On the Moraine, Part XX

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

The fall of 1962 still held some more surprises besides the Cuban Missile Crisis and our family preparing to permanently move to Highland County.

Mother became ill. It turned out she had overactive thyroid. She was hospitalized for a couple of days for radioactive iodine treatment. I am guessing today that is an outpatient procedure. She recovered and never had another problem with that to my knowledge.

Then Christmas came. My brother and I had been used to getting a hideously overabundance of gifts at Christmas. It didn’t happen. That was the start of lean Christmases; in fact, lean everything in the future.  

Being young adults in the Depression, my parents did not like to borrow money and, going forward, this attitude would negatively affect our ability to farm effectively. I’ll have more thought on this before I wind up this series.

So, Christmas was a bust, at least in the eyes of this 12-year-old.

We planned on moving at the end of the first semester of school in Troy, which was about the middle of January.  

On the appointed Friday, John and I went to school and Dad rented a two-axle U-Haul trailer to pull behind the 1956 Chevy. When I got home, most of the appliances were in the trailer (except our automatic washer and dryer, which we left). 

The trailer was almost full. Neighbors had come over that day and helped Mother and Dad load up.

It was strange to walk through the only permanent home I remembered and seeing it nearly empty. 

We got Buttons out of his pen for the last time and headed to Highland County about 6 p.m. It was already dark.

I don’t think U-Haul will let you rent a trailer that big to pull behind a normal sedan these days. It was quite a load.  

The lane at the Beaver Farm is about 1/3 of a mile long and about halfway, it curves to the left, crosses a tiny creek the abruptly goes up a fairly steep, but not too long of a hill. The first try, the old Chevy wouldn’t pull the hill. Dad back down, carefully making sure he did not slide off into the creek and gave it another go. It didn’t make it again.  

I suggested we go to the barn, get the John Deere and pull it up the hill. Ignored.

Finally, with enough careful backing and getting up speed, we made it. I am sure we took about 10,000 miles off the life of the Chevy’s clutch. It was 10 p.m., but we were at the Beaver Farm.

On Saturday, Dad and I took the U-Haul trailer back to Troy, picked up our own trailer at the house in Troy, loaded it with shop tools, and headed to our new home.  

I cried when we left Troy that afternoon.

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.