THE OLD HOMESTEAD

It's Mono Monday and the theme is "memories."
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This is the house my father built in 1957 and where I was raised from the 7th grade on.  Lots of "memories" of this place.  I spent an inordinate amount of time with my dad clearing trees so there was room to build the house.  We started when I was in 6th grade and spent every weekend at "the lot" cutting down trees with a 2-man crosscut saw and then splitting the logs into firewood and digging stumps out of the ground.
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I hadn't yet started working at the farm but had I been I'm pretty sure I could have borrowed the Allis WD tractor which would have been a boon for pulling stumps out of the ground.  From this place it was a 1 minute walk to the fields surrounding the forest where I could hunt rabbit, pheasant and squirrel. It was one mile (1.6km) walk to the bus stop for school and two miles (3.2km) to the farm where I worked.  Started milking at 05:00, then breakfast and off to school.  Wrestling practice after school and then back for afternoon milking.  Then home and homework.  Repeat the next day, etc.
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My nearest neighbor was a block away and that's just the way I liked it.  I hate the city.  It's nice to visit once in a while but I'm just not home there.  I left for college in 1962 and returned home during the summers to work and earn money for school.  I graduated in 1966 and then got my first teaching job 100 miles (160km) from here and I haven't been "home" since except to visit.
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My sister got married to a Navy man and moved to Hawaii and then to Virginia Beach...she's a retired ICU nurse.  My baby brother moved south to the Kenosha area where he ran a local power plant...electrical generation unit.  I used to change his diapers in this house.
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I can't tell you how many dandelions my dad had me pick out of the lawn...millions, I suspect over the years.  I tried to tell him that unless I got the entire taproot they'd just keep coming back.  He knew that, I found out later, but it was his way of keeping me busy and out of trouble.  In the winter we'd build an ice rink on the front lawn so we could ice skate...it's where I taught my little brother to skate.  I'd often opt to walk down the block to the local creek where my friends and I would play ice hockey.  We used tree branches for hockey sticks and old beer cans for pucks.  We'd put water in the crushed cans and allow it to freeze...it added a bit more mass to the puck.  It hurt when you got a beer can in the face.
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So many memories of this place.  Mom and dad are gone now and my siblings have all moved away......but the memories remain.
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BEST IN LARGE.