Thursday, December 29, 2011

Poppy and Granny's House

I have so many memories of that house.  It was a part of my life from birth until well after I got married at age nineteen and we moved in there with my father and my dog.  I've mentioned before it was a whitewashed, clapboard house but now I'm going to pass along some more memories about it and the yard and other buildings.

The house sat on a flat area on a rise up from Nat's Creek.  Behind the house was another little rise then a garden are (flat) and behind that was an old barn.  On one side of the barn was a little out building  (left) and on the other side was the foot path and a raspberry patch.  Past the barn was the chicken house and fenced in area and the outhouse.  On the other side of the branch from those was another garden area.

On the edge of the rise behind the house were three or four chestnut trees.  On either side of the house were a large apple tree.  I don't recall the apples were anything special but the trees were fun to climb.  On the up creek side of the house right on the edge of the fall off to the creek was the well.

I've always feared "dug" wells.  I keep imagining falling into one and being head down and not able to turn around and right myself.  Of course, I've always feared drowning more than about any other method of dying.  Yet I do love the water and especially the ocean.  I feel, in a past life, I must have been a sailor who drowned in the ocean.  It is such a love/fear thing with me.  I feel no more peace anywhere than I feel being alone in the woods sitting beside a flowing stream of water.  I wish they could put that feeling in a pill because I'd be OD'ing on it all the time.

The house had three rooms down stairs and one big loft up stairs.  Standing with one's back to the creek and looking at the house there was a set of concrete steps up to the front porch.  (I really miss having a real porch).  On the left side of the porch was the porch swing.  On the right was Poppy's rocking chair and the old trunk where he kept coal to be used in the house.  I used to come once a week and carry coal up from the coal house to fill the trunk on the porch.

At the front of the porch there were troughs where Poppy would crumble left over biscuits and corn bread for the birds to come and eat.  In fact, granny had to make extra bread each day to feed his birds.  I remember him crumbling the bread into the troths and calling, "Pee, pee, pee" to call in the birds.  I guess they must have known what it meant because they flew in from everywhere to eat those bread crumbs.

When you went in the front door you entered the living room/Poppy's bedroom.  Straight in front of the door sat a dresser and beyond it a small closet.  To the right of the front door was a second (granny's) bedroom.  Granny also had her old, foot treadle, Singer sewing machine in that room as well as her quilting racks.  I've spent many an hour in there helping her make a "tacked" quilt.  When I stayed with them I mostly slept in that room with Granny.

In the living room, Poppy's bed was to the left of the door and a chair was between the front door and the door to the kitchen with a pot bellied stove in the middle of the room.  That stove served more than one purpose.  Yes, it provided all the heat in the house but during the day when the fire was going anyhow there would be a big kettle (pot) of soup (pinto) beans on top of it simmering.  Man, we ate a lot of soup beans, corn bread and onions.  I hated them back then but now I could eat them every day.

In the evening Poppy would shut the "dampers" on the stove to shut down the fire then put lumps of coal in the stove with kindling wood on top of it.  When I was not sleeping in the bed with Granny I was in the bed with Poppy and of a morning I had to jump out of bed and go dump a healthy amount of coal oil (kerosene) on top of the kindling wood then light a kitchen match and toss it in to get the coal oil burning then close the stove door and  jump back in bed until the fire got going good and took the worst of the chill out of the air.

Beyond the living room was the kitchen/dining room which ran the entire length of the back of the house.  On the left of the door was the kitchen table, the refrigerator and (I think) a cabinet.  Directly across from the door was a cabinet with a flat surface.  That is where Granny rolled out the dough for everything.  Biscuits, dumplings, pie crusts, ginger bread.  Just to the right of the door between the living room and kitchen was the door to the stairway to the upstairs. 

It was not much of an upstairs.  It was one big room with one bed in it.  There was also a dried out and stiff deer hide from a deer one of my cousins had killed.  Before Poppy moved it to the front porch to use for coal there was the old trunk that was full of black walnuts.  I loved sleeping in the bed up there.  It did not have any frills at all.  It was just bare rafters with a tin roof nailed on.  It was  not very large and on the sides the roof sloped down where you were really close to the roof when you were in the bed.  There is nothing like lying snug and warm in bed listening to the rain pounding down on a tin roof that is only a couple of feet over your head.  Maybe that is where I learned to love storms.  There and the cabin on Spring Knob.

To the right beyond the door to the stairs were a couple of tables.  One held a wash pan and a bucket of water.  On the left was the wood/coal fired cook stove.  Even though they had electricity my grandfather would not allow my grandmother to have an electric stove.  She cooked on that old cook stove until after my grandfather passed away in 1969.   And, she cooked well.  She could do more on that old stove than most women can do on a modern one with all the gadgets.  She made the absolute best gingerbread.

Beyond the stove and tables was the back door to the house.  There was a big apple tree on that side of the house and the "smokehouse" built about half way up the rise and the cellar underneath it.  In the cellar was shelf upon shelf of canned vegetables and a bin with potatoes piled in to last through the winter.

There really was nothing in the smokehouse to tell you it was a smokehouse.  That is just what it was called.  When you went in the door just to your left were two coffins my grandfather had made from poplar trees from the hills there.  I was told when they were made he got in his and tested it out to see how comfortable it would be.  He was, in fact, buried in that coffin. 

On that side of the house there was a window in the loft and there were long strands of string tied to nails on the window sill and to stakes in the ground.  There were morning glory flowers planted there and they would climb all the way up the string.  The were very beautiful in the mornings with the dew on them just as the sun was raising.  I miss morning glories and honeysuckles. 

In the front of the house there was a drop off to a flat garden area next to the creek.  That little hill was where all the ashes from the stove were dumped.   It was a big ash bank and you could sink up in it.  On the flat area was a small mulberry tree.  I can remember my brother and some of my cousins putting kitchen matches in the bark of that tree and sitting on the porch steps and trying to light the matches with .22 rifles.  Shooting was a big thing in my family.  I'm not a bad shot but I was probably the worst shot in my family.

My mother, when in one of her crazy spells, would take the .22 and go shoot walnuts off a tree and sing at the top of her voice while a pair of our dogs would howl along with her.  When I was near my teens and we lived in West Van Lear my sister and I were shooting across the road at a target in the chicken lot and she out shot me by a large margin.  My brother was a better shot as well though I was not horrible.  We used to stand in the yard of that old house and shoot near a pop (soda) can down by the creek.  If you hit the can you lost.  You had to shoot as close to it as you could and see how far you could make it jump.  When we both worked for June Hayes we bought identical 30-06 rifles and once we got them sighted in we could each bust a fist sized rock at about two hundred yards. 

In the front yard there was a small quince tree.  I think a quince is something like a pear but the tree never bore fruit.  But it had a horizontal limb placed just perfectly for me to "skin the cat".  That is where you grab the limb with both hands and bring both feet up over your head through your arms and do a flip backward.

There is a lot more I could write about that house and all the memories I have associated with it but I guess it is enough for now.  The house itself is long gone in reality but it will always live in my memories.

1 comment:

  1. I love the image of Stella shooting nuts off the tree and singing. That may turn up in my book. ;)

    ReplyDelete