren't there. We aren't allowed to go in that room unless the pot's in there in the corner and we have to use it, or else if we're there for the first time in the spring after not being out there all winter. Then we have to go through all the rooms and shake out everything in the drawers to get the pink, baby mice out.

Gram and Pap's room only has a plastic curtain hanging up for a door and we can see in it from Aunt Helen's room. They have a big four-poster bed with a white chenille bedspread, and there's a low dresser that has a tray on top with three things of makeup. Gram doesn't look like she wears makeup, and maybe she doesn't because the Cherry Red lipstick and the powder and the little bottle of lotion from Linda Lee Cosmetics always look the same.

Gram loves baseball and listens to it on the radio as much as she can at her real house on Brown's Run. Sometimes she doesn't come out the farm with us because the radio doesn't come in good and she doesn't want to miss the Cleveland Indian games. That's her favorite team and she yells and roots for them to win, especially Dobie and Easter. And she has big black and white pictures of all of the players nailed around the wall of her bedroom at the farm.

Nobody else goes to church, but Gram is a Catholic and she has to go every single Sunday or she won't get to go to heaven. She has a cross with Jesus nailed to it hanging on the wall above the baseball pictures, and it has palms laying on the top of it that Gram brings from church. I always think it's good that we don't have to go to church because we wouldn't want to have to leave the farm early on Sunday the way Gram does. And we already know we're going to heaven.

Aunt Helen's room is right by Gram and Pap's in the back of the house and about all that's in there is a big bed and Gram's old Victrola cabinet that they use to put clothes in. The other room is the one we call the "middle room" because it's pretty much in the middle of the house. There's a big bed on one side next to an old rocking chair that Gram's grandmother brought on the boat when she came from Ireland. Sometimes I sleep in the bed with Mom and we cover up with heavy, wool, patch quilts that some dead relatives made in the olden days. They have moth holes all over them and they smell musty but we never wash them. Once in a while we take the sheets home to wash but not the quilts.

On the other side of the middle room there is an old army bed that Uncle Foxie likes to sleep on when he's there. The head of it is under a high shelf where we keep a lot of our fishing stuff. And it's below that shelf that Gram's dad's wool, tweed, fishing cap hangs, even though he's dead and can't wear it anymore. It has lots of fly-hooks stuck in it but we aren't allowed to use them, only look at them.

The living room is mostly for sleeping, too. There are two cots and two big couches along the walls, and the table and chairs where we play cards is in the middle of the floor. But we don't spend much time in the house. The minute we get up in the morning we go out on the porch where Mom and Aunt Helen like to just sit and smoke and drink coffee while they talk and swing back and forth on the swing.

We don't eat anything until the men come back from fishing. Then as soon as they get cleaned up they start cooking the breakfast in the big, black, iron skillets. Pap fries pounds of bacon or fresh side and then uses some of the grease to fry potatoes and onions in another skillet. He fries eight or ten eggs at a time in the rest of the grease until the edges of them are crisp and lacy. We don't have a real toaster but we can still make toast like they did in the olden days on an old tin wire rack that sits on the gas burner with the bread standing in a circle around the edge of the fire.

After the women do the dishes, the men usually take a nap or else they do some work or go hunting. The rest of us go for a walk down the creek and we stop to swim or fish if we want to. We like to walk at least as far as the swinging bridge, which is about as far as the dirt road goes. There are too many snakes past that and only the men go further because they don't think about getting bit.

I always worry about getting bit and I worry about that snake bite medicine, too. One time, on a walk, I heard Mom saying she didn't remember if a person who got bit could live for an hour without the medicine or if it was a half hour. But nobody talked about it again and I wish that someone would get this straight because of all the snakes around and because we probably shouldn't be walking too far from the house and the snake bite medicine. Sometimes we talk about how to use a green stick for a tourniquet and about how to cut the bite and suck out the poison, but we couldn't do that because we don't even take a knife with us.

It takes about an hour to walk from the house to where the road ends right past the swinging bridge. We don't walk too fast and there are a lot of things we look at and do, like getting pieces of bamboo to make whistles out of or counting the rings on an old tree stump to find out how old the tree was. And we always have to be watching for snakes. In some places the tree roots look like they are snakes laying along the banks on the sides of the road. And the road goes through a tunnel of trees for most of the way, so I always have to worry about a black snake falling around my neck.

