This Old House (eBook)

ALL THE BROTHERS WERE VALIANT

AND ALL THE SISTERS VIRTUOUS

(Inscription on tombstone of

Duchess of New Castle in West Minster Abby)

Chapter Two

My family lived in the last house on the left, on a road running past Lower Mills that continues on to Cornville.

The marker ending our town was located just one-hundred feet from our driveway.

When I reached the age of five my world changed dramatically. I had heard the stories of school days, the mile walk to school, making new friends, recess adventures and had in fact met many of the friends my older brothers and sisters went to school with. I was well prepared for school; my siblings had provided constant stimulation for all my senses.

The sounds of kids shouting and laughing and crying took place all hours of the day and evening. Those wrestling matches, fights and competitive games formed a resilient young lad.

The discipline and common sense that came from Mama ran through the veins of my sister Loretta, who was charged with taking care of us a good deal of the time. We all learned a lot from Loretta.

The grudging taste of a Popsicle, pie, or a snack cake called Snowballs, my older siblings occasionally brought home, had us younger kids looking for opportunities to make money to buy our own.

All the older brothers and sisters worked jobs of one sort or another.

Bean Picking in the summer by all the brothers and sisters old enough was a given.

My sister Loretta won a state championship bean picking event. Harold Bosworth’s bus arrived early in the morning and transported area kids to farms in other towns for the day. You stood in line and were given a bushel basket and a burlap bag then directed to an area of the bean field.

Our older brothers and sisters warned us ahead of time that fooling around or fighting would not be tolerated.

During the next eight hours you were expected to pick only the beans ready to be harvested. The smell of dirt, fertilizer and green beans, combined with a relentless Sun numbed you into a trance like state. Bend, pick, and place the beans in the basket then stretch and move along the row, dragging your half-filled burlap bag. As you were filling your basket, you mentally calculated what a full bag might weigh; you could already taste the pastry your efforts had earned. A filled bag was left in the row to be collected by the boss. It would be weighed and you would be paid one and a half to two cents per pound.

We got good at estimating weight and by the end of the season could usually guess within a pound or two of what we had picked in a day.

It was a long hot day with a break only for lunch. We carried a mason jar of water with us and quenched our thirst on the fly.

On some especially hot days, on the way home, Mr. Bosworth would stop at a store or ice-cream stand.

WE ALL LOVED MR. BOSWORTH WHEN HE DID THAT!

Bean picking season would last about a month. Most of our school clothes were bought from our efforts.

We all became good bargain hunters. The money was precious but we always wanted to look as good as our friends. Of course, looking good had a price that went beyond the cost of new clothing. Mama admonished all her children to, “Act as good as you look!”

Babysitting, haying, farming and splitting wood were other jobs filled whenever the opportunity arose.

Our neighbor farmer, Mr. Chamberlain, hired Danny and I at age six and seven to pick rocks from a field he had plowed up.

As this story unfolds you will find it was more than rocks that would be harvested in the spring of 1953. 

When my family wasn’t working, playing games filled the air with sound and assorted balls. All the kids in the neighborhood came to our house to play.

By the time I reached school age two more sisters and two brothers had been added to the family. One more brother, Zane, would be born a short time later to total fifteen.

You guessed it The Z in Zane signified the last letter in the alphabet. My mother had determined enough was enough!

Mama and brother Zane

Before entering school, the immediate neighborhood was our playground and our school. A ring of trees framed our property and we spent hours climbing from one to the other. Below, our sisters swept the leaves away and created little homes. Milk cans became tables and chairs; while odd pieces of junk my older brothers lugged home from the dump decorated the tree limbs which became walls. Dolls were talked to, disciplined, wiped and washed, in those little homes. Sister Loretta’s no nonsense approach was the role model for my younger sisters and those dolls never talked back. 

The only games we younger kids were excluded from were after dark games played by older siblings and neighbors. Those night games had rules we were told. Rules we wouldn’t understand till we were older.

Various landmarks held both wonder and terror for us.

The Slate Quarry filled with what appeared as black water was supposedly bottomless. Mama said there were large water creatures and strange goings on in there; it was off limits to us younger kids.

Our older brothers Richard and Russell fished for and speared eels in that place. They also pulled all kinds of things from the water. The mysteries and goose bumps surrounding the Slate Quarry grew with each new adventure.

Many nights we younger kids would have nightmares having glimpsed those giant eels brought home in burlap bags. They sold some of the eels to a man in town named

Harold Herring. I believe he had a way of cooking them that was quite tasty, or so I’ve been told. Mama warned us all to stay away from that quarry. We didn’t listen. Probably should have.

MAMA HATED THAT SLATE QUARRY!

The Town Dump provided a wonderful place to shoot rats and tin cans. Castoff pieces of furniture, toys, bicycles, even old motors were dragged home to be repaired, confiscated by the tree dwellers or eventually placed on our own dump behind the barn.

It seemed the dump was always smoldering. The brothers would come home smelling like a burned tire.

MAMA HATED THAT DUMP SMELL!

When sister Nora was six years old she finally understood how all the strange bottles, cans, broken toys, picture frames, tricycles and other items too numerous to list arrived in our yard. George and Billy now headed up the dump squad. Nora enlisted her younger brother David and asked Mama if they could go to the dump. Mama said absolutely not, there were bears that rummaged through that refuse. Nora and David snuck part way across the field then turned toward the dump road. They got nearly to the dump when they heard a deep growling noise.

They realized Mama was right and ran as fast as their little legs would carry them, all the way home. Mama met them in the driveway and asked why they were out of breath. Nora started crying and said a bear had been after them. Mama turned her head away and smiled, then growled deeply and laughed. Mama taught another of life’s lessons without having to scold. Nora and David never forgot it.   

Both the quarry and the dump were within a half mile of our house and could be reached by crossing a large field that was cut for hay and planted with corn by our neighbor, Mr. Chamberlain.

Mr. Chamberlain was Canadian French and spoke very little English. Danny and I had a hard time knowing exactly what we were to do when we worked for him.

We asked Mama why he couldn’t speak English if we little kids could do it. Kitty was already talking in sentences at age two. Mama explained that his brain had been trained in a different language and it was harder for adults to learn something new, such as a new language.

“Who would teach him if he did want to learn, the poor man works all day and all night as it is.” Obviously Mama didn’t view the hours she toiled to hold our family together in the same light as Mr. Chamberlain’s efforts. The difference in my mind was the fact that her crop was growing 24-7 year round.

Even after Mama’s explanation Danny and I thought if you couldn’t speak English you must be a slow learner, so we felt bad for Mr. Chamberlain.

Our house itself served as an out-door recreation area. We created games using both the house and barn in numerous ways.

We played a game using the electric meter. There is a small dark area on the metal disc that spins inside a glass enclosure on the electric meter. The amount of electricity being used in the house determines how fast the disc spins.

We would all take turns trying to run around the house and barn arriving back at the meter before the dark area re-appeared.

My family is very competitive. I didn’t know back then, but it seems if there was a wager made with a visiting friend, an iron might suddenly get plugged in or a few lights turned on while the friend was making their run. Can you imagine that! 

Another game watched by us but played by others, using the house and barn, usually took place on Sunday...