On the Moraine, Part II

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

My dad and his family had moved to Troy, Ohio in 1935 from Graysville, Ind. (my parents are buried there). My mother and one of her sisters came to Troy from Portsmouth, Ohio after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. They had worked in a shoe factory where the pay was very poor. They came to look for work in the war effort and ended up in my dad’s department at Hobart Brothers (welder manufacturers, not the KitchenAid business which was also in Troy). My mother welded gas tanks for generator engines.

As I mentioned last time, the last glacier had left the northwest half of Ohio flat, and Troy is definitely flat. When my dad started visiting those who would be my grandparents in Portsmouth, Willard and Katherine Beekman, he fell in love with the hills on the southeast side of the moraine.

I am not sure exactly when my parents decided to buy a farm. I must have been 4 or 5. I remember us driving around in Highland and Adams counties looking at farms. There was one I remember called the Opp farm in northern Adams County. Something happened that we never bought it. I have no idea what that was.

During these times of farm searches, I remember us driving back home to Troy in the dark on Sunday evenings. Dad would stop at a gas station or some sort of small grocery store, and mother would buy some fig newtons or similar items to tide us over until we got home.

This was before the days of fast-food restaurants, so the choices of food for people traveling in a hurry, especially late in the evening, were very limited. The interstate highways were in the future. Ohio’s speed limits on the two-lane roads were 60 mph in the daytime and 55 mph at night; the signs were built in such a way that they automatically changed numbers based on whether the sun was shining on them or not. I thought them fascinating and magical.

I think it was Christmas when I was 5, that would be 1955, that Mother bought Dad a big flashlight as a gift. I remember the purpose of the flashlight was so Dad could investigate the dark parts of any houses, barns, or outbuildings on any farm they were considering.

In this same time frame, we were already gardening on a large scale. Dad had made friends with a gentleman who owned a large house and lot overlooking the Miami River in Troy. He let my family garden the back lot, probably two acres, in order to keep it trim and weed-free. We, of course, gave him and his wife food from the garden.

I also remember chasing rabbits in this garden, especially the babies. I kept trying to catch one, but they could outrun me. Mother and Dad would laugh at me. On the alley that went back to this garden, which ran alongside a cemetery, there was a patch of blackberries. I had never seen them before and Dad told me when they got ripe, we would pick them, and Mother could make a cobbler.\

“What’s a cobbler?” I had never heard of such a thing.

“A pie in a square pan,” was Dad’s reply.

I guess the acorn does not fall far from the tree. Here in the 2020s my daughter, who is a prolific gardener, besides having a garden at her home, also has a satellite garden a few blocks from her house. More folks wanting a garden rather than a backyard full of weeds and she complies.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press. He can be reached at jthompson@taii.com.