This photo is where the granite foundation stone lay, hidden in the middle of my mother’s flower garden. You can see part of it; moss covered on one end. This was where I lay reading books as a child, and into by early teens. The books were adult books fond in the vast overhead chamber of the house, slightly musty. Books like Ulysses, books about Will Rogers, Roosevelt, poetry books, Weathering Heights. I forget other titles. Not sure what I understood of Ulysses at age twelve, but I read it all! And I like ready about Teddy Roosevelt and Will Rogers! One of the poetry books had a poem about friendship, and I thought at the time it was a good gage to live by. To be “A good friend” by Atmos.

Where the moss did not grow, a small pillow would be placed under my head. Think shirts covered by torso so to keep out the dam cold of the great stone. These slim trees are purple lilacs, behind me and to my left there remains a very large group of them even now. Half of them purple but the ones near the stone are white. The mass of lilacs is kidney shaped and fills that part of our lawn.

On my right as I laid on the foundation stone there still remains two very ancient Yellow Transparent trees. These trees are being care for by my son Stephen who was an apple farmer. I recall that they were one hundred years old when I was a kid, well, its seventy-one years later! They still bear fruit in abundance.

Further past these and to the if facing the apple trees, to the left facing of them an old macintosh stood by itself, past that cultivated black berries and the old pine I also sat in to read or to just be by myself, always within distance of the house! I watched its windows, like black eyes the windows stared back at me. Connecting the apple trees together there was my mother’s clotheslines.

One clothesline came from the porch to the Golden Transparent apple tree on the left tree. Under this, near the porch there was yet one more large foundation stone, and this was my brother “Skippy (Charles) and my boat, or our go-to place to simply sit. A Bartlett Pear tree stood a few feet away from this. It would bear a few pears but needed another tree to bear more.

I had found pathways into the middle of those lilacs and when my father was not home, I would go in and sit there too, play with dolls, hidden I observed the cars go by or the things my mother or Uncle George did coming and going from the big old two-family house. The clapboards of the house were stained by age into deep grey, tans, and browns.

I was never sure what Dad thought I would do in the lilac bushes, but Mom realized the magic and she could keep an eye out for me if I was there from the kitchen. She knew I would be in there or my reading rock for a bit of time. The big pine had rules like do not go too far up! The pine tree was more of a problem as you had to avoid getting stick sap on you. But it had a long low branch that you could sit and make it move up and down.

This was a world where apples when ready were free lunch or you could use them as pretend food for your dolls, right along with lilac leaves, plantation plants, clover blossoms, dirt from the dooryard to make mud patties. Old bowls and silverware helped one to dig and mix things up. The only problem with using apples was the bees who thought you had chopped apples just for them!

When playing house, I had dolls or a cat who did not mind me dressing him up. Looking back I realize how laid back this cat was! He was a long-haired coon cat. I would dress him like my mother and aunts dressed the babies, a baby t-shirt, then a dress, a bonnet and sweater. I had my own baby carriage, and it had a pillow, sheet, and blankets. Perfectly made up, the cat all dressed I would place him in the carriage where he would purr loudly, and sleep most contently! Until, Dad came home. Dad thought the cat must be hot! Mom reasoned he must not mind at all! And she laughed. He purred loudly as she patted his head. Dad gives into this. Shaking his head at the willingness of the cat. The thing was he showed up on cue whenever he saw me outside.

I have thought a times, that what I recalled most about growing up was work! There was a lot of work to living as we did. Carrying wood, water, and the experience of an outhouse out back, no inside plumbing, there for a wash bowl and chamber pots. In high school that change a bathroom happened!

There are things you learn to love about a woodpile, the smell is wonderful! The buck saw and horse stationed in the middle of things. A stump for splitting kindling. This made a seat at times so I could listen to my father, uncle or grandfather talk about his childhood. If not asked you were compelled to stack the firewood. Sometimes we would load up my brothers “red wagon” for the house. There were two stoves, the kitchen stove and the heater stove that had wood boxes to fill.

Bees liked the sawdust, and I cautiously watched them. Noting the kind of bees that came. Was it a wasp instead or one of my father’s honeybees? Their hives were straight out back from the house; three of them in-between golden delicious apple trees. There was always applesauce with all the apple trees!

Sometimes there would be slab wood to cut and make kindling out of. We would make use of narrow board and make a teeter totter out of it using a fat tree stump turned on its side.

Memories become fonder the older you get. It had felt like a lot of work back then, but it had been how my folks had grown up. This gave insight into their lives and my own. I was interment with the flowers and insects that came into that world as I lay on that foundation stone, as I spied deeper into the wood pile and sawdust, I studied the way the wood grain and found faces or objects where the knot holes were. I saw how bark adhered itself to the wood. I noticed dew on the lawn, and when it rained and the lilacs dripped from their glossy leaves. I discover the world under the grass and plants on the lawn. I loved the milk weed with its pink and white bell-shaped flowers. Other favorites were purple bell-shaped flowers and Queens Annes Lace!

What do you remember of your own explorations. Those times when you were innocently exploring what was before you, uninterrupted by anyone else!

Best Wishes! May love and laughter find you! Pejj Nunes