Lone Star

My earliest memories are of the farmhouse at Lone Star.  Lone Star isn't a real town.  It is more of an area northeast of Fairland.  Here's a link to a satellite shot of the where I think the farmhouse was.  Evidently the well is still good and the current owner runs cattle on the place.  After we moved away, a new owner picked up the whole house and moved it into town.  [Maybe with Mom's help on locating it, I'll try to get a satellite shot of it as well.  But something in the back of my mind tells me that the house was torn down later even in Fairland.]  It was the house where I learned to walk.  Mom tells the story that walking in that house wasn't trivial.  It seems every room was on a different level and you had to always step up or step down as you went from room to room.

The satellite shot shows the typical Great Plains geography and road plan.  The entire countryside is divided up into "sections" (as opposed to city blocks) that are a mile on a side.  Of course, all the roads run North-South or East-West.  If you want to travel NW to SE, it's drive-turn, drive-turn, drive-turn.  Only major highways like US routes or turnpikes go "as the crow flies".  State and county roads followed the right-of-ways along the section lines.  And even the US routes and interstates will sometime do a jog out in the middle of nowhere because the right-of-way "grew up" along a section line.

I don't  really many early memories of the place.  I suspect I may have invented a few from looking at a photo album that had some pictures of me at the house.  It was while I lived there that Mom found me in the crib rehearsing all my words before I went to sleep.

The story is also told about how I would sometimes go out into the field that Dad was plowing and Dad would stop the tractor, pick me up, and keep plowing with me in his lap.  But one day I wandered a little further than usual and became lost as far as my folks were concerned.  They eventually found me crying in a neighbor's field while I watched him plow.  I was upset because he wouldn't stop and pick me up.

I remember watching a tortoise cross the dirt and graver road next to the house.  I was fascinated as a road grader came by, caught the turtle in its blade and rolled it to the edge of the road with the other rocks and dirt.  The turtle just came out of its shell and went on its way.

The house was heated by a big gas or oil stove in the center of the house.  I like to stand with my back side to it to warm up my pants, then bend my knees to feel that warm cloth on the back of my legs.  One day I stood there long enough to scorch the pants.  Mom was mad.

Alison and Ellen were born while we lived there.  Alison was big enough to play with before we left but Ellen was just a baby and not much fun.

I remember a time that really scared Alison and I.  One evening Dad had been out in the barn dehorning cattle.  It seems that cutting a horn off is not much different that trimming a toenail as far as the cow is concerned, so it doesn't hurt them.  But a horn does have a blood supply, so the process can be a bit graphic.  When Dad came up from the barn, his hands were all bloody and we thought something terrible had happened.  Ah, the things you miss out on, living in the city.

We moved from the farm because Dad figured he could make better money working for Uncle Sam using is hard-earned degree.