On the Moraine, Part IV

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

We stayed in the tenant house on McNary Road for several weekends, waiting for the renter in the “bigger house” to move out. I have no idea what those arrangements were, I was a little kid. They must have been satisfactory, for I never heard my parents discussing them.

So, sometime in the spring, we moved to the bigger house, down the lane at the McNary Farm. It was also partially log, as had been the tenant house up on the road. In both cases, at sometime the logs had been covered with unpainted wood sheathing.  

The bigger house had had a couple of additions, the one toward the far end had a basement made of hand-hewn stones. Today, all that is left there is a pile of logs from the house and the open basement.

Now, the basement walls are white, I remember them in the old days as being somewhat brown. We set up the little heater we had brought from Troy in the “dining room.” Mother cooked on it until about 1961. We bought another used wood stove and put it in the living room.  

Over the years, various relatives from Scioto County gave us pieces of furniture we put in the house. For instance, there was a bunk-bed set we put in the living room and which my brother John and I used.  

Mother and Dad slept on an old mattress and spring set in the dining room – now kitchen – next to the stove. The house did have electricity and a well out front for water. It had a hand pump, of course. One of the enduring memories was arriving on a Friday night in the winter when the house had been shut up and cold all week. We would unload the car, come in the house and Dad would make a fire in both of the stoves. John and I would put on our pajamas, throw our coats and anything looking look like a blanket on top of our beds and jump in. I used this same bedding technique in the late 1990s in a hotel in Warsaw, Poland that had no heat. (Don’t forget the things you learn as a child.)

The farm had a barn, granary, wooden corncrib, chicken house and a cow shed that was about to slide over the hill into the creek. There was also a smokehouse and an outhouse. Up on the road where the tenant house was, there was also a small barn called the tobacco barn.

When we got into the big house, we started exploring the buildings. The barn had a tack room with lots of old harnesses and such. The tack room also had a wooden version of the old water well pump. It is the only one I have ever seen, and I have dragged it around now for about 68 years. It is sitting in the corner of the bathroom about eight feet from where I am sitting in my office right now.

In the granary, hanging from the ceiling by a wire, was a set of wood wagon wheel tires that were apparently factory made. I watched over the years as the granary was deteriorated and along about 2000, I “liberated” these, and they now hang in my garage in Georgia.

The pump and the wagon wheels are probably destined for the dump when I am gone. No one else wants them. If you can think of a place where they will be preserved and displayed, let me know.

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.