The New Farmhouse
Al Botcher's farm was similar in a lot of ways to the one owned by Grandma Lill and Grandpa Lee.
The driveway fanned into a rather large area where cars could be parked a number of places and there was a wooden garage, large enough to pull a single car into and hardly enough room to open the driver's door to get out. Passengers had to get out before Al put the car in there. There was an outhouse next to it which you could use if you were outdoors and didn't want to go into the house.
There was a big barn with cow yard and a machine shed/grainery like there was at the Sparta farm but there was even more. Another implement shed with attached corn crib sat beyond the garage and further yet was a hog house with a chicken coop across the pigpen from it. It was like a little town sitting there, all waiting to be explored.The house sat by the road with a front yard shaded by two big white pine trees which must have been a hundred years old. A small smokehouse made of cement blocks stood on the back side.
A big garden area with bordering lilac bushes lay east of the house.
We would enter through the back door by the driveway right into the kitchen where my mother had placed a round, white wroght-iron table with a big glass top. It was her prize possession and must have been a wedding gift that was stored somewhere because Grandma Lill had no place for it. Sitting at the table, one could look out nice windows to a view of the driveway and the machine shed and barn across the way.
The sink and appliances were across the room with counter tops between. The bathroom, like the one at the farm, was not very big and was stubbed in on the front yard side. It contained a vanity, big wall mirror, toilet, and tub. A door at the other end of it was the only way down into the basement, which was very rough but had a concrete floor. It was not actively used for the storage of much more than some firewood since anything large would not be easy to get through the bathroom and around the corner of the stairs going down.
The basement consisted basically of two large rooms with a huge support wall between them that held up the middle of the house. The far room held a great big octopus furnace and a coal bin.
That was a filthy mess! I don't think my mother ever went down there it was so bad. About once a year a dump truck would arrive and back up through the yard to a little window that could be removed. A wooden chute was stuck from the truck through that window and an entire load of coal would be shoveled down it. It would create so much coal dust that it would be all day before it settled. No fire was lit in the furnace during this time for fear of igniting the dust and blowing up the house.
A doorway from the kitchen led past a stairway and into a nice, large living room. Doorways at each end of this living room led into and out of an equally big dining room, which would only be used if Al and my mother were entertaining more than six guests, such as Thanksgiving dinners or Christmas dinners. It contained my mother's collection of books. When my mother obtained a book, it was read and then went on a book case or a shelf, never to be abandoned, no matter how trivial.
The same was the case with what she would call knick-knacks. Knick-knacks were all the little decorative things one accumulates during life--framed pictures, baskets, lamps, candle sticks, candy dishes, pitchers, trivets, decorative boxes or other containers, souvenirs, and any number of little things that just can't be parted with.
Grandma Lill must have been storing a lot of these things for my mother, because she really filled up that house with them. I'll bet Lill was glad to get rid of them, because she was probably storing a lot of things for the other children as well.
Across the east end of the living and dining rooms was an enclosed front porch. Some comfortable furniture was placed out there and it was real nice. A door led down some steps and across a little stretch of lawn to the huge garden.
The stairway between the kitchen and living room was enclosed and had a door at the bottom. Beneath and behind it was a closet for storing items, but it also doubled as a really good hiding place.
The stairs went up to a little landing. The bedroom belonging to Al and my mother was right at the top. A short hallway led to another small bedroom which was used as a guest room. The guest bedroom had a door that opened onto an outside balcony that had a white wooden rail around it. It looked down into the front yard.
Walking right around the bed and through another door led into my bedroom which was actually pretty awesome.
I had a small window that looked out to the front yard and the big pine trees and another window that looked out over the roof of the front porch and gave me a beautiful view down the valley. I could see the gravel road winding down into the lowlands of the next farm and back up again along the steep side of a hill. In the distance, a mile away perhaps, I could see another farm perched on the side of another hill, the farm at which my school bus picked up two boys and a girl. These kids were to become my good friends.
My room had a double-sized bed and I had my own closet. What was even more amazing was that my closet, although about six or seven feet deep, had only a partial back wall and led into the back of the closet of my mother and Al's bedroom! It was a secret passageway.
The secret passageway was a novelty for a while, but they ultimately filled it up with shoes and boxes so that I couldn't appear suddenly in their bedroom.
My mom never met a little piece of furniture she didn't love, so I ended up with a small desk in my room which was really nice. I could keep all of my finds in and on it.
I don't think that my mom and Al ever became aware of the best feature of this bedroom. The window facing east, when raised up, not only gave me a nice breeze in the summertime, but provided an opportunity, especially on a cold winter night, to pee through the screen onto the porch roof and not have to trod through the guest bedroom, down the stairs, through the kitchen to the bathroom and back again.
What a great house!
No comments:
Post a Comment