Empty Porches When I turned teenager, my family moved from a house surrounded by farmland to a small community in central Pennsylvania. Oakland Mills sits on both sides of one of the two main roads that run the length of Juniata County. Its population included about 17 households and less
House on the Highway – Published in the 2017 summer issue of Common Ground Magazine. When I was four years old, I lived with my mom, dad, and brother in an old farmhouse. I have small pieces of memory from the house, but few of them
When i was a kid…
When I was a kid, we once took a summer vacation by roping off a segment of the farmer’s cow pasture, pitching a tent, and setting up a small charcoal grill. The fishing by the river was good, but the cow patties were a bother.
When I was a kid, we rode to Canada with a caravan of family and friends. Four or five of us kids rode in the back of Dad’s pick-up truck, lying flat out on a plywood board held up by the wheel wells. A piece of jagged carpet covered the splinters. Five-gallon jugs of gasoline were stored under our plank bed.
When I was a kid, the dark, wood-paneled basement became Barbie-doll/G.I. Joe city. The creepy shelves under the basement stairs were our country store. A cardboard box became a ship, a cabin, a rocket ship, anything we wanted it to be. We often put a grocery box on the Radio Flyer wagon and pretended to be riding an Amish buggy. My brother would push the wagon with me in it down the steep hill by the old farmhouse. My buggy had no horses to lead the way.
Ah, the nostalgia – stories about the good old days when I was a kid fill my mind and make me laugh, even the ones that filled me with terrible as a child. As an adult, I do everything I can to care for and honor those folks who filled my mind with delightful memories. As a grandparent, I do everything I can to fill my little ones with memories so they can one day look back and laugh and remember the good old days.
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