FINALLY: WE MOVE

Grand Pa Easley was bedfast for five years. Aunt Pearl was his youngest daughter. She and her husband, Uncle Everett Davis, agreed to take care of him and manage his farm. By December 1936, Mother and Daddy were married. A few weeks before that, Grand Ma Easley had died. I don’t know how long they were married when they arranged with Grand Pa and / or his estate to buy his farm. Sometime in 1940 Uncle Everett and Aunt Pearl requested to be relieved of their assignment. He wanted to move to the State of Washington to take a job in defence work. So it seems that Mother and Daddy agreed to move in ahead of whatever the original plan had been. They would assume the responsiblity of Grand Pa’s needs. And since they may have already been making payments on the farm, everything should move along smoothly.

Grand Pa died Christmas Eve, 1940. (The next day I was 3 years old.) He had one brother, Uncle Burnett Easley, a Baptist Preacher, in Texas, who was two years younger. Uncle Burnett died two days later, December 26, 1940. That resolved any problems related to Grand Pa's care and Uncle Everett and Aunt Pearl's move. I always thought it relaxed the need of our imminent move. I remember the move. I don't remember the when. It might have been early in January or as late as March 1941.

We had a 1937 pickup. We didn't have much. I think someone had already moved some of the stuff. There were things in the pickup bed. The part I remember most, Mother had me climb onto the passenger side of the seat. She sat Donnie between my legs. I held around her middle while Mother drove us to our new home.

Wow! What a big wonderful place. I think of the house as having two fronts. The front on the west faced the road. That part was a "two-roomer," north to south. Centered behind those two was a room about as wide as those in front, but probably half again as long. It's front faced south. On the north side of that room was a lean-to about 8' wide and the same length as the room. The shape of the whole was a "T" with the lean-to filling out the width filling out on the north so that was all one straight wall, front to back. A porch ran the ful length of the front, turned and ran around the "T" part of the south and continued along to the back wall. A cistern had been dug at the back southeast corner of the house. Then just beyond the cistern another "two-roomer" had been built in the same architecture as the rest. All exterior walls were board and batten, except the north wall of the lean-to had a type of clap board. The porch ran right on past the cistern and along the front (south) of those two rooms. So there were six large rooms with a lean-to.

The barn was dpwn the hill straight south. Then behind the two rooms that were separated from the main house, there was a square stone building, a small window in the back and one door in the front. It had no roof. But had an octaginal hall about 6 to 8 feet wide with a roof over the whole.

An old man had staked a claim on the property in 1895. Grand Pa and / or family bought it from him. When they moved there in 1900, there was a stone building about 10' by 15'. It was a good 100' east of the stone house behind the cistern and big house. That stone house to the east was roofed with a very sharp peak over the stone walls, then the pitch became much less steep and continued out for at least another 6' or 8' on the sides and the ful style extended out to the south also 6' or 8'. Those other buildings were not there and the stone house with octaginal walls was not there in that form. It has been a simple half dugout just to the east of it's present location.

I think the old owner had built and been living in the dugout. The family: Grand Ma and Grand Pa with 6 sons and 3 daughters, and at least one daughter-in-law, most of them approaching adulthood, had to make-do with those two stone rooms, the wide roofs and what ever covered wagons they had.

To Be Continued.