Dee and John on Uncle Alvie's Farm Gate

John and me on the gate leading into the farmyard. This photo was taken on the farm of Uncle Alvie (Grandpa Tom's brother), and Aunt Lydia. I remember stepping up onto the gate to have this photo taken. I remember the pigsty, the smokehouse, climbing up into the hayloft in the barn, the cows out in the pasture, tiny chicks in an incubator, going to get eggs for breakfast out of the henhouse, and the little orchard with apples. Once, when I was about eight, Uncle Alvie let me drive his old tractor around the farmyard. I also had a pet chicken that year. One day I followed a chicken around the yard, finally coaxing it to sit on my lap. We sat on the front porch and watched as an occasional car would come up the dirt lane, raising clouds of dust in the air.

I loved Uncle Alvie and Aunt Lydia. Uncle Alvie was a "character" - much like Uncle Russel. He was a funny old guy. And (like Aunt Helen's reactions to Uncle Russel), I can remember Aunt Lydia, shaking her head, tsk-tsking, and saying "oh Alvie...." in response to something funny he had done or said. When I was just a little tot I loved being with my friend Carol Ann Gladson. She and I would laugh at almost anything - we could put each other in stitches by just looking at each other, and I think we might have been just a little annoying to grownups who would often ask us, what was so funny? We liked teasing (and being teased by) Uncle Alvie. I remember one day when Aunt Lydia had killed and cleaned a chicken for dinner, Carol Ann and I begged her for the claws. Uncle Alvie was laying barefoot and in his bib overalls, taking a nap on the parlor floor, and Carol Ann and I snuck in and tickled his feet with the chicken claws until we got some reaction, something which we, of course, thought was hilarious.

The cinderblock farmhouse and property sat deteriorated for many years. Once I went back to see it and I took pictures of it, abandoned and surrounded by weeds in all directions. But on a later visit Becky told me it had been turned into some type of clubhouse for hunters so we drove over to see it and one of the guys let us in to walk around the place. We stood in the front room, the very room where I had tickled Uncle Alvie's feet so many years ago, and the room seemed so very small. But I was very happy to see the old place put to good use again. (It is on the other side of, and up the road, from where Russ and Helen lived.)