One of my oldest memories is when I lived in the trailer, between Rosalie & Jimmys house and Jean, Jill & Eddies house. I was sitting in my highchair, and someone appeared in the window, maybe Dean or Eddie. I can also remember being outside with Jill, and she and I went walking back in the cornfield behind the trailer and we found my bottle! It had been taken from me and thrown over top of the trailer and I think it was my dad that threw it. He claimed he was “throwing it away”. Well, Jill and I found it, and then it was always at her house and when I was there- I could drink from my bottle. The last time I saw it, it was in her garage, must’ve been 1971-2?.

Years later, when I lived in the 2-story house on the other side of Rose & Jim, some days we could spend all day outside playing. Some of our moms worked and we had a chore list but after we got that done, we could go outside and play or ride our bikes, it was a great time to be a kid! Eddie & Dean could ride anything with a wheel on it. And one wheel it sometimes was- because one of them had a unicycle and they’d ride up and down Signpost Road and without safety sticks! They could also sit on the handlebars of their regular bicycles (backwards) and peddle backwards yet be traveling frontwards all the way from Deans house to Agnes & Eldred Taylors house and maybe farther! The most amazing boys I knew of at that time! Eddie would always say, all in one word, “happeninggggggdudddddde” when he walked by my house if I was out in the yard. Signpost always had kids outside playing, clothes blowing in everyone’s backyard on lines propped up with sticks. Little fabric bags hanging with clothes pins in them, our clothesline was strung between 2 walnut trees, and I was taught how to properly hang clothes out to dry at whatever age I was when I could reach the clothesline. There is a method, and not just randomly hung!

Sunday mornings we’d all leave the house around the same time and walk up through town to go to church. Individual families walking together, I feel my heart pull remembering the faces of those loved ones that we can’t get to now. We would walk no matter the temperature, but not when it was raining. A few winters I had a “muff”, and it was solid white! It was like a furry tube that you could put your hands in each end and walk with your hands in front of you like that. I don’t know where it came from or where it went but I loved it. I loved it because it made me a French Princess from the “Pettit’s” side of the family because Gam was doing genealogy long before there was an ancestry. com and her people were French. Oh oui oui…

My cousin Julie lived next door and right between our two houses there was an old cedar tree next to a little hill and we used to ride our bikes from Julie’s yard to my yard, up that hill, around that cedar tree and down the hill round and round. One time a snake fell from that tree and landed on or very near Julie’s handlebars! What year was that? I am certain I never even walked under that tree again and it was forever the “snake tree” after that. Never been so glad to see a tree gone as I am that one. I am usually a tree lover but not THAT tree.

The graveyard road is the dirt road that leads down to the woods, down to “Tankers Town” and the dump where I’d search for treasures to decorate my forts with. All kinds of cool things were back there, and old tractors and farm equipment, a trail through there that crossed a little stream of fresh water and I know that because I drank it before. Lord, I hope it was fresh water. I remember a wide board laid over it where we’d cross, if you kept on that trail, you’d come out across from Gina Mills house. We could be ALL the way back there in those woods and down that long graveyard road and we’d hear the music box music far in the distance. It had to have still been in Horntown because we had the time to run home and get money from someone-anyone, change from the couch cushions, whatever it took, and be ready and lined up for Mr Whippys Ice Cream truck that was headed our way! My favorite was a chocolate/vanilla twist with sprinkles. I don’t mean sprinkled with sprinkles either, I think he rolled that ice cream cone right down in the sprinkle container and it was loaded. Now that I’m an adult and look back towards those woods, it looks so small. I swear it was huge when we were kids. The whole town was bigger.

It was the graveyard road where all the willy walking took place with Gam. She would briskly walk that dirt road for exercise and carrying a tree branch with leaves to swish herself with every now and then to keep the mosquitoes off while she walked. Sometimes I was late in seeing her walking but no matter how far ahead she was I would run to catch up with her so I could willy walk with her. Sometimes it would be a several of us. She would hum or sing and sometimes the lightening bugs would be out because it was the edge of dark. She walked in a dress, yes she did, a “house dress” of course, with stockings held by elastic bands on her legs. She was made out of the good stuff and smelled of Ponds cold cream. Sometimes she would let me help her lay out the walnuts. She had boards she laid them out on until it was time to crack them and use for baking. She had a little knee pad used for kneeling on while she tended her flowers. She knew everything about flowers.

Come to think of it, she knew every. single. thing about everything.

♥