OUR COUNTRY HOME

OUR COUNTRY HOME

We moved from Stella Street in West Frankfort to a home about 7 miles east of town. The address was Thompsonville but we still called it West Frankfort. I never saw a town of Thompsonville. Dad had bought a house and 40 acres for $4,000.00. The house only had two bedrooms that I remember. I don't know where Butch slept. He may have slept on the couch or a rollaway bed. I don't remember a couch so the rollaway bed is probable. The two little ones slept in Mom and Dad's bedroom and we girls all slept in one big bedroom. There was no bathroom but there was a little cubbyhole room that had a stool of sorts that didn't flush. I think we used it only at night because we used the outdoor toilet in the daytime. It was larger than the standard outdoor toilet and was a two-seater. Dad had covered the floor with linoleum to make it more presentable. We wiped with pages from the Sears catalog or any other paper we could get ahold of. We didn't want to wad the paper up because it would be too rough yet we had to be careful not to poke a hole in the page while wiping. Dad would apply lime on the contents every now and then to keep down the smell.

We pumped water from a manual water pump just outside of the kitchen. But it seems like we did have running water in the kitchen sink. There was a room off of the kitchen that had a bathtub. I think some of us had to use the same water, possibly to save the water in the well. My memories about the house are obviously fuzzy.

We six older siblings had a ball the two years that we lived in the country. Casey was born while we lived there. Jamie was two years old when he was born. So they remember very little if any about our fun years. Jamie doesn't even remember falling out of the hayloft, hitting her head on a 2x4 rail below and having to get stitches. 

In the summertime we would swing on what we called grapevines that were over a creek. Of course they weren't grapevines but we still call them that to this day. They were stout vines. The creek was shallow so no damage was done if we fell. We rode our bicycles or just walked anywhere we wanted to go. We had to walk about a mile to visit a friend and we always walked barefoot in the summer. We lived on a rock road but our feet were so calloused over on the bottom that it didn't bother us. 

I would get up early to pick blackberries. I loved doing it in spite of chiggers until one day I was in a tree row with blackberry bushes along the row. I found some good berries there but when I reached in to get some I noticed a tree wound around a young tree and the curled up tree had a design on it. Then it occurred to me that what I was seeing was a big snake wound around a young tree. The snake was bigger than I thought they could get in that area and I ran all the way home just knowing that the snake was at my heels. I never picked another blackberry.

We went exploring in the woods behind the house. We had to cross a field first. In the woods we discovered a little creek with little green snakes hanging off of branches overhanging the creek. They didn't scare us so we just enjoyed wading in the creek. When we got back to the house, Mom started throwing a fit. We didn't see her that angry very often and I was confused as to why she was angry. She grabbed the hose and started hosing us all down. We had been wading in a sewer creek. I don't know what we did about our clothes. I don't remember that part.

Across the road were some random trees. I decided to climb one of the tall ones one summer day. Sharon was with me. I got way up high and then in a flash I went from the top to the bottom. I guess I had been standing on a thin limb. Amazingly I didn't hit any big limbs or even break any little limbs on the way down and the only injury I had was a small cut from a barbed wire fence at the bottom. Sharon expected me to be dead. She talks about it to this day. God was watching over me or sent my Guardian Angel to prevent any other injuries.

In the wintertime we would ice skate on the "Skunk Pond." Marilyn probably came up with that name. It smelled really bad in the summer. That was because it was a pig pond instead of a skunk pond. We didn't really have any ice skates so we would just slide across the pond in our shoes. Lucky for me, someone had donated us some clothes and on top was a pair of tap shoes in my size. Whoever donated the clothes had to know that I liked to tap dance. I only knew a couple of steps but that was enough that I had to entertain a few people. Anyway, those tap shoes had the metal pieces on the bottom that made the tapping sound but they were also good for sailing across the Skunk Pond.

We had chickens and a garden while living on the farm but that's as much farming as we did until one day a farm truck drove up to the house with something big in the back going from one side of the truck with wooden sides to the other truck side, making an awful racket. As it turns out, it was a pregnant sow and pregnant sows are mean. It put the fear in us every time we used the outdoor toilet. One day some of my siblings including the twins were chased by the sow, which was named Pork Chop. It was angry because it had birthed its piglets and was intent on protecting them. it chased the siblings into the chicken coop. They climbed up on the laying nests and so did the sow. Mom -- all five foot of her -- came out swinging a broom at the sow and it ran off. It was one mother against another mother -- Mrs. Overturf against Ms. Chop -- but our mother won. Once Dad heard about the near catastrophe the sow was gone. Carolyn said Pork Chop became pork chops. I don't remember what happened to it but I was glad she was gone.

We had another friend that lived a mile or two away. Her parents trained wild horses. They had 36 of them. She brought one by the house one day and had me try to get on it. The horse tried to bite my leg when I got on it, or was trying to get on it, and that was enough for me. Its teeth looked 6" long. One day some of us older ones went to her house. For some crazy reason we went into the pen where the horses were. They were on the other side of the pen which was a big one. There was a tree in the middle. All of a sudden the horses came rushing toward us. Everyone climbed the tree screaming but there was no room left for me. I don't remember what happened after that. I must have blanked out.

Mom would pile us all in the car and we would go swimming or fishing in the Thompsonville Lake. Those were good times. Mom really enjoyed them too. 

On the down side, Carolyn got encephalitis one summer and Butch got Rocky Mountain Fever the next summer. Carolyn had to go to Children's Hospital in St. Louis. She made friends with her roommate named Quenlin. Butch went to the Benton Hospital where he fell in love with sliced tomatoes with cottage cheese on top. Granny, Dad's mother, stayed with us while Carolyn was in the St. Louis hospital. We thought we had died and gone down in the ground. She was the opposite of Mom. She cooked us bread pudding and it was the awfulest stuff any of us had ever eaten. Most of us won't eat it to this day. Sharon was more accepting of it because she had lived with Granny for a while. She was more familiar with her ways.

Dad decided he'd had enough of the country. He sold the house and we moved to Mt. Vernon where he had a job at Illinois Power Company. The country home will always hold a special place in our hearts.