A Nice Memory From Spring Knob

I've mentioned my time at Spring Knob more than once but I suppose it deserves a revisiting.  It was four and one tenth miles from route 40.  The one road between Inez in Martin County and Paintsville in Johnson county, at the time.  I remember this because my dad always referred to it that way. 

We moved there when I was around four years old.  We stayed there until I was seven years old and only about three months short of eight. 

It is difficult to describe that place.  We were there because there was a forestry tower there and my dad worked for the Ky Dept. of Forestry for those years.  Only job I ever knew him to have.  That place is full of stories and I'll try to tell most of them as some date but this one revolves around a cart.  I guess that is what you would call it.

My dad and a man named Ed Eldridge were good friends.  Ed ran a government surplus store in Paintsville and my dad bought a lot of stuff there.  Guns, ammunition, shoes... only place he could find the Navy shoes he had worn for thirty years in the Navy.  Always wore them.  Ed's wife Maxine was also a good friend.  I loved to just wander around that store looking at all the neat things they had there.  

This particular time we were there they had this "cart" up on a high shelf.  I thought it was one of the most wonderful things I had ever seen in my life.  It had four wheels and in front of the seat there was a handle you could move back and forth to propel you forward and back. 

I don't know how they sneaked it but dad bought it and hid it in the trunk of the car until we got home then he gave it to me.  That little cart is one of my favorite memories.  We did not have any grass at all.  Just a dirt road as a front yard and a dirt patch on the side of the house between the porch and the well.  I would leave all kinds of black, rubber marks in that area as I loved to send it backwards then forwards and make the wheels spin.  I'm afraid I've never outgrown the love of making the wheels spin but that is another story.

I can't remember how long that thing "fit" me or what ever happened to it but I can surely remember being on it between the porch and the well and all those black marks on the dirt.