Part 3 of 5

A dream is realized and a dream dies

Mom and Dad moved out of his father’s house in 1947 to be tenant farmers on the first of three farms they worked on. My older sister and brother were born while they were on the first one. My parents dreamed and saved for a farm of their own. In 1955, the year before I was born, they bought their farm while they were working on their third and last stint as tenant farmers.

Their farm was an old farmstead with a huge old house that sat back a lane. There was a barn for horses, a barn for cattle and a barn for tobacco and various sheds and outbuildings. Tombstones remaining on the property dated as far back as 1821. The farm, about 80 acres, needed lots and lots of work to be a profitable farm again. The pastures had grown over with cedar trees, the barns and outbuildings were full of junk and needed repair. There were only hints of fences.

Mom told about the time a ball of snakes that were hibernating fell out of the loft of one of the outbuildings while Mom and Dad were cleaning it out. They weren’t the poisonous kind, but still. A ball of snakes passing by my head would be cause for senseless screaming and running around in circles. Mom told the story like the ball was made of rubber bands. I would have liked to see her real reaction, there must have been a screech at least.

Mom and Dad practiced the Live and Let Live code of dealing with most wildlife. The snakes were a species that hunted and killed mice and rats. That was a useful animal on a farm, so they were never killed. Dad did not hunt so the rabbits and deer were safe for as long as he was alive. Possums eat ticks, so OK. Raccoons are cute, sometimes destructive and can be aggresive to dogs. As long as they stayed out of the yard, they were OK too. Ground hogs were a different story. The tunnels and mounds they dig can lame cattle, damage equipment and undermine buildings. Ground hogs were dispensed with when located. We had foxes on the farm off and on. A pair of red ones sat on a hillside many evenings and watched as Mom and Dad worked on building the milk shed. We didn’t see them afterwards but others came around. They didn’t bother us or our animals, so we didn’t bother them. Dad hated buzzards because they will attack and kill an unprotected calf. He shot at them, but I don’t think he killed any. As a cattle farmer Dad had issues with dogs who chased cows and calves. He felt within his rights if he shot a dog that was after his livestock. That happened at least once with a known dog. There was a pack of stray dogs that ran across a wide territory in our area. They were as dangerous to the cattle as coyotes and were destroyed if a farmer could get it one in his sights.

The big old frame house did not have running water but neither did the house where we lived. It seems so odd now. It wasn’t strange in the mid 1960’s for an old farm house to still have a well and an outhouse. The old kitchen had a working fireplace for cooking and a hand pump for drawing water from the well. This would be very rare and very cool to have these in a kitchen today. We had to go outside to the pump to get our water where we lived, so the kitchen pump was an upgrade. The house was big, dark, kind of cold and kind of spooky in my 8 year old brain, sort of like the Munster’s house in the old television series but without the monster in the cellar. I wasn’t too keen on the idea of living there, I had a very active imagination and I imagined a lot in that house. The house needed repair and updating, but Mom and Dad were up for that too. I’m sure that Mom put her OK on the farm because of the potential she saw in the house.

They rented out the house, fixed fences and cut and cleared the pastures for beef cattle, and cleared out the other buildings of whatever was left behind. It took a lot of time. They kept living and working as tenants themselves for 10 more years. They needed a big nest egg.

The winter of 1964-1965 was a cold one, colder than usual. The old house on Mom and Dad’s farm did not have a furnace, but it did have four chimneys and wood stoves and fireplaces. One day in mid January, the renters built up big fires. At least one of the fires was too hot because live embers went up a chimney and out onto the wood shingled roof. The roof caught fire.

Dad and my brother, Joe, were at the farm that day checking on the cattle. They saw the smoke and alerted the family members inside. They helped the tenant family get many of their belongings out of the house and into the snowy yard. Fire trucks got there after the roof caved in, a neighbor made the call. My folks knew the house was lost almost immediately. The fire burned and smoldered for three or four days. The one story wing of the house was made of large logs that kept the fire going. Mom and Dad did not know about the log construction before the fire.

The house was not insured.

Perhaps the fire made Dad more determined to live on his land. They suffered a big loss so maybe it was time to move and protect the rest of the property. I don’t know for certain, but that sounds like logic that Dad would use.

Dad started making plans to build a house and the dairy barn. Mom told me that she wasn’t really ready to move. She would have preferred to stay where they lived a while longer.

Mom and Dad and the four of us kids cared a great deal for the owner of the farm where we lived as tenants. She was an elderly widow and a real Southern lady. She was the best landlord my parents had. She hated to see us go. My little sister, Becky, and I hated leaving her more than the rest of the family. We saw her every day, more than we saw our grandparents, and we loved her like family. My sister asked my mother where “Memaw”‘s room was when we went to see the progress on our new house on our own farm. Memaw was Becky’s baby talk for Mrs. M. or Miz M. as we called her. Miz M was old, early 80’s I think, but she was spry and she seemed happy to have two little girls under foot. We sometimes watched her soaps with her and she let us watch cartoons on her tv. She fed us snacks, roast beef with mustard on crackers stands out in my memory. When Miz M had company, Becky and I would sneak over to get in on the action. We were never turned away although Mom would come to get us when she realized we had escaped. Better to leave before our welcome wore out. When Mom told my sister that MeMaw was staying at her house, my sister said she was staying there too.

We moved in January, a year after the old house burned.  Mom and Dad had finished building a concrete block milking  shed onto the largest barn on the farm.   They did most of the work themselves.    Our new house was a small three bedroom, one bath ranch house set inside the footprint of the old farmhouse.     Mom’s dream of a large old home was gone.  It had been in her reach, but she would never have the home she wished for. It must have hurt her heart a lot. I never heard her to be bitter about it.

Mom had a talent for making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. She could take any old thing, busted and dirty and turn it into a functional piece or a thing of beauty or both. She could sew, paint walls or a picture, wallpaper, upholster and refinish furniture. She could clean like Mr. Clean. She would take on a new project without knowing much about it. She would be good at the skill it took by the time it was finished. I learned so much from her. I know that the scary old house would have become beautiful in Mom’s care. I also know that she would have had to sidestep Dad and be creative to pay for the work it needed. Dad had the attitude that the dairy and farm were more important than anything having to do with the house. So the income always rolled to the farm.

Dad’s dream of farming his own land was just beginning at the same time that Mom’s dreamed burned up.   He was about 45 years old and Mom was 37.