This was originally posted in 2008. Since then, the house has burned down. So much has changed up there that it does not seem like the same place. I don't know if any one that reads my blog now has read this. Partly cause I cannot remember if I have ever reposted it.
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I debated on posting about this but I just want to share it, though I doubt if I can make you understand the way I feel about this place.
Once upon a time, when my husband and I were young and had stars in our eyes and thought all things were possible, we decided to quit our jobs here in Terre Haute, Indiana and move to Tennessee, my home state. We moved to the little house/cabin in the top picture. I have no idea how old it is, but I have loved that place since I can remember. I still love it, and would move there in a heartbeat--though I don't know what I would do with all my sewing and my husbands things would not fit anywhere there. But there is no house on earth that I would trade that place for if it were mine.
The other picture is one of the views we had from our front yard. And you go on up the holler past that barn to get to the place that
Neal and all of us lived...where most of us were born. (I was and one brother was born in the hospital.)
When we lived up there, my mom's
best friend lived at this house pictured here.
In our case, my best friend/sister-in-law lived less than half a mile on down the road from us, and my mom a little bit farther. I visited with both daily, either by phone or actual face to face...and it took me forever to be broke from that when we moved back to Indiana. But it was so good while it lasted.
Out by the barn, I had a garden that would be by most standards a big garden--I had potatoes, tomatoes, sweet corn, hickory cane corn with cornfield beans growing up those stalks, bush beans , cucumbers, and what all else I cannot remember. I canned beans, and sold beans, and canned sliced green tomatoes and made tomato juice. And canned whole tomatoes. We bought peaches and I canned those.
My husband could shoot his guns off the front porch if he wanted, though he always got out in the front yard and used a picnic table as a rest. He could get in I think 500 yard shots to sight in his rifles....he could shoot his bows in the front yard as well...it was the ideal for us.
I got to stay home while he first got a job at a local college, and from there a lumber yard, and then he got to go to a vocational school and learn to weld. Well, being a little older than the students out of high school, he got along real well with his teacher who was a wonderful man.
There was also machine shop classes taught there--and it had a remedial course it taught two nights a week for people that needed refresher courses.
Roger talked to that teacher and he agreed to let Roger come and set in on those...he would not get credit or anything but he would still have some knowledge of lathes, etc. So he really took advantage of everything he could there and it has served him well throughout his life.
I do not know what the hold is that this place has over me...most of the time autumn makes me so homesick for it. And I dream about it...not as often as I used to, but often enough. And I don't like to wake from the dreams. I always try to go back to sleep and dream more. There is just a feel to the place...it has always had a hold over me.
When we were kids, the owners of this place lived in Michigan and we mowed the yard for them. I loved having that excuse to go up there and go in the house. It never seemed to get hot enough to matter in the summer...about all we ever did when we lived there was open the window in our bedroom and open the back door. The cool air coming off that mountain cooled everything out.
I am linking this to
Timeless Thursdays...a bit late.
