On the Moraine, Part XVI

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

Wintertime on the McNary Farm was an entirely different experience. We had two wood-burning stoves, one in the dining room (which was the little “heater” I described in an earlier episode) and one in the living room, which was an old one with a decorative porcelain outside. Neither one of them was much of a stove.

Then. there were the drafty old windows and doors. The place was a barn.

In recent years, I have had the pleasure of staying with my Mennonite friends in the Sugartree Ridge Community. Old or new homes, they have insulated them and put in modern windows. I marvel at the little amount of wood they use for heat and cooking compared to what we used in the 1950s and '60s in drafty old farmhouses.

Behind the stove in the dining room, we had a wood box, which was the steel liner from an old refrigerator, lying on its back. We could put quite a bit of wood in there.  

You could find me sitting on top of that pile of wood on a Saturday evening, reading “The Reader’s Digest” or “Five Acres and Independence,” which I have mentioned before. Being between the stove and the wall, I think it was the warmest place in the house.  

Mother and Dad’s bed were to one side of this stove and the plywood table we ate at was to the other side.

In the “living room,” my brother and I had an old set of bunk beds that someone in the family had given us.

Arriving here on a winter Friday evening was rugged. It had gotten dark not long after we left Troy, and it was pitch black when we got to the farm three hours later. The house had been cold all week and the first thing Dad would do is build a fire in both the stoves. 

When we went to bed, we would throw our coats and other clothes on top of the beds to help keep us warm. In a column several years ago, I mentioned this technique came in handy when I was in Warsaw, Poland a number of years ago – no heat in the hotel – it was not the time of year to turn it on yet!

After about an hour or two, the rats above the ceiling would start scurrying about as the heat rose through the ceiling. They would never stop moving around all night, or, indeed, all weekend. I think they got more of the heat from the stoves than we did.

Of course, snow would bring a new way to play. We had sleds and could slide down the hills. If it was a big snow, we would have to tromp down a path for the sleds to run in. If it had been cold for several days, we could skate on the pond where we fished in the summertime.

In the yard, stood three giant fir (not pine) trees. Two were in front and one was in the side yard. If a storm came up during the night, the wind would howl through those trees with a long, mournful noise. I can still hear it today.

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.