The Woods Is Full Of ‘Em: Back to Red's memoirs

[This is a photo of "Straight House" -- I assume it's the house that now sits where Red's memoirs say they lived on "the Straight farm".]

Red:

When we lived here I had to walk down our long drive way about ¼ of a mile to a paved road where I got the school bus to school in Hartford. This picture is how the school looked at that time.

This is also the place we lived when my cousin Ralph Till shot at me with the 410 shot gun. We were having an argument about something and he said he was going to shoot me, so I took off for the barn. He waited until I had reached the barn before he shot and hit the barn door just after I went through it. I remember lots of things about this place.

PHOTO: Ralph Till

My cousin Ralph lived with us a lot in the summer time and one year when the fair was on we walked down the rail road tracks to the fair grounds and jumped the back fence to get in the fair. We spent the day there and walked home that evening the same way.

One summer Ralph and I took the Train to St. Joseph where the Silver Beach Amusement Park was and went on all the rides. We each had $2.50 to eat on and ride the rides and it was enough.

When I was 10 or 12 years old I would hitchhike from Hartford to Ralph's over by South Haven. Most of the people that came along knew me so I would get picked up but some times the rides were short. I always had to walk from the Jericho store to where Ralph lived, about 2 miles.

My cousin Ralph recently reminded me of the time he and I went flour sacking. This is when you would fill an old flour sack with straw, and tie a string to it and lay it on the shoulder of the road. Of course this was when we lived in the country. Back then a lot of the older cars had fenders and there was a space between the fender and the hood, and people would lay their sack of flour on the fender. Well we would lay the flour sack along side of the road, lay the string from the flour sack to the ditch or a bush, something to hide us. We would then cover the string with dirt and wait for someone to stop to pick up the flour sack. Just as they were about to pick it up we would pull the string and the flour sack would jump away and that would scare the people. Most of the time the people would laugh but some times the people would get real mad and cuss us out. My brother Bernarde and some of his friends also did this years before we did.