Tracy Farm Dad worked on the farm cutting hay and working in the
barn. I’m not sure what else he did. I remember once that Uncle Roger came to
help him cut hay but I may have this part confused with life on the farm. What I
remember on the Tracy Farm was that Dad was cutting hay in the field a short way
down the road. I went out of the house somehow without being seen and marched
down the road and into the field barefooted. I cut my feet up a lot on the
stubbles and they were bleeding. Dad took me home and Mom fixed me up.
All I remember of the inside of the apartment was the
lightness and airiness. The rooms were huge to me and the sunshine came in all
the windows. The floors were polished hard wood.
While we were here an epidemic of whooping cough was
going around the country. A county nurse came to the house and gave us all
shots. Back then you didn’t get the one shot with diphtheria, whooping cough,
and polio all in one. Maybe the Salk vaccine for polio hadn’t even been out
then.
We didn’t get to play out doors much unless Mom was
with us because there was a cistern to collect rain water behind the house. I
think for awhile it had no cover over it and Mom was afraid we’d fall in. I do
recall seeing some old worn boards over the hole some time while we lived there
but not at first.
The barn seemed to me to be long and skinny and
alongside the road just below the house. There was an old rusty hunk of
machinery in there and one time we girls were down there and Dad was doing
something with it. He told us it was a candy bar machine. He sent us up to the
house to get pieces of wax paper from Mom to put the candy bars on because he
said when they came out they would be warm and melt. We were sucked in and flew
upstairs to find Mom.
Mom didn’t like the Tracy woman because she was always
letting her blouse drop so Dad could see her breasts. We didn’t stay there long,
either.
I think we moved here after Dad lost the farm. There
were only the four of us, Anna, Millie, me and Sue at the time. (Enid had to
have been born here or before we moved here because Mom was pregnant with her
when we lived on the farm.) The Tracy’s
owned the farm and I think they lived downstairs. We lived in the upstairs
apartment. The house was white and sat on a small rise a short way up the Tracy
Road off the Vaughn Road. Tracy Road is right about where Torrington
Construction sat on the Vaughn Road. I don’t know if that company still exists.
It was there in the 70’s and 80’s but not all those years ago when we lived on
the Tracy Farm.
I don't remember any animals here. There must have been cows but I just don't remember.
There were no cameras here so no photos.