Sunday, January 4, 2009

My Very First Home

Yesterday Mom and Dad went to Clintwood to visit Mom's sister and her husband and invited me to tag along. I hadn't seen my aunt and uncle in over a year, so I braved the possibility of motion sickness (riding in the back seat of a vehicle for over an hour is always risky for me) and away we went.

Fortunately, Daddy took the best possible route and I didn't feel ill at all. The visit was really nice; they're awfully sweet people, and it was great to see them again. After we left their house, we drove up on Reedy Ridge, where Daddy and his family lived from the time he was almost 11 years old (sometime in 1944) until he married Mom in 1953. Then, he and Mom lived in a small house just up the road from his family. The house is gone now, but here is the site on which it stood:

It was a three-room house, with a living room, kitchen and bedroom. There was no indoor plumbing.

Here's a view of the road leading from the house back off the ridge. The house would have been in the field off to the left from this viewpoint:

Mom had to carry water from a house that used to stand in the approximate location of the gray garage in this photo. You'll note that there was a considerable hill to climb while loaded down with buckets of water. (See Daddy in the rear-view mirror.)

Off to the right of the road, Daddy said that he used to cut hay on this field, now reclaimed by Mother Nature:

This is the house where Daddy lived with his parents, his brothers, and his sister from about 1944 until 1953:

From Reedy Ridge, we drove to Clinchco, where Daddy spent his early childhood. While there we stopped to read the names on the Coal Miners Memorial.

This memorial is "Dedicated to Those Who Lost Their Lives in the Coal Industry". Here is a closer view of a portion of the monument showing the names of two of my relatives:




Willard Sweeney was Daddy's first cousin. James F. Trivett, Jr. was Mom's uncle. Actually, he wasn't a "Jr."; his name was James Ferrell Trivett, son of James Austin Trivett and Draxie Vanover Trivett.

After the visit to Clincho, we made our way back home. It was a good, if tiring, day.