If Old houses Could Speak

Yesterday my wife and I went to pay a visit with my oldest sister Jeanette and for me it was a ride back down memory lane. 

She had us a bag of pecans that she had been gathering from one of those huge pecan trees that put it into overdrive this year, covering her yard with its sweet bounty. 

It's hard to beat paper shelled pecans for a snack. 

As we drove on the small country lane going to her old place, it seemed like only yesterday that her only son Rev. Jerry Dillon and I had our B B guns armed and dangerous  

When we started down what we dubbed Bird Lane, a short stretch of the road with thick brush and trees grown up along the fence line, I well remembered stalking those songbirds and having a heyday shooting some with our Daisey B B guns. 

Their surviving kin these some 65 years later could still be seen darting in and out of the tangled limbs and branches. 

Then as we made the short turn and headed down hill it was Pee-Pee Hollow where when we were old enough to drive, we would stop and relieve ourselves. 

From there Jerry's old home place was in sight where once we helped juice them Jerseys, as they ran a modest size dairy many years. 

As we pulled up to the old house and parked, all too well I remembered those golden days of yore when we would sleep inside behind unlocked doors because the world was at peace. 

Upon entering the house, I could smell the familiar smells of a most honored and revered place that has now turned into a memorial. 

It was like I could smell the thick sliced bacon frying that always greeted us when we had finished washing out the dairy barn after milking. 

The old Dillon home place, located in the south part of Walthall County, is 165 years old, the oldest dwelling place still in use in the county. 

That would be back in 1858 when some of us were just a gleam in our grandma's eye. 

Papa Carl Dillon and a close black gentleman friend built it from rough sawmill lumber using a saucer with water as a level and the foundation beams of old heart pine logs. 

Bear in mind this old homestead has survived untold hurricanes coming up out of the Gulf of Mexico and in-numerable tornadoes twisting and dancing about down through over a century and a half. 

If only old houses could speak. 

We buried Preston back in Feb. of 2021, but he lived to be 94 dying in the same bed he was born in, the very same room. 

He was the baby boy of 14 siblings and many times he would relate to me how life was in those bygone days when a gentleman's handshake was better than a contract because back then a man's word was his bound. 

He told of how he could remember when the first electric power lines were being placed and the actual day they were setting the poles down that same road I came in on yesterday morning. 

He said he and his large family never knew the old house had so many knot holes in it until their dad screwed in those old-fashioned light bulbs. 

He and the remaining sister have passed now joining all the rest but the old house still stands. 

Granny Dor, as his mother was called, had two sisters that lived in dinner bell hearing distance and they together raised off 47 chaps. 

They would make dinners sometimes together, mixing the biscuit dough in a wash tub. 

I can only imagine the sounds and sights of 47 young 'uns frolicking all over those rolling hills. 

Of course, it was more work than it was play and all were raised the old-fashioned way of working from sun to sun. 

I asked Preston why his mother and her sisters had so many children? 

Two had 15 and the other 17. 

His answer was, "There were no televisions for entertainment back then and you can fill in the blanks...."  LOL 

And in those summer nights we slept with the old attic fan running going whoop-whoop-whoop. 

In the winter, there was the old open face fireplace that is now all boarded up and Net would cover us up with 50 lbs. of homemade quilts it felt like. 

I could go on and on about Bro. Jerry's old home place. 

If old houses could speak. 

God bless you and God bless America.