Cloia and Lorilyn 1970
I don't remember many things about my childhood. To hear my siblings speak of things that happened is like listening to another person's history. Some of the player's are familiar--but I don't remember being there. It is like that with a lot of people, I tell myself.
I was born in Santa Ana, Ca, and do retain a couple memories from there. The San Diego Zoo, I remember, vividly. A train track in Riverside, Ca., I can still close my eyes and see it...funny how a person's memory works.
My family moved to Southern Indiana in 1969. My father remained in Ca. to work and send money back to us. The place my father had purchased sight unseen, was a 150 yr old farm. A small place of 13 acres, backed up against the Hoosier National forest. There was a huge barn with two breezeways, 6 stalls and a giant hayloft that immediately became a hangout for my brothers. There was also a smokehouse, poultry house, storage building and outhouse. The house itself was 2 stories, but not very large-only having 3 bedrooms. Upstairs, my sisters shared one room, and my brothers the other.
When we arrived in 1969, there was no running water in the house. Water had to be drawn from a well. The stove in the kitchen was a wood burning stove with griddle and large double ovens. The heat for the house was a Ben Franklin cast iron stove in the living room. Many of the windows were broken or missing and there wasn't a driveway--meaning parking at the top of a hill and hiking down through a pasture to the house.
I have to wonder at my mother's thoughts upon arrival...from leaving a nice suburban house in California, to arriving in Southern Indiana, on her own with 5 children, having just learned to drive so that she could make the trip. Arriving at the spot on the map that her husband had described so confidently as being "a great little farm"..and finding it an abandoned homestead that hadn't been lived in for almost 50 years! Regardless of her initial thoughts--she was up for the challenge, and set about improving what she had.
The memories I have from the early years there, are only snippets of things. Drawing water from the well--a fragrant pale pink wild rose grew next to it. The staircase to the upper rooms was an enclosed stairway. To sit in the stairway, I could hear children's voices and would listen to them whenever I could hide there. My mother would work from before daylight until after dark on improving the place. Breaking ground with a spade and putting in vegetable gardens. Cutting wood and carrying wood. Hunting and harvesting. I am sure my siblings, being older than I, helped her. But I truly cannot remember them ever working with her. Her hands became rough, but strong. She was amazing to me..nothing could defeat her.
My father was injured in Ca, only a couple months after we arrived on the "farm". The money he was to send for supplies, stopped coming, yet he remained there. My mother was truly on her own in finding ways to feed us and keep us alive. I am told it was then that she started 'wandering'..I know it was a standing joke in my family that she would be working in the field..then suddenly be gone. Hoe left laying in the dirt..water bucket left sitting on the ground..hammer left hanging on a half driven nail..she would just turn and walk into the woods. Sometimes she would only be gone a short time..but sometimes my siblings would gather and search for her for a long time..no one ever 'found' her ..she would just appear after much calling and searching, and return to working.
By the time my father arrived, in late 1970, the "farm" was indeed a farm. There were chickens and pigs, gardens full of vegetables and herbs, fields of corn, rows of cut wood drying, windows repaired or replaced, fences mended, a road blazed and a family that was making it just fine without his input. I am sure it was a sore point with him, and was for many years that he was not really needed. Unable to work, due to his back injury. He tried to take on the role of "supervisor" over everyone and everything. Each day was a new argument over who was to do what, and who wasn't giving him respect. It became a constant roar of voices raised in anger. The voices of the children in the stairwell were drowned out. I started slipping out to avoid the new ugly sounds..and I slipped into the woods..
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