This
photo shows the house still with the old Victorian
porch, (on the
right)
and the next
shows the replacement new porch.
(His comments when I asked
the identities of the people)
OK as I
remember this was a visit to Baxter by the Kahle's from
St Louis. In the back row : (lady ?), Mother's
sister
Alice Hermann Kahle, her husband Milton G. Kahle. in
front: my sisters Marcia, Stephanie, myself, and cousin
Bill Kahle
The car and
trailer were ours; the Gilkey trailer was I think the
first of the fold-out tent-camping trailers.
Dad drove to the Indiana plant to buy it. He was quite
pleased to be able to cruise at 70 with it.
CHILDHOOD HOME
The home in which I grew up was bought by my paternal
grandfather just before WW-1
and was passed to us at his death a few months before I was
born in 1923. It was of the
Southern Colonial design on 20 acres, of which six or seven
were in grounds and gardens.
The land had been a 'Land Grant' by the then President U.S.
Grant and Dad had an original Plat
map showing all the dimensions in Chains and Links. There
was a pretty little river going
through, with a dam, which provided irrigation water.
Reputedly, this house was put together in Illinois in the
1870's, disassembled and wagon-hauled to
Kansas to be rebuilt there. Anyway, it was largely of white
pine and in the attic one could see the
number codes on the timbers and boards (some boards were 36
inches wide). The house had six
bedrooms upstairs and one bath, but two bedrooms had
lavs as well. Downstairs there was a stair
hall, an entry hall, a very long living room, a den, a
dining room with French doors, a china pantry, a
butler's pantry, a big kitchen, a back hall used for
ironing, and a big storeroom used for kitchen
supplies, canned goods and all. Behind the house was the
Servant's cottage, part of which was used as
a laundry, with gas stoves for heating the big washtubs. The
main house had six operating fireplaces,
three down and three up in the bedrooms. When I was small,
we had a coal-fired furnace in the
basement, initially hand-fired and later a 'stoker'
that was always breaking. The radiators whistled.
Why father put up with this for so many years before
converting to a gas - hot air system I don't
know. The house was about 400 feet back
from the road (US Highway 66) and had a long gravel
drive up to it, continuing around in a circle
past the farm buildings, the barn, and the servant's
cottage. This whole area was in lawns, with big old elms and
black walnut trees. Across the drive in
front of the house mother had developed a large formal
flower garden with wandering paths and
surrounded by Lilacs. It had a fish pond with a little
bronze fountain where one could sit and listen
to the birds. Adjacent to this was the vegetable
garden where we grew most all our needs of
asparagus, lettuce, cabbage, peas, beans, sweet corn, cukes,
radishes, carrots, and strawberries.
We raised two crops a year and mother canned most of
it. We had chickens, Guineas, and ducks, and
you haven't lived if you haven't mucked out a chicken
house. Father tried to raise pheasants
to release them for game, but they always disappeared.
When I was small we had two riding horses and a Shetland
pony. We also had a Jersey milk cow
named Buttercup for a while. Father finally decided that we
hadn't the manpower for all this
and made a deal with the Douthitt's dairy to take Buttercup
and the horses in return for a
substantial period of free milk (delivered too).