We moved from the house on Stafford to Spring Knob Forestry Tower when I was about four. I think this was the only job I ever knew my dad to have. He stayed up in the tower all day looking for smoke from forest fires so he could call them in.
We lived there until September of 1961 when we moved to West Van Lear. I was seven going on eight when that happened so we must have been at Spring Know for about three years more or less. When one is young those years last forever and now they just fly past. I have so many memories of life at Spring Knob I know I'll miss many of them and have to revisit that period of my life many times.
The tower sat on the highest point of Spring Knob with the log cabin where we lived down below it a ways. The house was in Johnson County and across the road (front yard as well) was our garden and it was in Martin County. One one side was the house then there was the road then a small raised area with trees and then the garden on the down slope. The road wound around the hill and made a large "C" shape surrounding the garden before continuing on down and around the hill past "Jim Crow" Crum's house and "Old man" Crum's house and then past the last house in that area and I forget the name of the people who lived in it and that is just due to senility as I should remember it well.
I don't even know where to begin with memories of Spring Knob. There are so many of so many different kinds it is hard to voice them in any coherent way. So, since I can't string the memories in a coherent manner I guess I'll just do episodic ones as I think about them.
Spring Know tower sat four and one tenth miles our a dirt road from Route 40. This was the black top road between Inez and Paintsville. I know this as my dad always would say that. It impressed itself on my memory. If one went down the hill past Old Man Crum's house he'd go down Greasy Creek to Boonescamp where Walter's store was. That is where we always got our groceries. The building is still there though Walters is long gone.
Greasy Creek and Boonescamp were named by, or for, Daniel Boone. On one of his long hunts they camped there and it was said they killed so much game the sides of the trees got greasy from hauling it out. Ergo, Greasy Creek.
Sometime you should read up on Boone. He was over forty years old before he first stepped foot in Kentucky. Despite the Fess Parker image he was a small man about five feet two inches in height. But, he did giant deeds in and around Kentucky.
The house was a log cabin with mud chinking between the logs. I know as I used to pick it out as it was pretty crumbly. Standing on the dirt road (which was our front yard as well) and looking at the house there was a front porch running the length of the house with the front door about in the middle.
When one went in the front door, on the left was the kitchen with the stove first thing and the table down towards the other end of the room. There was no refrigerator as we had no electricity there. Straight ahead in the main room was the bed where my mother and I slept. To the right was the couch where my older brother slept and against the far wall was the fold up bed where my dad slept. Directly above it was a window. On the right wall was a large fire place which we used as our sole means of keeping warm in the winter.
Beyond the bed was a doorway to another smaller bedroom and a back porch built out over the hill. I can remember at times sleeping in that room. My clearest memory of sleeping in that room was pretending to be sick so my mother would kill a chicken and make me some chicken broth. I dearly loved chicken broth. Loved chicken as well and chicken and dumplings. But, most of all it was chicken broth.
Still standing outside looking at the house to the right the road continued a short way and wound around the small rise where the tower sat. That was where our car was always parked. To that side of the house was the well and a small out building with a fenced in area. Beside he fence was a table where my mother would put tomatoes to ripen in the sun. I have a picture of me sitting on that table somewhere.
Then on the highest point was the tower. It was one hundred feet to the tip, top of it. Man, when you were up in it and the wind was blowing you could feel it sway. It always scared me but my Dad stayed up there in storms with high winds and lightening. I don't know if I would have. After all when the rain is pouring down what are the chances of spotting a forest fire?
I can remember my mother getting me out of bed before daylight and taking me up the tower to just below the cabin on top and we'd sit there and watch the sun rise up over the hills. The valleys were all filled with fog like a vast, white ocean with little green islands sticking up where the tops of the hills were.
Crum's house. Here about eighteen years ago my brother, nephew and I want out there. I remembered every turn of the old dirt road though it had been over thirty years since I'd been over it.
There are houses all out that way now and most, if not all, of the road is black topped. Everything changes and the only place the "used to be" lives on is in the memories of those who lived those times. In my mind it is still a real place even though the bulldozers pushed it over the hill years and years ago.
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