Just a Few Unrelated Memories

My daughter commented on my story of my brother and the possum and it got me thinking about the reality of that story.  I can believe every word of it up until we end at my mother standing and screaming because there was a  possum on the table.  That does not at all sound like the woman who was the bane of my existence for so many years.  I don't see a possum on the table even fazing her.  She may have been screaming at my brother but I don't think she was at all bothered by the possum other than it was on her table.

This kind of relates to another story that I did not experience (not having come into the world for about forty more years) but heard all my life.  Now, it was well known my grandfather was one of the laziest men on earth.  I was told he would set under a tree and read Jehovah's Witness literature while my grandmother and the girls would tend the gardens.  (Hey, see, I come by it honestly.  The reading and the laziness both.)  But  this is just to point out how probable the rest of the story is.

Now this was in those "way back when days".  I'm thinking very late 1890's or very early 1900's.  They lived in a gap in the hills along the river which the whole family has referred to as "the Poppy gap" ever since I can remember.   It was just down river from the Tom Price gap.  I guess  you have already guessed places picked up the names of their occupants.

Really nothing there now.  The strip mining stopped just before getting there.  Only thing really left is a big stone that was the front step and a hole in the ground where the cellar used to be and a lonely line of dead fruit trees beside the path.  And a huge persimmon tree.  I used to go sit under that persimmon tree quite often.  Waiting on squirrels which never came.  Well, mostly never came.

But, my grandmother (Victoria DeBoard VanHoose) had to get up well before daylight to take the shotgun and go kill squirrels, clean them and have them cooked  before waking my grandfather up.  Now, tell me the child of this woman would have stood screaming at the sight of a possum.  Just does not seem likely.