Family, Friends & Follies

The stability in my life during these formative years was the love and parenting of Grandma and Grandpa, and the farm.  They had not planned on owning a farm but the fickle finger of fate during the war years had brought them from Cincinnati to Verona, Kentucky and ownership of 110 acres of Northern Kentucky farmland.

When Uncle Leonard, Grandpa’s second son, was drafted into the army, he was sent to the front lines in Germany, fighting in the Battle of the Bulge.  He fell asleep in a foxhole, and froze his feet during the bitter cold winter fighting.  He was shipped back to England and placed in a hospital.  After his feet were healed and he recovered, he was sent back to the German front to continue fighting.

While in the hospital, he wrote a letter to Grandpa and Grandma and said that he was in a hospital with “a little foot trouble.” Grandma and Grandpa interpreted the letter to mean that he probably had both legs blown off and he didn’t want to worry them with bad news.

As soon as they read the letter, Grandpa and Grandma went to the bank and cashed in all of their savings bonds, and with any other money they could scrape together, they went to northern Kentucky and bought one hundred and ten acres of rolling country farmland, complete with house and barn, outside a very small rural community called Verona.  Now, they told each other, when Uncle Leonard came home after the war, he would have a place to live since he would not be able to do anything without his legs.

All at once the war in Europe was over and Uncle Leonard was discharged from the army and “Johnny came marching home.”…and he had both of his legs.

“Oh, thank God, it’s so good to have you home and see that you’re not hurt,” said Grandma as she hugged Uncle Leonard.

Uncle Leonard looked bewildered.   He asked, “Why did you think I was hurt?”

Grandma stared at him uncertainly.  “Well, you wrote to us and said that you had some foot trouble.  Your Dad and I just assumed that you had been hurt real bad and…” her voice trailed off, as it finally dawned on her that Uncle Leonard was in one piece.

Grandpa and Grandma now realized that their hasty decision to buy the farm had been a mistake. Uncle Leonard stayed on the farm for a short time, and then left for the bright lights of Cincinnati.  For most of his life he lived there and never returned to the farm except to visit.

Totally landlocked with surrounding farms, the only ingress and egress to the farm was a rutted lane leading to the main highway. The Waller farm framed in the east side, to the south was the Elam farm and to the west and north the land belonged to the Chapmans.  The main highway was Kentucky State Route 16 and it was a mile from the farmhouse.  To get to the main highway, a makeshift road provided legal access to the farm.  The two ruts, winding through the picturesque Kentucky countryside, were all that existed of a roadway in the early years.  Grandpa and neighbors spent long hours to improve the road. They built culverts to help drainage.  Laboriously they hauled limestone rocks and broke them up to create a base in some of the deeper holes.  Whenever he went to town, Grandpa, always made a stop at the courthouse, gently applying pressure on the county engineer. The county had equipment to either grade the road or bring in a few dump truck loads of gravel to make the road more passable.  I’m reasonably sure that some elected official at one time or another bought Grandpa’s election vote for a few truckloads of gravel.

For the next few years Grandpa and Grandma worked and improved the farm.  Neighbors said that my Grandpa worked harder than any man in the county. Old timers said that in the first ten years Grandpa owned the farm, “he wore out three double-bladed axes clearing the land.”  I do remember Grandpa being an expert with an ax and he was constantly honing the blade with a whetstone when working in the fields.

The farmhouse, originally a two-room log cabin, had been improved long before Grandpa and Grandma bought the farm, and there was little resemblance to the original house.  Weathered clapboard siding covered the exterior and the interior had been covered with gypsum board. The house now had four rooms on the lower level and two upstairs.  The added rooms downstairs consisted of another bed