In 1950 we lived at the corner of Barbour Street and S. Broadway Street. He was nine years old and in third grade. The school was at the end of the street, a few blocks next to the train tracks. Across the tracks were the hairdresser, the gas station, and the hill to the center of town with a single traffic light. Providence, Kentucky was a great place to grow up. My father’s parents lived a short distance in the other direction on Leeper Lane, which ran along the side of an abandoned railroad track. My mother’s father and sister lived just two miles out of town to the west. I could bike or walk to visit my grandparents on the ether side anytime I wanted. In fact, he was free to explore the entire city if he wanted.
Very often on Saturdays I would walk past the school and follow the driveway that ran along the tracks to the Ice House and the exit road. 293 to Clark Farm. The old farmhouse was on a hill overlooking the rolling farmland of western Kentucky. Grandpa Clark loved the house because of the breeze that always blew through the large front porch where he kept his favorite chair. My Uncle Paul and Aunt Pauline lived with Grandpa and looked after him. Uncle Paul had a bird dog named Toby and he was very well trained. Whenever anyone approached Toby’s house, he would run out to greet them and stick their leg out. It would keep sticking the paw out until you shook it and then it would leave you alone.
Toby was my best friend, we ran around the fields and played all day. Aunt Pauline had told me that Toby was not allowed into the house, but one day she was determined to bring Toby inside. I struggled with him and managed to carry him through the back door and when I released him, he slammed into the screen to get out. He had been well trained and he knew he was not allowed into the house.
Aunt Pauline loved to make play out of work and she always had a project we could work on. I was selling Stanley products all over the county and we unpacked the boxes and stored the shelves in the little house that was near the road in front of the main house. They always had a hammock or two in the yard to play with and a barn to climb on. My Uncle Paul let me drive the tractor and help him build a new barn.
They loved to swim and every year they found a new place for a pond and built a dock to swim in each new pond. I can remember at least four ponds where we swam and hunted frogs and each one had a dock. I loved watching Aunt Pauline cook the frog legs and when I put salt in the pan they would pop. Aunt Pauline was the oldest girl in the family of four girls and one boy, and her mother died at a young age, so she raised the youngest girls. They had horses, a couple of cows, goats, and chickens. Cherry trees lined one side of the house and the large lawn had two tapioca trees with lots of caterpillars on the leaves large for fishing. I loved climbing cherry trees and eating cherries with the birds. On the other side of the house was a large garden that always provided more fun work. Grandpa Clark taught me to play crazy eight and we played for hours. He would sit on his porch and smoke his pipe, tossing the spent matches by the side. We collected matches and built forts on the ground with them. Every year during the holidays, the families came back to Providence to visit us and we had a lot of fun with all the cousins.
I would go out for long walks with Grandpa Clark in the woods and he would show me how to make all kinds of things with the branches and the bark. You could take a green stick the size of your thumb and whistle by cutting through the bark to make it slide off. Next, cut a flat on the stick followed by a notch. Then you would slide the bark back on the stick and you had a big hiss. He also taught me how to make a whip out of strips of plaid bark or tie ropes used for bailing hay. If you tied a strip of leather on the end, you could make the whip pop with a loud crack.
When Toby died a few years later, it wasn’t the same, visiting the farm and not having that bird dog come out to shake your hand.
