Chapter 2 - Growing Up

The first thing that I can remember is being five years old and living in a small town in Pendleton County, Kentucky, called Morgan. This little town sits along the Licking River off Highway 330.

We lived in a two-room house behind the Morgan School. I remember this house well. There was a room on the right as you go into the house and one on the left. The room on the right was our Living Room (or Front Room) and a Bedroom. I remember we had two living-room chairs, one full-sized bed, and a roll-away bed in that room. My three brothers slept in the roll-away, my mother and father slept in the full-sized bed, and my sister slept in the kitchen on a roll-away. Sometimes the elderly lady who owned the house would stay all night with us, and she slept in the kitchen with my sister.

On the back left side of the house was a very small porch. On that porch we had wood piled up for warming the house in the winter and for using in the cook stove in the kitchen.

Often my mother would take out the wash tub, pour boiling water in it and then add cold water to make bath water for me and my brother, Jerry, who was my foster brother and eight months older than I was. We would both get into the tub for a bath. My brother never liked bathes; I didn't have much problem with them.

I started school in the first grade while we lived there, because we did not have Kindergarten.

I remember there were lots of snakes there, since we lived close to the river. Once a snake got under our house where a chicken would lay eggs, and the snake would eat them. This large black snake would go out to the large tree in the front yard, circle around the tree, and burst the egg inside. One day my father came home and saw the snake on the tree and kill it with an axe. The snake was still pregnant with the egg. This was quite a sight to see.

More next time ...