Little House in Nicholas County

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Look at this cute little house. One year when I was a girl, my dad built a house down in the low meadow on my grandparents' property. It was maybe half a block from their farm house. I say "half a block" because I live in Chicago but no one said that back then. Maybe they said it was "down aways" from the big house. Because I was a girl, I thought it was farther than it actually was, so I might have said it was a "fur piece" from one house to the other.

But imagine this, that my dad built this house on his own - wired it, put in the plumbing. Amazing! Just whipped it up. I remember it had a "breezeway," an open area between the main house and the garage where we had a swing and where breezes would actually waft through. And we seemed to always have kittens frolicking there too. Not to mention that I could go out the back, climb the fence, jump the little creek and go up the hill to visit grandma.

It's still there today.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

My Grandma's Bible

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My Grandma's faith was an inspiration to her 10 children and 25 grandchildren. My sister has one of her bibles, marked at the top of each chapter with a number of hash marks - one for each time she had read that chapter. The Bible I remember had a stub of a pencil hanging out of it by a ribbon so she could underline and keep track.

I'm sure her faith saw her through tough times, raising kids on a WV farm. I remember her up before dawn making biscuits in the kitchen, preparing breakfast for the men who would come in after milking. I remember seeing her canning enough fruit and vegetables to hopefully see her family through winter. She made lye soap and fashioned candles, sewed everyone's clothes on a treadle sewing machine. Makes me tired just to think of it!

One of the best things she did, though, was to pass her faith on to us, so during tough times we have it there to lean on and the Bible for comfort and inspiration. 

Visiting the Cousins

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I loved visiting my Uncle Dan's house near Craigsville, WV. It's funny how visits were back then. There wasn't a phone at grandma's house so we just got cleaned up and drove the few miles to their house. And they were always home. My Uncle Dan in this picture looks like all the Creasy boys did - handsome, tall, lean. He worked in the mines but at home did a lot of woodworking and at one point made gun stocks from scratch. That's Aunt Lena beside him.

Those are my cousins on the right. Ruth was know as The Marilyn Monroe of Richwood High when she was in high school because she looked so much like her. Sue (second from the right) was closer to my age so we hung out more. She taught me to Jitterbug in their living room and I always went home with one of her hand-me-down dresses. I loved putting up hay with her at grandma's and she was the model for "Cousin Patsy" in my book Mountain Girl.

The living room here is near and dear to my heart. The flowered wallpaper was just like that in my grandma's house. The blankets, pillows, curtains and heavy, dark furniture are so familiar from that time. I recognize the picture on the wall as one by that famous cowboy artist. (Do you know his name?) I'd like to step into the photo and hang out for a while.

The New Mexico Years

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I remember this trip. We're all very tired as we journeyed the three-four day trip from New Mexico back home to WV. Looks like the cat in my sister's arms is even tired. That's me in the cowboy hat on the other side of my mom.

When I was six years old, my dad on a whim applied for a college teaching job in Las Vegas, New Mexico and got it. So we spent two years in NM and it was an adventure. In my first grade class I had American Indians and Spanish speakers. Not something I had come across in West Virginia. I learned to eat chili, which I'd never tasted before (and still love). I have my father's recipe from those days. 

We lived in a row of barracks up on a mesa (WV hill with the top naturally sheared off). Every little house had a horse or two roaming free and the horses knew which house they belonged to. Ours was named Blue because he was dappled. Sometimes he'd come to our door at mealtime and bang the screen with his nose until we gave him a snack. I also had a pony named Soapy that bucked me off once and my dad almost swore.

I didn't like the dusty desert, which was a shock after WV's lush green hillsides, but I loved the wild donkeys and the horned toads that skittered across our back patio. They looked like toads but lizardlike with a tail. I'd catch them and stroke their backs.

Lots of memories but that's another post.

Snowball and Me

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Here I am riding Snowball again. AND I've got on my Davy Crockett  t-shirt. I'm on Grandma's farm and having a great childhood. It went like this. I'd get up in the morning and get dressed and do whatever I wanted for the rest of the day on 50 acres of beautiful countryside. So I'd hop on Snowball and ride him around bareback wherever we decided to go. I always let him stop and munch grass whenever he wanted.

We'd play imaginary games (well, I would). One of my favorites was Annie Oakley and he was my faithful steed. (I never did know the name of her horse.) Other times I'd be a harem girl and he'd be a camel or a circus performer and he'd be an elephant. He was my best friend those days and in my memory, it's always summer.

Ye Old Homestead

This was my grandparents' house in Nicholas County where I spent part of my childhood. It was on 50 acres and was the most beautiful spot in the world to me. Notice that the yard is fenced in to keep out livestock and wandering critters. Even the dogs were not allowed into the inner yard. The yard was filled with all kinds of flowering bushes and I especially loved the Snowball bush.

In the early morning, cows would gather around the fence and Mooooo trying to get my grandpa to come out and milk them. It was not the greatest way to wake up but maybe better than an alarm, although you couldn't shut it off. I loved the cows and the milk, cream, butter, cheese and cottage cheese they provided. I helped grandma churn milk to make butter and remember grandpa lugging around those big silver milk jugs. Happy memories!

Dashing Uncle Joe

Here's my Uncle Joe Creasy during WWII. I love the airplane with its ferocious painted teeth. A lot of the men in my family fought in wars.

A couple of my Creasy ancestors were in the Civil War and one was wounded, one killed. That's when West Virginia got its name, by the way: it seceded from Virginia, which fought for the South, and went with the North.

My dad was a naval officer during WWII, which is why I was born in Miami Beach, where he was stationed. Since the Navy was moving him around to various bases, my mom returned to WV and stayed on my grandparents farm in Nicholas County until the war was over and he came home. I was two when I saw him again. I think that was the experience of many children during that time.