Matters Of Fact

DISCOVERY OF FACT - 1943

It had been a long hot day and the evening air was still warm.  The moon had been hanging in the eastern sky for quite some time as the blue Ford two-door sedan rolled up to the front of the huge white house nestled at the bottom of the hill.  The place had not been occupied for several years and although some cleanup had begun tall weeds still stood between the house and the big red barn that loomed in the moon light 100 yards or so to the south.  Off to the west of the barn and a little north was a second large building this was the “double granary” title came from the fact that this grain storage building always had a driveway between a set of two or more grain bins on either side.  This driveway usually served as a shelter for horse drawn wagons and later on in history the farm truck that replaced the wagons.  This building looked big but the barn was much the larger of the two, it was comprised of three double stalls on either side of a walkway plus a single horse stall on the north end and an enclosed oats bin on the other side of the isle.  At the west end of the walkway was a ladder which provided a method of reaching the “Hay Loft”.  This loft was a huge open area, in all the years I worked, played, and explored in the old barn I never actually knew it’s dimensions but I would guess from the floor to the peak of the roof it was 30 feet or so and probably 40 X 60 feet of floor space.  At the top of the roof was a hay track that extended out of one end of the building and was used to lift a hay fork that held maybe 1/6th  or so of a hay rack load of hay each trip up.  This was powered by a team of horses and then in later years by a tractor.

A fourth building I believe, had at one time been the original dwelling.  It was a building probably not more than 20 X 35 feet set on a basement laid up of native limestone that opened to the south.  Thinking back this probably had been a pretty neat old house that would have been home to several families over the years but had served as a chicken coop for many years at this time.  At the time I am remembering, however the most formidable object in view was the huge white house that seemed to stand hiding who knows what inside those walls.  As soon as the car lights were turned off only the moonlight was available to find the path to the front door lurking somewhere under the front porch which was itself, nearly as large as the house this family had been accustomed to occupying up until this night.  There was no yard light because REA was not to reach this farmstead for another six years.  The cedar trees that lined either side of the walkway seemed to blot out whatever light was present in the yard and I wondered if it was really wise to be disturbing this place that, in the mind and imagination of an eight year old boy had not been visited by people at this hour for a LONG time!  I don’t remember where we slept that first night or what the inside of the house looked like but at this writing some fifty-one years later I still remember the scene I have tried to describe as I remember arriving at the old Attwood farm one night in August of 1943 probably after being in the field until late in the evening.

Sometime during the summer of 1943 my parents had managed to purchase the 320 acres of land from a Dr. Attwood who resided at Randolph, Kansas.  We had lived all of my life on a farm just four and one-half miles to the west of this location in a tiny farm house.