A Visit of a Lifetime

These photo's were all taken when we visited my parent & grand mother when our children were still pretty young in 1974.

Some things I remember as a child growing up with my father.

Our father was a strong man in Mind, Body and Spirit. He worked most of his life on the strip mines to provide as good a life as he could for us all. There was always a roof over our heads and later on with the new home he built which they still live in, in Upshur County. There was always plenty of good food from the store and from the garden that was planted every year. Our mother would spend days canning up jars of all different things plus there were big freezers in the basement where she would package up things from the garden.

I remember as a child we would be riding with my dad to where ever he may have been going and if there was a stream or river near by it was a known fact what would come next. He would stop the car go to the trunk and out came either a Fly Rod or Rod & Reel.

A lot of trips were made by our family to near Kerens above Elkins to see my grandmother & grandfather Powers. They lived way back off the had road and back in on about a five mile dirt road to a farm I would die for today. There was no electric power, so we took her a big oblong battery to play the radio, she washed clothes in a gas powered washing machine. We carried her block ice wrapped in burlap and straw for her three door ice box refrigerator which I would love to have had today. There was no bathroom there at the farm but there was a two seat out house. When there was no ice food was kept in metal containers in the cold water stream that ran by the house. There was no loud mower to cut the grass just a push mower that I loved to use. Some people may think I'm crazy but what a way to live. So peaceful, quiet, simple, I thought it was the most wonderful place in the world.

I remember as a child when our grandpa was alive all that could make it  would come up to the farm my cousins and I would go play up at the apple orchard or go through the woods to where there was a cave which we were scared to go into but we would stand and yell into it to hear our echo. While  there my Dad, Uncle's and Grandpa would all go out hunting. What ever the kill of the day was that was our supper.

We would also go up to the corn crib and shell corn "boy you talk about having rough hands, you do after that. Also up on the front of the corn crib there was a shelf with a barrel on it and a chained up Raccoon and he sure did chatter a lot.

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