My great-grandma Virgie lived alone beside us in a small single-wide trailer. I believe when I was growing up she still owned 20 acres, but only resided on one. The story is that she went to an auction where on the steps of the county courthouse bought the land for a really cheap price. To this day it still amazes me that she lived there alone, keeping up with all of the duties of maintaining her property, especially with having advanced Rheumatoid Arthritis. She was a resilient woman who lived to 91 years old.
She often wore a simple white short-sleeved underdress beneath a sleeveless light pastel floral apron dress with big pockets in the front, stockings, black nursing shoes, and thick-framed pointy glasses. Her silver hair was always coiled into a large bun resting on the top of her head. All her clothes looked handmade. She spent a lot of her free time making old-fashioned quilts with small squares in the old traditional way, by hand. As newborns, she made baby quilts for each of us kids. We are fortunate to still have one of her full-sized quilts, as well as our baby quilts. On the queen-sized quilt, a few of the squares started to separate back in the 80's when we still used it frequently. It's been retired ever since, put into storage to preserve it. The older I get, the more I drift toward living simply in her image, even as far as with her tastes in clothes, albeit I am a bit more loud in my color choices and layering.
Our property was on the left of hers. On the other side lived one of my mother's aunt's, Clara and her adult son, Cousin Bob, who lived and worked from home as a mechanic, in their double garage. It was always strange to me to refer to him as cousin because he was my mother's age. I've never understood how labeling family members works. To the right of them were more family members, but I forget all of their names, now. We usually referred to the other families along our street by their last names. Most of our family we called by first names. Anyhow, they'd adopted my twin cousins Vicki and Valerie who were older than me, as they were in high school when I was in elementary school. Altogether, my family must have originally owned somewhere between 60 to 100 acres there in the country, on that street, divided between everyone.
My grandparents Gladys and Oscar both passed away before I was born, which was how their 20 acres was passed on to my folks and their siblings. At some point, before I was born, part of it was sold to our neighbor across the street, Mr. Buchanan. He only seemed to use it occasionally to ride around on his beautiful horse while wearing his cowboy boots and cowboy hat. He looked just like the Marlboro Man you would see in all of the magazine ads of the time. Back when smoking was force fed down everyone's throat through double page ads in every magazine. Over the years, our 20 acres was sold to him in increments. Although my grandparents moved the family up north to the Kansas City area, not all of the land was sold to him so a lot of it remained ours for decades, deserted. When I was born, my mother returned to raise my sister and me. Finally in the late 80's the rest of it was sold to Mr. Buchanan, as we trekked back to the Kansas City area when I was about a month into 4th-grade.
Even though we did not own all of the original 20 acres of land when I grew up there, the part we still owned and I was raised on was about 8 acres, 3 of which was a pine and cypress tree forest behind the backyard. It was as if I had free range of the wild and untouched acreage. I took full advantage of that. I roamed around every inch of that property, as well as my great-grandmother's. There were no fences to distinguish our land from theirs. I was all over those 20+ acres, sometimes much to the chagrin of my parents. As a matter of fact, I could probably map it out even though it has been over 20 years since I was last there. Maybe one day I will.
To this day, anytime I am in that area of the county, I intentionally drive down that street, slowing down, maybe even stopping in the road, to look back in time. Unfortunately, we let the property go to move into the city around the time I was 8 years old for financial and work-related reasons. Not long after we left, the property was bulldozed to turn it into grazing land for his cattle operation, which he eagerly expanded. Things which aren't able to be undone were done. Changes unable to be reversed occurred. Life moves on in that way, doesn't it? I miss it there very much. Every year, the older I get, the more I miss it. Of late it feels like a necessity for me to find my own place, with as much spirit, to plant my trunk, regrow my roots, find stability, with as close of a resemblance as possible. In 2005 I moved to the greater Los Angeles area but in 2013 I returned to Missouri to be closer to the family. Events transpired. Bittersweet is the best word to describe it.
One thing led to another and eventuall, we found our way back to "the country", just with a new address. It feels like home here, too, but nowhere will ever compare to where I grew up. As they say, you will never forget your first love. I am learning to love this place, as well. I hold dear the memories of freedom, adventure, and family from my early years. Some of those memories are so crisp it's as if I am back there in those moments. As if time has not passed. Yet, decades of life have happened since. But, I guess you could say, a part of me remains there as an innocent child. If we leave pieces of our soul everywhere our spirit feels love, I left a piece of myself there. The landscape might have changed but, deep down, I will always be there running BAREFOOT IN THE BOONIES.
As a recap:
What I am PLANNING to do is chronicle memories and experiences from childhood through adulthood that will tie all of the elements in life which have molded this convoluted variety in interests into the ultimately cohesive path towards permaculture and homesteading. Concurrently will be a series of Gardening/Sustainability/Homesteading/Permaculture specific posts with tons of pictures documenting my progression from 2011 to 2017. Thank you for sticking around till the end. I hope you will enjoy these short stories.
For reference, here are the previous posts:
STORIES:
BAREFOOT IN THE BOONIES: EXPOSING MY ROOTS (introduction post)
BAREFOOT IN THE BOONIES: Chapter 1
2011 GARDEN:
TO BE CONTINUED...
That's all for now. Until the next post... If you found this post enjoyable, please consider upvoting, resteeming, following, and commenting! Thank you kindly for reading.
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