The Old Homestead

Ah, Main Street.  Not many of you around anymore.  The Mom & Pop shops, small movie theater.  It seems to have gotten smaller but still hanging in there.

This is where I grew up, and where my Dad still lives.  We lived a few miles out of town (actually, in between 2 small towns).  Easy access by bike whenever I needed to go anywhere.  As one of my daughters  said, “It seems much smaller now.”  Guess that happens when you get older, eh?

The fields that surround the house used to be farmland when I was growing up, but new neighbors have turned it into pasture for their horses.

I had always wanted a horse when I was growing up, but my Dad said that we didn’t have enough room on our property.  Well, Dad, all you had to do was buy the land around our house and we would have had the room!

Here we have the old chicken coop in the back yard.  When I was young, this building served as a playhouse,  haunted house at Halloween, and home to the rabbits I used to raise, among other things.  The one thing that it never held was chickens (must have been something that the previous owners had before my folks bought it in the ’60s).

I love seeing the girl’s faces light up when they see this old building.

I think that my daughters hold the fondest memories of this building because of their Grandmother.

My Mom always had a great imagination, and she liked to share that with the girls.

Flashback to my childhood:  Every year in early Spring, The Wizard of Oz would be shown on TV , and this was a movie that we never missed (this was back-in-the-day before cable TV and there were only a  handful of channels that we got – yes, I am that old).

Seeing as how Mom loved that movie and with her lovely sense of humor, this was dubbed “Witchy Poo’s House”.

Come to think of it, that was a name on H.R. Pufnstuf too…  but she didn’t watch that… I did.  Hmmmmm.  Think I’ll stay with The Wiz on this one.

So when the girls were young, they would always visit Witchy Poo’s House and Mom would have some grand adventure with them.  She was a good storyteller.

We tried to get inside, but the door was blocked with bags of mulch and such.

Even though they are adults now, they just can’t help themselves when it comes to climbing things.

But doing it in dress shoes probably isn’t the smartest.  Good thing that sisters always help each other out in situations like this.

We discovered this old pitchfork head laying up against a tree.

So, along with a few “discarded” tomato cages, it will find a new home with Nichole.  She seemed to think that she could put them to good use.

Don’t worry Nichole, I won’t tell Grandpa.