A little touch in my Uncle's beautiful country garden
“Ironically, rural America has become viewed by a growing number of Americans as having a higher quality of life not because of what it has, but rather because of what it does not have!” ~Don A. Dillman
Boy can I attest to that quote. When I was a teenager traversing one coast to the other to spend my summers it was always a bit of a culture shock for me when I would arrive to The Farm. My grandparents still had a ‘party line’ phone well into the late 70s! A TV that with rabbit ears got three fuzzy stations. A bumpy, rutty, dirt road prevented much in the way of riding a bicycle. So walking and riding horses was our only mode of transportation as kids.
We are a mile off the hard road in any direction. I remember always laughing when my grandmother would hear a car coming up or down the road past the house looking out the window to see who it was. If she didn’t recognize the car it became a short topic and she would say in jest, “WHO is using our road!” There was and still isn’t, garbage pick up, city water or sewage. Everything is pretty much as it was when I was there only now you can get satellite TV and have internet. Cellphone service consists of standing in a sweet spot and not moving while talking.
It has a high elevation and so when there is flooding in the valley you would think we are safe. We are in some sense, but the water table rises underground and the dirt floor basement and spring house with the water pump will often get flooded causing problems with the oil furnace and water pump. Otis put in an old fashioned, and I mean ‘old fashioned’ septic system and it still works better than all the new fangled ones now required by the state in a new house construction. He used to shake his head at the stupidity of the new systems and just couldn’t understand the ‘thinking’ behind such nonsense.
Sometime in the 1940s Otis and Ruth bought an abandoned property that comprised of three farms. It totaled a little over 200 acres nestled in Susquehanna County PA, north of Scranton and south of Binghamton, NY. It had three barns and a house. No electricity, running water or indoor plumbing. It was quite a commitment and undertaking that took great courage. He paid $2200 dollars give or take and decided to become a dairy farmer. Ruth who was college educated, became a social worker.
We figure the house is close to 200 years old. Originally it had a wrap around porch on the side facing the road and the front view as you see here. You can see in the wood floorboards where the old porch was as it was expanded to enlarge the house by taking over the porch. When I was a child I saw a picture of it in its original form with all the folks standing in choreographed positions with big hats, feet up on the porch and hands on hips, rifles in hand. There are many great stories I heard growing up of my grandparent’s escapades moving in and fixing up the place. But by the time I arrived on the scene as a youngster it was way modern in comparison.
And yet, when I would arrive as a young teen, it took me about 2 weeks to get out of my sulky mood and griping comments about how there was nothing to do! Well, there was a lot to do, it was just different and quite frankly more productive. I learned to sew, knit, crochet, drive a tractor, milk cows, help Otis in the middle of the night deliver calves up in the woods with a flashlight. I learned to clean the barn, stack hay bales, mix up milk formula to feed the calves. I learned that baler twine is right up there with duct tape as an essential tool in life as it can do most anything!
View of the 'big hay field' across the road that is now part of my Aunt's piece of the pie
I observed the hard work of living in the country. I noticed that a beautiful house would completely collapse within a year after the resident died if left unoccupied. I was fascinated by that actually. How could that be? I came to believe that if there wasn’t a sentient spirit, living and occupying the space then nature just took it back.
When I would return to California at the end of the summer, my mother would have to deal with my sulky mood for two weeks adjusting to there is nothing to do! I hated all the people, the noise, the artificial activity of trying to being productive. Cleaning my room, vacuuming, putting dishes away was namby pamby compared to getting the hay in, feeding the livestock, WASHING dishes, figuring out why yet another piece of farm equipment stopped working.
Riding our horses to the lake or to friends and sometimes even to town! Movies for 25 cents where you didn’t care what was on, you were just happy to be at the theatre with popcorn and friends. I lived in two vastly different worlds.
Looking down at the farm from the top of the big hay field. We inherited the house and surrounding buildings. About 35 acres.
I saw abject poverty in America for the first time, up close and personal, over the years there. When I was 16 and drove my car across the country for the summer I volunteered for the Public Health organization, thanks to my Aunt who was a nurse for them, and drove elderly and impoverished patients to their doctor appointments. While I got head lice for my trouble, I met the most amazing people that I truly enjoyed chatting with back and forth from their homes to the doctor.
One summer when we could drive we would travel to all the carnivals in the area every weekend. My Aunt came to have a heart to heart with all of us about our “Carnival Hopping”. She was gravely concerned. We had a hard time keeping a straight face then and it’s even funnier now! Carnival Hopping! I remember my sister, a beautiful towheaded blond, was being pursued by an ‘older’ boy at one of the carnivals, a local, and he decided to impress her with his talents for swallowing live gold fish. I felt something before I looked her way and she was staring at me with huge eyes and the sheer terror on her face with a SAVE ME plea on her face that was priceless.
Lynn and her son Drew live there now. We are thrilled that there is a “BEING” living in the house so it doesn’t get taken back to nature. The hardest part for Lynn living there was to not try to make it what it was. It took her a while and a lot of counseling from big sister to understand that, while The Farm is a magical place and a beautiful spot, what made it magical, what made it special, was our grandparents. It would do her no good to try to recreate what they created, but instead, to make her own, to let Drew pursue his dream to raise beef cattle. She has finally gotten it and they are working toward that goal. In the meantime, its a hard life, something breaks everyday, heating is a killer up there in winter and Drew works full time trying to keep things afloat.
The area up there is changing with the Natural Gas Drilling Boom. We are sitting on the largest natural gas shale in the world currently, from southern NY to Virginia. We have a gas/oil lease that we signed in ’08. It afforded us the opportunity to bring the house up from 110 to 220 electrical, new siding, insulation, windows, doors, bathroom, etc. We wait patiently for ‘the drillers’ to come. We are told 100 trucks of heavy equipment will descend on the property, with 8 weeks of drilling day and night and then they will pack up and leave. When the tower is taken down we will be left with a 3′ pvc pipe and a meter, with a small fencing around it so the livestock can still meander in the field.
I tease Lynn and call her “Ellie Mae” from the Beverly Hillbillies TV Show, The Clampetts. We just pray that our water stays in tact during the fracking process which continues to be controversial. We have done our due diligence and await their arrival. We are doing our part to tap into the vast resources of this country to keep it all ticking, while remaining hopeful that the technology and mindset of the consumer moves in a direction of conservation and alternative life styles.
While I missed my “internet connection” and other amenities that I am used to, just like when I was a kid, I have come to appreciate so much all that IS NOT there. I have learned to go and simply BE. Its still an amazing and special place for me. Dave and I married there with 150 friends and neighbors. It was and is still a magical and special slice of heaven on earth.