All the way down the creek there are trees and plants that we know about. At different times from spring to fall we get berries, walnuts and paw paws. Sometimes we get honey from our bee tree or we get sassafrass roots to make tea with. We have wild flowers everywhere, but the ones we like best are the wild orchids that only grow in one shady place along the road. Nobody has ever seen any flowers like them before and we don't pick them because they die too fast.

Poison ivy grows everywhere, too, and even though we all know what it looks like and we always tried to stay away from it, we still used to get it really bad, with our eyes swelled shut and itchy patches all over us. But that was before Uncle Foxie told us to eat the poison ivy leaves. Since we did that, we don't get poison ivy and we even rub poison ivy leaves on our arms and legs just to prove we won't get it.

We don't always leave the road to go into the woods to see the Civil War soldier's grave, but sometimes we do. He was buried under a tree and has a rock with his name and the name of his army group. We have another graveyard on our property, too, that is where a whole family is buried that was killed by the Indians.

And we always see where Dad says the murder was on our property. It's a spot in the road where the creek is about two hundred feet below and where two men pushed a car with another man in it over the hill and into the creek. The two men said they went off the hill and into the creek, too, but Dad never believed them because they weren't even wet. He knows that you can't trust The Trespassers and he thinks the two men killed the other one and then pushed him over the hill in the car.

The Trespassers have also robbed Gram and Pap's place a lot of times. We have mostly old furniture and other things from the olden days and we're always finding things missing. Dad and Pap think they watch for us to leave, so Pap hooked up a gun to a string so the gun would shoot The Trespassers if they opened the kitchen door. But no one broke in while he had that set up and Gram finally made him take it down before he ended up shooting himself.

We either go out the farm on Friday night or Saturday morning and we always leave on Sunday evening. After we get back from our walk on Sunday afternoon, we eat a sandwich and then Mom and Aunt Helen sweep out the house with the broom and empty the pot into the outhouse. Dad turns off the gas and the electricity and then we walk back out the road to where our cars are parked up by the bridge.

We always do almost the same things every week out the farm but we all like being there better than anyplace else. And the only reason I want to go home is to get a drink of water.

1951 - Don Crow with Sam & Linda

Abt. 1954 - Linda on horse owned by Rodney Gorby, s/o Price Gorby.

1995

For three decades, until about 1980, we owned "The Farm". For many years, beginning just after World War II, it was a gathering place and weekend retreat for some of our closest family and friends. But, ever so slowly, our lives changed, our numbers dwindled, and the property had to be sold.

The first dozen years at "The Farm" were the best ones because then I was a child, surrounded by a loving family, at a time before we were touched by sickness and death, in a place that was beautiful and safe.

During the next twenty years, careers, relocations, illnesses and deaths, as well as my own abject fear of snakes, ultimately left Dad the sole custodian of our vast acreage. And with virtually none of the family able to share either the responsibility or the wonders of the farm, Dad had to let it go, let it belong to people who would quickly replace Gram and Pap's house with a trailer and modernize Uncle Foxie's cement block house beyond recognition.

Now, in 1995, Gram and Pap and Uncle Foxie, as well as my own beloved mother, are long-buried. But those of us who remain still grieve for the place that was beautiful and safe and for the gatherings of the people who made it the best place in the world to be.

I have only heard of the many changes to the property, and as l long as I never see them, I can preserve "The Farm" in my mind just the way it was, as the paradise of my childhood. Then, whenever I want to, no matter where I am, I can go there. I can see Mom and Dad and my brother, Sam, as well as my grandparents and some of my aunts, uncles and cousins. Together we can take a long walk down the creek, or we might just sit quietly on the porch and listen for the whippoorwill.

Dad wrote me this letter after I sent him my FARM story:

Sunday
Mar 12 (1995)

Dear Linda:

I received your story & enjoyed it very much. I can appreciate that it is a child's memories & are the way it seemed to you. That is what makes it unique.

It made me feel good because for the time I can see that Ruthie & I did a fairly good job in this world. We have good children. I must admit the last page made me cry a little. If you have good memories mostly you are a good person. If they are bad you can be a disturbed person. With memories you can keep the good ones & delete the rest. Memories can depress you but mostly they make you happy.

Looking at the past when you get older is what keeps you going even if there are some hard bumps. Memories are you & your life. The future is not too good to think about because it is full of fear and uncertainty.

I am glad you made me aware of just what Ruthie & I did accomplish. Just remember to hold on to those memories because they can sustain you if you ever lose your spouse or someone dear to you.

Thank You, daughter,
Love Dad