Family Tree

Almost all family trees have their unusually branches…..those members that are just a little different……some call them black sheep of the family……..some call them the skeletons ………..and some are just called eccentric. I would like to tell you about three of my family tree members that are just a little different from the norm.

They are my grandmother’s three brothers……..or my three great uncles……their names were Ray, John, and Paul. Now all three passed away when I was a little girl about the age of eight…..so this is being told from an eight-year-old’s point of view.

All three uncles never married and lived together on the old homestead, as my grandmother use to call their farm. Several times every year we went to see the Uncles. First thing that I can remember are the steps leading up the porch. They were very old rickety wooden steps. Leaning to the right. The third step from the top had a small hole in it…..just big enough for a small foot to fit through. Once on the porch (which also leans to the right) in the far right corner were two golden eyes belong to an old yeller dog.. Looking back on it now, I can see that they were the eyes of a very sick old dog not the eye of a wild animal waiting to devour little children as my dad always told us they were..

Like so many older farm houses when you enter the door you enter into the kitchen. Hanging on the wall immediately to the right of the door was an old time telephone. The type that you had to crank and the receiver was on a long cord but the mouthpiece was stationary on the phone on the wall. I don’t remember every seeing anyone use it but I also don’t remember seeing any other phones in the house.

The kitchen looked like it could have been use on Little House on the Prairie. At the sink was a hand pumped faucet with a glass of water to prime it. And the stove was an old wood burning stove. One of the uncles kept getting up to stoke it. There were never enough chairs for all people to sit down, so the kids had to stand. They had no television or radio. Playing euchre was their only form of entertainment. And of course only the adults would get to play. So now the kids are left to stand with nothing to do. If I haven’t mention it before there were no toys to play with either. I am not sure that my great-uncles even knew that the children existed.

Once in a while, if we were there for a long time, my mom would tell us we could go in the next room and sit if we were getting tired of standing. There was never any light in that room and I am not even sure what the room was supposed to be. In one corner was a rope bed. Yes an old fashion rope bed. Made of a frame with rope stretched across it , both vertically and horizontally with a mattress filled with corn husk on top of the ropes, None of us every wanted to sit on that. Our only other choice was a love seat covered with a horse hide. I being a horse lover found this also a place I did not want to sit on. So I still had no place to sit.

That is all that I can really remember about my great uncles, except for the great love that they had for each other. As they each passed away the others were left to grieve. I don’t remember in what order that they died or how each of them died, but I do remember that one of them died after falling out of the hay loft in the barn after drinking a gallon of moonshine.

Although it would seem that going to the uncles for a visit was never a good time, I liked to good……….it was always fun to listen to the stories that they took about the farm……..and there was always a feeling of being welcomed.