Picture Book: The Farm on 7th South

I have begun about five different picture books, struggling to find the right topic.  I have about a million ideas, but none are developed enough to create something substantial.  This is a testament to writing what we know.  It wasn't until I looked closer to home and began to write about something that is familiar that I had enough to develop the ideas.  My great grandparents were incredible people who had a simple, but beautiful life.  I have such fond memories of them and the stories they told, and because I spent a lot of time on their farm, many of their stories became my reality as they were replicated in my childhood.  Here is a draft of the text for my story.  I have begun it on Bookemon because it allows for personally uploaded pictures.  It is told from the perspective of the child that my great-grandmother lost during pregnancy (if she were to have lived).  The loss was extremely painful to my grandmother because it caused complications that prevented her from having any more children.  She was one of ten and wanted at least as many, but ended up with three boys- the oldest of whom is my grandfather, Don J.  Also, the rhythm of the prose is inspired by the sweet children's book, When I Was Young in the Mountains.  It has been one of my favorites since I saw it on Reading Rainbow as a 5-year-old, ha!

When I was young on the farm at 7th south, 

life was simple, 

but good.

We would bathe in the old tin wash basin on Saturday nights.  Mother would boil water on the big wood stove and slip into the steaming water while the rest of us finished our evening chores outside.  Then father would wash in the warm water.  My brothers were next, and then me. By that time, the water was cloudy from soap and brown from dirt and cold from use. I didn’t like it, but it still washed the week away, so I had to.  

Sundays were for God and chicken.  We had some type of beef during the rest of the week, but on Saturday nights, one of my brothers would stalk a chicken or two from the yard, chop off its head, then bring it to mother for dressin'. That's how Blair got his crooked finger. Don J. told blair to hold the chicken still while he swung at his neck , but missed and chopped off Blair's finger. Mother took Blair to the doctor to sew it back on once it was found, but the doctor must have been tired because he sewed it on  sideways. Don J. hid in the pig pen until we found him and he was scolded by Father.   

Clean from our bath thight before, we would we attended church at the old stone chapel. It reminded me of the tower of Babel from the Old Testament because after the main service was over, we only had curtains to divide our Sunday School classes.  Everyone would get to talkin' and it was as if the whole building was a'hum with a hundred different tongues.

Mondays were wash days. Mother would hang our clothes on the line, even in the winter. I remember coming home from school in the frosty dusk and seeing her lift the stiff, frozen overalls from the line as if they had a life of their own.

Our winters were bone-chilling-cold.  The kitchen would stay warm from the wood stove when mother cooked, but the rest of the house was like an ice box.  It was Don J's job to keep the Heaterola stoked with coal, but he was usually lazy and the rest of us would be cross as we blew shapes in the air with our hoary breath.  

In the summertime, the canal was our lifeblood. Mother would toss us in as toddlers, clothes and all, to frighten the curiosity out of us.  That's how I learned to swim, anyway.  

Father would take a turn each week to irrigate our lawn with it. He dammed the culvert along the road until our acre of lawn would fill with a foot or so of water.  I would bob rotten apples and watch them trail after me as I tramped through the muddy lake.

Mother would quilt beneath the old willow tree on Tuesday afternoons with ladies from the town.  I would crawl under the frame and play house, trying to avoid the bobbing needles. Even when the rest of us were warm and barefoot, Grandfather was grumpy, but his beard hid his frown. We could tell what was beneath his white whiskers because he only spoke to father, and it was always in German.  He pretended that he didn't understand English so he could ignore the rest of us. Mother didn't let him bully her though.  Theirs was a silent warfare.

Our neighbors, the Kusakas, had to leave after the Japs bombed Hawaii.  The boys were older than my brothers, but they were kind to me and helped father each year with potato harvest.  We were sorry to see them go, and father even hid their guns in our cellar so the government wouldn't take them away.  After the war, they came back, but their land was so badly overgrown that they left to farm strawberries and sunshine in California.  

During the war, we got a toilet in the house.  Don J. was allowed to drive the truck because he was 13, and picked up the lumber down in Pocatello to build a wall around the toilet.  When we was finally home, he realized he had lost some of the lumber out the back. Because it was tightly rationed, father made him search along the miles and miles of dirt highway until he retrieved every last bit.

One night, our old dairy cow kicked over the kerosene lamp in our barn and it caught on fire.  The whole family was asleep, but a neighbor saw the fire and woke us up.  Father was devastated. One day after the fire, some members of our church showed up with a check for father.  They were all poor, like we all were, but they had each spared enough to contribute to our barn so we could make it through the winter.  It was the first time I had seen my father cry.

(I could keep going and going!  I need to cut back on the memories, I think, and better prioritize them).

When I was young on the farm at 7th south, 

I never wondered about the rest of the world because this was the world.

Home was simple, but good, and I would not have had it any other way.