Chapter 2 - The Farm

 

The farm was so beautiful. There were 110 acres. It was pretty isolated. The nearest neighbor was about one mile away. The farm was sorta' hilly-like but the hills were small and rolling. There were two ponds for the cows and horses and other little farm creatures to drink from and in those ponds were some of the biggest frogs in the county. Our house sat at the end of a one half-mile dirt road off of the main dirt and gravel road that ran through that part of the county.

The house was unbelievable. It was a two-story building with a great big front porch where Mom and Dad did a lot of rocking in huge comfortable rocking chairs.

We had a large yard with great big pecan trees that seemed to be a 100 feet tall.

Beside the house - about 20 feet from the back door - was another small building that was called the "smokehouse". On the front of the smokehouse was a concrete porch with a roof. Under that roof was the cistern - a great big old concrete-lined hole about 25 feet deep that held our drinking, cooking and bathing water. Water ran into the cistern from the roof of the house through gutters and downspouts attached to the side of the house.

The smokehouse served many purposes. It was there that Dad hung "sides" of pork to cure. After the annual hog killing, the smokehouse was always full of some of the best hog shoulders and sides of meat in the entire county.

This building, too, served as a storage area and it was there that we had our Saturday baths. When Saturday rolled around, we could always count on Mom dragging out that old No. 2 galvanized tub and filling it with water from the cistern. She would always add a little hot water from the cook stove to ease our pain of taking a bath. She let us do most of the bathing but we had to pass her inspection before we crawled out of the tub. Usually she would soap up the washcloth and give our face and ears a good scrubbing before we were allowed out of the tub. We were teenagers before Mom trusted us to bathe ourselves.

Cleanliness was important to Mom. Our hair had to be squeaky clean before we passed inspection. Mom strongly believed that cleanliness was next to Godliness! She always had the cleanest, neatest house!

Out behind the house was the "outhouse", the outside toilet. Ours was pretty nice. There were two seats (but I never knew of two people occupying it at the same time). The latest Sears catalog was always available there for browsing and some old newspapers for cleaning!

I'll never forget the time that I went out to that old outhouse to smoke a cigarette. I was probably 10-12 years old. There I sat, smoking a cigarette, thinking I was about the coolest kid in the country, when suddenly the door opened and there stood Dad. While he was only about 6-feet tall and weighed about 160 pounds, when I looked up and saw him standing in that door, he looked 10-feet tall. I knew I was dead!

Dad never abused us kids, but when we did something wrong, he sure would give us a spanking that got our attention. I knew I had one coming for sure. But, to my surprise he didn't spank me. He made me carry several buckets of water from the house out to the outhouse and pour down in the toilet. You see, when Dad surprised me and opened the door, I tossed the burning cigarette down into the "hole". There was an awful lot of the Sears Catalog down there and quite a bit of the old newspapers there, too. Dad was afraid my cigarette would catch the papers on fire. Ten buckets of water carried from the house and poured in the hole was sure to extinguish any fire!

That was Dad's way of punishing me! I never smoked a cigarette in the outhouse again. As a matter of fact, I didn’t smoke any cigarettes for many years after that little incident.

Our house had the usual rooms. There was a big kitchen with a wood burning cooking stove. It was there that Mom did her finest work. She was a great cook.

There was a separate dining room with a long table and benches and chairs that we sat on. Our family loved to eat so the dining room was one or our favorite places.

The house had a little family room where we listened to the radio and had family gatherings. I sat there almost daily and listened to The Lone Ranger, Amos and Andy, The Green Hornet, The Thin Man, and other great shows that were on during those years. There was a big formal-type living room that alternated between being a living room and a bedroom depending on how many children were home at the time.

There were a couple of bedrooms downstairs and there were two bedrooms upstairs.

I will never forget that big old beautiful house nestled in those pecan trees with its big inviting porch and a yard that just screamed at you to come out and play. It was truly your classic old farmhouse.

Off in a distance about 200 yards in front of the house was the barn and the corncrib. A good farm barn serves many purposes. It houses the cows and the horses, the hay and the oats, the tobacco, the farm equipment and the chickens and it can be the most wonderful playground in the world for kids.

You can climb the barn's rafters until your heart is content; you can climb and roll in the hay until you itch all over; you can pet the horses and the cows and the baby calves, chase the chickens, hide from your parents, take a nap in the straw, build things with all the tools kept there and play grown-up farmer while sitting on all the farm equipment. What else could a kid want?

While growing up on the farm, one hog-killing event really sticks out in my mind. Dad apparently felt that I had come of age, so to speak, and asked me if I would like to "kill" one of the hogs.

I was never a hunter. I seldom took a gun out to hunt and kill animals of any type. On a few occasions in my life, probably fewer than ten, I went squirrel, rabbit or crow hunting. The killing of animals didn't sit well with this old country boy but it was a part of growing up in the country and on the farm and I accepted it as a part of that life.

Dad and Mom grew their own fruits and vegetables and raised their own beef and pork. The slaughtering of cattle and hogs for your food was a way of life.

Dad Shanks

Dad Shanks & Eddie