The Colebaugh Family in Ottawa County

The Yard

At the corner, kitty corner, from the above map, was the only house that could be seen from gramma's farm The big house with an X didn't exist. . They had 8 children, the oldest was a girl and the youngest was a girl, and all boys in-between. My grandmother liked Bill the best because he was good and would help her. I liked the red head the best, his name started with R, but I can't remember it anymore. He was the naughty one, so you know who I liked the best. And followed around and got into trouble to. I loved to follow animal tracks but never caught up to any. We did search for and found Indian arrowheads.

The side road is at the extreme right. It had a ditch on the other side that we played in and sometimes it had water.

The right hand corner land was low down, much lower than the rest of the farm. It was full of single-stalk blackberry bushes. Aunt Carrie sent me out to pick enough for a pie. I had to walk down tree roots that were like steps that led from the house. The path led on an angle to the corner. After endless picking and getting pricked and the bowl looked full, I'd try to return to the house but my Aunt Carrier would laugh and make me pick more, and more and more and more. Boy that pie better taste good and I better get TWO pieces.

Coming down from the front porch was the path to the mailbox. There were so few cars that when one went by, Aunt Coila would announce so and so is -----.  She knew who everyone was by their car. It was quite exciting when the mailman pulled up. He would raise the red flag on the mailbox and I'd be sent down to fetch. Sometimes there was a wasp nest nearby and I  had to be so careful. There was a tree nearby that I liked to climb but my sister would push me out.  I tried to take a picture of the mailbox path on one of my later visits and of the mailbox itself.

In the upper left hand corner was the vegetable garden. The barn had been in the lower left hand corner of the upper left square but it had fallen down by the time I was a child. The chicken coop, the coal house and the outhouse were in a row. There were two huge trees, I remember lilac trees with huge blossoms. Do lilacs get that tall or was it some other flowering tree.  There was a pine forest behind the barn and even on the hottest days it would be so cool and quiet in there. Behind the pine forest was an apple orchard, mostly wizzen crab apples that I sure didn't want to eat.  On the other side of the granary was the old pasture. The barb wire fence had collapsed so I had to be very careful of where I stepped.

Then it was out in the sand dunes. That's where I explored up to the tree line of someone else's property. During the depression the CCC planted many trees to hold back the erosion. There was a constant breeze blowing from Lake Michigan.
I used to love lying on the big swing that was connected by big chains between the two big trees in the back yard. I just loved lying on grams quilts feeling the lake breeze blowing over me. There as enough room for seven kids to lie on that swing. I had to get much older before I realized that it was a bed spring.

There were big lilac bushes along the road and the driveway. Uncle Jack and Aunt Lorraine used to grub those bushes. I just loved those lilacs. They smelled so good. They were mostly purple. Aunt Coila told a story once that she could see that a car had stopped and the bushes kept moving. Someone went out to investigate and discovered some city people were just helping themselves to grandma's flowers.

At the edge of the farm was a CC planted forest. It was someone else's land and I was not allowed to trespass. There was no house anywhere on that land. It wasn't a farm and suburban mania hadn't reached that far, yet.

The cousins sharing popsicles.

Ellen Venzke, Carol VM, Althea Haiker, Gene Venzke, Barbara VM

Evening

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Last modified: 08/05/11