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A Place During Summer

| Tennessee

My maternal grandparents owned a small house in «The Killburn Holler».
I visited there many times between 1955 and 1963..primarily from May to September. Why only those months?
The 3 room house with a covered front porch had no indoor waterworks nor electricity. (Middle south winters can be tough without warmth and conveniences.) Yet, there were two wood-burning stoves: one for heat & the other for cooking.
The property had an outhouse and a fresh water spring. The spring held perishables like milk and butter.
Summer days & nights at my grandparents place were quite different from my «city» home with my parents.
Some of my best memories there include: my grandma’s breakfasts; an aluminum bucket & dipper hanging near the ceiling …filled with the spring water; being sent up the hill to fetch things from the spring; sleeping on a feather-filled mattress; going to bed when it was dark; aunts and cousins visiting — even some came from hundreds of miles away; taking black and white photos of my grandma’s snowball bush when it bloomed; playing with young kittens; wading in cold creek water; watching my grandfather chase away (but never kill nor injure) a 6 foot black snake that lived beneath the stone steps.
I loved the smells of the foods cooked there; fresh fresh breezes; the grass; the trees; dusty and moldy smelling rooms; watching my grandma use her treadle sewing machine; admiring her bottle of cologne; walking with my grandparents on the dirt road to the nearest neighbors.
The summer times spent there were wonderful…as I now remember them… over sixty years later.

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