I am rapidly approaching the age at which I will be allowed to start telling repetitive and boring stories about my youth, inflicting paralyzing ennui on listeners while rambling uncontrollably about how much better things used to be and drooling into my shirt pocket. This will serve as a first installment.
My folks were married in 1945 immediately after much inconvenience due to a war of which I will say nothing, as I was not present for that event. They both spent most of their youth as residents of the infamous Pattonsburg flood plain with all the subtle pleasures that periodic inundation brings. A letter from my dad during the war contains a statement to the effect that "If I ever get home and get a farm, it damn sure won’t be in the river bottom." He thus demonstrated a level of comprehension that escaped the other residents of Pattonsburg for several decades.
I will digress briefly from my description of the current farm to point out that I was an early resident of a log cabin, a resume item which seems to have lost some luster in recent decades. It used to be a critical first step for a good "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" style success story. To be completely accurate, the dwelling was in fact a two story log house located on a farm north of Pattonsburg where my parents lived for a couple of years before acquiring the farm. To be even more accurate, I wasn’t actually born there. My mother chose to go the Bethany hospital for the big event. I accompanied her there and back.
I have only one memory of the log house, and that is of moving day. I remember standing in an empty room looking out at the bed of a logging truck onto which the contents of the house were being loaded. I recall being stunned and confused and wondering why this was happening. I suspect that the reason that memory persists is because I still encounter situations which engender identical emotions on at least a weekly basis.
The move was completed in spite of my lack of approval. This was in 1948. The family at the time consisted of me, my parents, one black dog, two or more cats, a flock of chickens, and an infant brother. This list of participants is arranged in descending order of importance according to my perspective at the time. Age and maturity have shown me that the chickens were more important than the dog and cats. Electricity was not available and the nearest gravel road was 2 miles away. Conditions were primitive but so were we. Thus, no notice was taken.
Living conditions were consistent with subsistence farming activities in this country pretty much from the post-Civil War period until the middle of the 20th century. Water was carried up the hill in buckets from a hand pump on the old well. An outhouse was located out back, baths were taken in a #2 washtub once a week or so depending on social obligations. Laundry was done with a gasoline engine driven washing machine and dried on a line. The house was heated with wood cut by axe and belt driven buzz saw and lighted with kerosene lamps. Food storage was in the cellar and in a wooden icebox. Transportation was a pre-war Ford pickup. From the time that significant rain fell until the road dried, there was no transportation. I did not wear shoes during warm weather until I started high school.
The home entertainment center consisted of a battery-powered radio. And yes, before anybody asks, I do have memories of listening to the Grand Old Opry fading in and out on Saturday night. I clearly remember only hearing Hank Snow, Bill Monroe, and an advertisement for Prince Albert tobacco. Hearing the Opry did not inspire me to make a guitar by chewing it out of a cottonwood log and become a country singer. In fact it made no impression at all. I can only attribute this to a genetic defect, which haunts me to this day and causes me to be at best a mediocre musician.
Electricity arrived about 1955 and with it a kitchen sink with hot and cold water. At that time, the wood burning kitchen range gave way to an electric stove and an enormous freezer was added. A couple of years later a large boxy Zenith TV set was acquired. That was a couple of years behind all the neighbors, so my own personal mass media induced brain cell destruction was delayed a bit. Our first night with a television set just happened to coincide with the annual broadcast of The "Wizard of Oz". My grandparents came over and bought along a large can of shoestring potatoes for the occasion. I suppose it is appropriate that the intrusion of the television set was celebrated with junk food.
Sometime in the mid-1960’s, my folks installed a telephone and an inside bathroom. By then, I was long gone.
(To be continued in spite of all protests)
