Richard Thomas Memories - The Thar Place and The Forty

I can't decide whether to rotate the posts between the Thomas / Hicks / Burford family histories, or to stick with one all the way through before switching to another. What do you think?

* * *

THE THAR PLACE AND THE FORTY

I don’t remember anything until we lived on the Thar place.  This is where the picture of me on the pony was taken. I was about two or three years old.  

One time I was with my dad with the county truck in Keeler and we stopped at Foster’s store for some ice cream. They had a punch board for ten cents a punch and some times you would win a prize of some sort.  I don’t think we won anything. 

I remember that we would sometimes rent a cottage at Van Auken lake for two weeks in the summer and this is where my dad taught me how to swim. I was only about 4 or 5 years old, as I recall.

Then we moved to a farm just down the road called “The Forty”. This was where we lived when I started school at Stoughten Corners.

* * *

Author's note: Grandpa Thomas taught all of us kids to swim. My brothers and I learned in Van Auken lake, in Hartford. Our cousins, Mick, Greg, and Kim, probably learned in Lake of the Woods in Decatur, which was where they lived.