On the Moraine Part XIX

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

The fall of 1962 was a time of great turmoil for our family. I know I was feeling my own turmoil, just starting to the 7th grade in Troy at a school where I had never been.  

It was a longer walk – about nine blocks instead of four (in Troy in those days, if you lived inside the city limits, there was no school bus service). Rainy days were tough.

My parents were working on adding to our farmland in Highland County. Then, there was Oct. 16. That was the day the Cuban missile crisis started. If the McNary Farm was six minutes south of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base at Mach 1 as I stated before, Troy was one minute north. Nobody had to say anything. We all knew how close we were to a high-value target. 

All the adults were grim.

Transistor radios were issued to all of our teachers, and they kept them on a low volume at a station that would give early warnings of incoming ICBMs. We practiced “duck and cover,” both in the classroom and in the hallways. 

At the other end of our environment, my parents found another farm, the Beaver Farm, on S.R. 506. Mrs. Ruth Beavers owned it, having inherited it from her recently deceased husband, Oakley Beavers.

Meanwhile, coincidently, we had noticed a new house being built in Cynthiana. It is the first house north of S.R. 41, on the left-hand side as you drive toward Rainsboro.  

Mrs. Beavers was having this built for herself, anticipating selling her farm. She was the principal of the school in Cynthiana. The home still stands and is in good condition.

I don’t remember all the details of actually buying the Beaver Farm. I do remember we, as a family, walked the circumference of it one Saturday before we actually purchased it.

So, a deal was made that fall to purchase the Beaver Farm. I don’t remember exactly when we started moving into the house. I know it was before Christmas. Keep in mind, we are now consolidating the household items at the McNary Farm and the household in Troy at the Beaver Farm.  

Every Friday night, we would bring a trailer-load of household and shop materials from Troy to the Beaver Farm. Saturdays were spent shuttling household items from the McNary Farm over to the Beaver Farm.

One Saturday afternoon in December, a young man came up to the barnyard at the Beaver Farm. Only Dad and I were there. He introduced himself, Charlie Flannery, and explained he was our neighbor to the west on McCoppin Mill Road, and that he had a dairy.  

He wanted to know if we wanted to rent out our land for the 1963 crop year. He said he was having trouble renting land because he was only 20 years old. 

Dad told him we planned on farming it, sorry.

Charlie and his wife, Gloria, now live on Turkey Road, just east of Marshall.

Note: Geologically, Ohio is roughly two states divided by a line that runs from Cincinnati to Cleveland. Sometimes, this line is thought to roughly follow the old “3C” highway or I-71. It veers quite widely from this line, particularly in Highland County. North and west of this line, the state is fairly flat and smooth, the result of the last glacier of the Ice Age. South and east of this line are the Appalachian foothills, undisturbed by glaciers. In most textbooks, this line is called the Terminal Moraine. Starting in the 1950s, my family acquired two farms. The first one, known as the McNary Farm, is located at the junction of Highland, Ross and Pike counties. The McNary Farm is clearly on the southeast side of the Terminal Moraine. The other farm, known as the Beaver Farm, is located on the north side of state Route 506 at the intersection of that highway and Franklin Branch, a creek which is clearly marked on the Highland County engineer’s map of today. The Beaver Farm is definitely on the northwest side of the Terminal Moraine.

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.