THE OLD FARM HOUSE

…..is a lot like people.

We spend our lifetime growing old from birth to death. We change so much that our childhood friends don’t even recognize us anymore. Why, we could actually rub shoulders on the street somewhere and never know “who the stranger was”. We spend our life failing to take care of ourselves, letting our body “go”, thinking we are invincible, or something. We fail to do much maintenance like eating healthy foods or exercising. We grow thin on the top and thick in the middle.
The old farm house is much the same. We “let it go” and do the minimum. We don’t know the meaning of the word “maintenance”. Like our body, we fix it if it needs fixin’ and “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke”! It begins to show major signs of wear and tear. Like us, it begins to sag in places where we rather it wouldn’t. Like us, any old barn looks better with a new coat of paint. But we don’t ever get around to doing much more than that.
As we give up and desert the old place, the deterioration really sets in, then! Next thing we know, it falls apart and just can’t be fixed anymore! Then we are either buried or cremated. In this life, that’s all that’s left!
The old farm house where we grew up isn’t standing anymore. As kids, we spent a lot of time there running in and out of that old screen door, climbing the trees and playing “Annie Over”. It’s quiet around there now. The kids have grown up and gone away; the house fell in and apart from lack of use and upkeep. Only the memories remain.
Mom nearly worked herself to death keeping things alive. There was always wood to chop to be used for cooking and heating the house. Later, when we "modernized", Propane brought a whole new way of cooking!

We had a fireplace on each end of the old house, with a roaring fire to try to keep warm by. We had 360 acres of trees that we could cut, split and stack cords of firewood. There was always water to boil for 6 kids to take baths in and to wash the laundry. That old ringer washer still sets outside in this picture.

There are many good memories in that old farm. Life was much simpler then. As we moved on and sold the old homestead, we still go back into our memories and pull out the good times we remember, growing up in Northwest Arkansas.

The really only good thing about “the good ‘ol days” is that they are good and gone!