In 1950 we lived on the corner of Barbour Street and S. Broadway Street. I was nine years old and in third grade. The school was at the end of the street, a few blocks from the train tracks. Across the tracks were the barber shop, 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 railway platform. My mother’s father and his sister lived just two miles west of town. I could ride my 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 walked past the school and down the driveway that ran along the tracks to the Ice House and the highway exit. 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 he always blew on the big front porch where he had his favorite chair. My Uncle Paul and Aunt Pauline lived with Grandpa and took care of him. Uncle Paul had a Bird Dog named Toby and he was very well trained. Every time someone came to the house, Toby ran out to greet them and stuck out his paw. He would continue to stick his paw out until you shook it and then he 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 in the house, but one day she was determined to take Toby inside. I wrestled with it and finally managed to get it out the back door and when I released it it crashed through the screen to get out. He had been well trained and knew that he was not allowed in the house.

Aunt Pauline loves to turn work into play and always had a project we could work on. She sold Stanley products all over the county and we unpacked the boxes and stocked the shelves in the little house that was just across the street from the main house. They always had a hammock or two in the yard to play in and a barn to climb into. My Uncle Paul let me drive the tractor and help him build a new barn.

They loved to swim and each year they would find a new spot for a pond and build a dock to swim in each new pond. I can remember at least four ponds that we swam in and hunted frogs in and each had a dock. I loved watching Aunt Pauline cook the frog legs and when she salted them in the pan they jumped. Aunt Pauline was the oldest child in a family of four girls and one boy, and her mother died at a young age, so she raised the younger 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 many caterpillars on the large leaves to fish. I loved climbing cherry trees and eating the cherries with the birds. On the other side of the house was a large garden which always provided more fun work. Grandpa Clark taught me how to play crazy eights and we played for hours. He would sit on his porch and smoke his pipe, throwing spent matches overboard. We would collect the matches and build forts on the ground with them. Every year during the holidays families would come back to Providence to visit us and we would have a great time with all of her cousins.

I would go 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 bark. You could take a green stick the size of your thumb and make a whistle by cutting the bark so it would slide. Then cut a flat on the stick followed by a notch. Then you slide the bark back onto the stick and you have a great hiss. He also showed me how to weave strips of bark, or binding ropes used to bale hay, into a whip. If you tie a leather strap to the end, you could make the whip explode with a loud crack.

When Toby died a few years later, it just wasn’t the same, visiting the farm and not having that bird dog come over and shake your hand.