Backing up a Bit”
By
Gerry Niskern
A while ago I wrote about my first home in Arizona, titled “Historical Tranquility”. A lot of you enjoyed it but I realized that I should have started with describing the first home that I remembered; my home in West Virginia.
The house actually came with a little farm that my folks rented. My dad worked “down in town”, in the Ohio River Valley. At that time (before Ralph Nadar!) the valley was full of coal mines, steel mills and other manufacturing. We moved out into the “country”, up a steep mountain road into clean, fresh air when I was around two.
The home was built on a hillside with the front porch facing Rural Route # 1 and the basement facing the rest of the farm. On the path from the garage we entered the basement where I remember having lots of fun over the years. The floor was covered with linoleum where we were allowed to roller skate. There was a trunk left behind full of clothes for hours of make believe and in the spring we were enthralled watching over the chicks pecking their way out of their shell in the incubator. There was an adjoining “fruit cellar which my mother kept full of jars of fruit and vegetables she canned on a big wood cookstove in that basement. I remember how hot she was working, but I think she didn’t want to run up the electric bill using the new stove upstairs.
Going up the stairs you entered the kitchen where we always ate at little maple table with flowers painted on the backs. My mother had a brand new electric stove that was her pride and joy. It had a deep well feature that actually was an early version of the crock pots used now days. The aroma of her chicken and noodles cooking is still with me; also suppers of entirely corn on the cob from her garden. The best rhubarb pies came out of that electric oven, thanks to a large patch of rhubarb that came up every year.
On into the dining room, which we never used, into the living room. The living room had a fireplace with a hollow wooden mantle. One time a mouse was trapped in the mantle for some reason and it took a while for the horrible smell to go away. Down the hall was two bedrooms and a bath.
I didn’t spend much time except for sleeping in our bedroom because there was so much to do outside. Although my dad worked in town, my mom was a farmer at heart and she did her best to run the little farm. She put in a huge garden and there were many fruit trees and a large berry patch to tend to. I guess you could say our play was sometimes work, but work was always play too. I remember spending lots of time climbing in the apple trees with our dolls playing make believe games. Sometimes we were allowed to drop down thru a nearby meadow to the creek and spend countless hours playing in the water.
But I also recall spending hours in the sun picking the raspberries and strawberries. We built our own little stand out front along the highway out of bricks and some wood boards. We were allowed to keep the money we earned at our fruit stand and every evening my sister and I took our precious earnings down the road to the gas station and bought candy bars. The orange wicker furniture and swing on the big front porch held a tired but contented family munching on Clark Bars. We also picked the grapes from the grape arbor and rode with dad into town to sell them in peck baskets door to door.
That front porch had two huge pine trees on either side of the steps and in my memory we always had to be careful if we went out that way to the mailbox because my mom’s White Leghorn roosters hung out around those trees and they were mean. They had sharp spurs on their legs and they didn’t mind chasing us and using them. I never felt sorry when one of them ended up in mom’s slow cooker!
One fond memory of that house was an Easter morning when we were told to go out and look in our Collie dog’s doghouse. (dogs weren’t pampered in those days). We found ten plump little puppies born that snowy morning. Our dog was pure bred Collie and a friend of my dad’s had brought his beautiful male Collie to visit our dog weeks earlier. Not being as sophisticated as kids are today, we were totally surprised by these adorable puppies. Some were sold, and the most handsome one was stolen. No matter how much we begged we were no allowed to keep any.
I learned many things in that little farm home in those West Virginia hills. How to be responsible for some housework while mom was working outside, and how to work in the sun sometimes too. Salesmanship, handling money, caring for tiny chicks and puppies, were just a few of the skills I learned in the first house in my memory; the first “Historic Tranquility” place in my heart.