The Thompson Farm

I wish I knew how to draw a map and post it here so you could see how the farm was laid out. I will do my best to describe it so you can imagine it. As I said earlier, the road from town ran south along the west side of the farm. At what used to be the center of the west side was the driveway, marked by the one-room schoolhouse. As you drove east toward the house, you could appraise the crop in Grampa's field on the north side of the drive. You could also check out the crop in the Petersons' field on the south side of the drive. (After the sale of half the farm to them, whenever that was. Before my mother was born, anyway.) When you had gone almost half a mile, the drive forked southeast to the Petersons' and northeast to the Thompsons'. This fork was one of the most beautiful spots on the farm. There were tall elm trees whose branches met over the drive so it was like going through a green leafy tunnel in the summer. On the north side now there was the windbreak of young trees that had been planted to shelter the house, garage, little pasture and barn from the worst of the wind. On the south side was the paddock which used to hold the house where my mother lived when she was little. The only remnant of that house was the lilac bushes in the southwest corner. Grampa would put sheep into that paddock when they needed to be closely observed for some reason like a contagious illness in the neighborhood. Then it was the flower gardens and the house on the south. The whole great big yard was fenced to keep out stray livestock and, especially, chickens. Gramma became very upset if animals got into her gardens, either the flowers or the vegetables! There was no barbed wire on the farm because it damages sheep's wool, so Grampa used a woven wire fence with four-inch squares. There was a gate and sidewalk right where the circular drive came closest to the house. Then the drive continued around past the pump house, tractor shed, machine shed, granary, chicken coop, water tank, barn and garage with the gas barrels. By the time you got to the garage, you were facing west and just across the drive from the house. Going straight up the walk brought you to the back door of the house, the one everyone always used except for special occasions like weddings, funerals and golden anniversaries. Then you took a branch of the walk around the north side of the house to the front door on the open porch on the west side. The back door opened into an enclosed porch where everyone hung their coats and removed their boots. Over many years the dogs had dug a "cave" under the porch beside the concrete steps where they spent a lot of their "off-duty" hours, but in really frigid weather they came into the porch. It was not heated, but was warmer than outdoors, even their cave. King, the dog Grampa had the whole time I was growing up, would not come into the kitchen, even when enticed with treats. Gramma kept a rag rug on the floor between the door into the porch and the door to the kitchen. King would wait there for Grampa to go out again. The each room downstairs was about fifteen feet square. The door from the porch was in the middle of the east wall of the kitchen and the pantry door was just south of it, the swinging door to the dining room in the middle of the north wall and the door to the stairs in the southwest corner, opening to the west. So the dining room was north of the kitchen and it was open to the parlor to the west. The parlor had a big open doorway on the south wall to a rarely used room in the southwest corner of the house. That was where the piano was and also shelves with books and games and a toy chest holding toys that my mother and her brothers had used. The front door to the house opened into this room. The room was closed off from the parlor with a heavy curtain most of the time. In the kitchen the sink was in the southeast corner with the table beside it in the middle of the south wall under the window. (Remember the big spider plant hanging in front of that window? It tickled the necks of the grandchildren who sat on that side of the table!) There was also a small window to the east in the pantry. It had shelves all along the sides to the north and south. The cookie jar was kept in the southeast corner and its lid tended to rattle, a noise Gramma could hear from the north forty, it seemed! The refrigerator was on the west wall beside the door to the stairs and the wood stove was just east of the door to the dining room on the north wall. My mother mentioned the telephone on the wall beside the kitchen door and it was in the corner between the stove and the door. When I was little, they had a party line and their ring was "two long." For those of you too young to know about this, several houses shared a telephone line. Each house had its own ring, for instance the two long rings of the bell at my grandparents' house. You could pick up when the phone rang for someone else's house, but that was rude and nosy. The dining room had windows on the east and on the north with the doorway into the front room on the west. Beside this doorway to the south was an old bookcase full of farmers' reference books. I was fascinated by the veterinary science books and on rainy days would spend hours lying on the floor studying the diagrams and articles. Horse ailments have some pretty strange names. There are strangles, thrush, fistulous withers, lockjaw, parrot mouth, stringhalt, etc. When you went into the front room Gramma's rust-colored rocker was on your right in the northeast corner. Then a floorlamp and the matching couch along the north wall under the window. There were two windows on the west wall with a big rack full of violet plants in front of the northern one. The coffee table in front of the couch held magazines and a candy dish, always full. My adult relatives were always puzzled to see my interest in the magazines, both Gramma's gardening ones and Grampa's "Farm Journals." Grampa's chair was in the southeast corner sort of behind a big oil heating stove. He was a scrawny type and got cold easily, while Gramma was plump as a good cook should be. They both had a good view of the television set in the southwest corner, but they didn't watch much besides the news and Lawrence Welk.