Chapter 6

None of that happened the first time. The first time? 1955 wasn't fun at all. The fat older brother ... the miserable younger sister ... the mother who hated the very air I breathed. No... 1955 was no fun.

This time around, Grandmother sold me the farm ... for what my mother sold it for after Daddy died ... the first time. 39.6 acres of rocky swamp, swaybacked house and joke for a barn cost me seven thousand dollars after it was all done.

But, my side of the family? The men have a heart defect that couldn't be fixed. Besides the farm, Grandpa was the best barn builder in the state. He built six or seven hip roofed barns a year ... most of them in Clinton County.

Daddy went to college and Law school on the proceeds of Gramp's barn building. For spending money Daddy ice skated booze from Windsor Ontario to Detroit in the winter and operated a family owned steam launch on the Tahquamenon River with special tours to the falls ... Daddy graduated in 1936 ... Grandfather Austin died in 1938 from a massive heart attack ... even modern medicine couldn't have saved him ... he fell from the peak of the largest barn in the state.

He was nailing the good luck broom to the eaves over the Hex when he fell. Well ... that blew that theory!

Grace and I spent many hours in the new pool ... did I forget to mention the pool? In the backyard? I did!

The house in town was on a double length lot due to the Catholic school and playground that cut off McConnell street a half block before M 21/US 27. When daddy bought the house, they were just finishing the school. There was this stretch of street across the back yard that didn't go anywhere so he bought it ... for a dollar and services.

The Methodists to the north used the rest of the street for the driveway to the Pastors garage.

Daddy had a concrete wall built on the north end of the abandoned street. Then he hired a steam shovel to eliminate several muck beds at the farm and had the dirt hauled to town and spread from the Catholic school yard fence to within 20 feet of the backdoor. That raised the backyard nine feet at the very eastern edge of the yard. The crew he hired tapered the new backyard to three feet by the backdoor. Mom planted roses with an arched passage with a gate to keep us kids out of the wayback.

It was great dirt for agricultural purposes: Grandma grew the best Victory Garden during the war. That muck dirt is similar to peat in England ... but deeper.

Digging out the muck beds at the farm created a series of ponds that started at the fifteen acre wheat field and extended to the road that ran in front of the farm house. The water for the ponds came from the seven acre wood between the fifteen acre field and the five acre christmas tree field at the very south end of the farm.

The water in the seven acre wood was an extra caused by the vibration of the steam shovel digging out the muck and the dump trucks driving in to load the muck. Something broke in the aquifer and created a swamp in the middle of the wood. Daddy had the shovel tile a drain from the swamp under the wheat field and the tile fed the series of ponds.

The intention was to drain the swamp in the wood. That didn't work. The pond in the woods never ran dry.

That happened before I was born but the ponds and stream were still there when I bought the farm from grandma. They might have already been there ... but it wasn't pretty.

The summer Grace and I turned 13 ... we didn't turn 13 in the summer ... we turned 13 on May the 8th. We were born May 8, 1942 ... I had all this money from the Derby, so I built ... had built ... an olympic sized pool with two one meter and one three meter high quality springboards. It was in the wayback yard but close to the backdoor of the house.