The Journey Part 1

Like all journeys there must be a starting and ending point. My journey started when I was about 10 years old, when in the late 60's my father and mother purchased a 100 acre farm where they planned on building a house to retire to when the time came. The farm was in an area where both of my parents where born and raised, at that time however we live about 120 miles from the farm. Both of my sets of grandparents lived about 10 miles from the farm and we frequently visited them, on those visits my dad, grandfather (Dad's father) and myself would go out to the farm on Saturdays and work cleaning up the farm.

My father was a minister so after a long day on Saturday we would head back home so he could preach the following morning and evening. One thing I was always happy about as a kid growing up was that we never were allowed to work on Sundays so I could always rest up and play on those days.

The farm consisted of 60 acres of timber and 40 acres of pasture, the pastures had not been kept up for years and had grown full of saplings. I remember my grandfather had a cutoff saw that consisted of two 20" bicycle wheels, a motor which you had to wrap the pull cord around(no recoil start on this thing) to start it and a 30" circular saw blade. Of course you would get thrown in jail these days for using such a contraption without 40 warning labels and guards. But papaw as we called him was a master of this machine a cleared all the pastures with it and still had all his limbs when finished. We actually still have the old cutoff saw in our barn but I doubt it would still run.

The farm also had an old 3 room house (shack) on it, it was an old railroad conductors house (the railroads use to have these along the tracks for conductors to stay in) that had been moved to the farm several years earlier. I remember the first time I entered the little house I was scared to death, the old man that had lived there years before had heated with coal and everything in there was coated with a thick coat of coal dust, there were cob webs everywhere and junk was laying all over the floors. After 40 years however the little 3 now 4 room house is still standing, it is due for another round of renovations however.

I will continue the journey on my next post thanks for stopping by.

Tim