"I see Grandpa's house, I see Grandpa's house"

Grandpa and Grandma moved many times. I know my Dad and his brothers and sister were born in Polk County, MO, and Dad in Halfway, MO, halfway between Bolivar and Buffalo. Dad went to high school in Humansville and spent his last year of high school there while his folks moved to a dairy farm in Chandler, AZ.

The first Missouri farm I remember was a fieldstone house just south of Bolivar that Grandpa built himself. The farm was on rolling hills and had a pond with a spring where cream, butter, eggs and milk were kept. He had cows, chickens, turkeys and farmed with mules. I remember spending time with them in the summer time and helping Grandma feed the thrashing crew. The table would be loaded with home grown vegetables, fried chicken and always pie for desert. I didn't venture far from the house after a turkey chased me out of the yard one day.

We always loved to go to the farm and the three of us watched carefully as we got nearer because we wanted to be the first to espy the house and the first to sing out, "I see Grandpa's house!" The house was near the road on a rise of the rolling countryside and we could spot it from a couple of miles away. You can still see it from that distance and it still looks like "Grandpa's house" but the present owners have enlarged and improved it.

Grandma was a good cook and everything was seasoned with butter and cream and always fat meat. Grandpa always butchered the fattest calf, hog and even chickens. Grandma loved to bake angelfood cakes and always fed Grandpa two or three eggs every morning plus a couple of egg yolks. She saved the whites of the eggs until a dozen were saved, enough for an angelfood cake. Grandpa worked hard on the farm and there never seemed to be a worry about cholesterol in those days.

The next move was an apple orchard. We three loved to play hide and go seek among the trees about dusk. I still have a long scar from the barbed wire that got in the way of the game. I loved to watch them make apple cider.

He continued to farm a place, refinish the house and then sell it. Even after he sold his large farms he would still have a large truck garden selling strawberries, grapes, raspberries and tomatoes. He wouldn't sell the size strawberries in the store today - his baskets were always filled with huge ripe strawberries. On one place I used to pick strawberries for .25 cents a basket. My brothers couldn't see the strawberries until they were in a dish with cream but I made some spending money that way. I would pick strawberries until I happened to see a snake and then the days picking was over.

After Grandma died in 1964, Grandpa couldn't stand the stay in the house so sold it, bought another lot and built a new house. There, too, he had a large truck garden and people came from all over the county for his produce.

In early 1975 at the age of 89, Grandpa suffered a slight stroke but continued to live alone and take care of his garden. He decided to sell and suggested he might like to find a place in Springfield, near my Dad. He put his place up for sale and it sold right away. One day he called Dad and told him the papers were signed for the place and he was ready to move to Springfield. Later that week a neighbor found him in his back yard where he had died of a heart attack. He had lived a good, hard working 89 years doing what he loved. He is fondly remembered.