Day 24

Day 24 , originally uploaded by BarbaraKaye.

Day 24 ~ Yes, it's a picture of a picture. :-) This is a painted photo of the house where I grew up. It's on Zuefle Drive, McDermott, Ohio. It sits on 3.5 acres and the back 1/4 of the lot goes up the side of a hill. We didn't own all the hills back there, but we spent a lot of time exploring them anyway. If we weren't in the hills, we were playing in the creek at the front edge of the property. Playing means looking for crawdads (crayfish) and snakes and skipping rocks. Unfortunately it was too shallow for swimming. Mom sold the house in 1995, two years after Dad died.

Mom and Dad grew up in Kentucky in neighboring counties. But the didn't meet until after Dad came home from serving in the military in Europe during World War II. He was a medic following Patton around. When they married, they first moved to Cincinnati where I was born, then on to the area where I grew up. But for a while they rented and moved often. Mom got tired of moving and when they discovered a snake at the back door of the last rented home, Dad wanted to move again. He was concerned about us kids. But Mom put her foot down and said she wasn't moving again unless he bought a house. He went out the next day and bought this house without Mom seeing it or even knowing about it! But it was a great house for us. One of my earliest memories, (I was 3) is being in that house before we moved anything into it. My sister and I sat in the bay window in the living room and sang. We thought it was funny because our voices echoed. :)

I miss that place very much.