Chesnut Hill: The Early Years

By Winona C. VanLandingham

This book is a collection of short stories, poetry and recipes gleaned from the Growing Up Years of the nineteen-thirties, forties and fifties, on Chesnut Hill. I was born in the big old white clapboard house where we lived. It was a large, airy, cool house in summerand in winter! When frigid temperatures came; and they did, even though it was Florida, and the wind whistled around the corners, we gathered around a cozy wood fire sipping hot chocolate and later slept warmly, bundled under fourteen or so handmade quilts. It was altogether a perfectly lovely place to spend a childhood !

Daddy was a Rural Mail Carrier and mama stayed home to cope with our frequent, wild adventures.

We children, presented a constant challenge. We werent exactly bad just very creativeand we didnt have TV to divert our attention. As a result, we came up with lots of fun things to occupy our time. For instance, we went wading in a lime rock sink hole one summer and caught ourselves a baby alligator which we hauled home in a washtub full of water. We thought hed make a cute pet! But, can you believe that our daddy didnt agree? His reaction was something like, Where theres a baby gatortheres a mama gator!

We were just country kids, in an environment where we were allowed to stretch our imaginations although we did have certain rules. We were not rich in material things and mostly had to make do with what we had but we were a pretty ingenuous bunch of kids.

Come and travel back in time, to the days of my sojourn as a very precocious inquisitive child. Experience the poignant nostalgia of the sad and happy times our family lived on Chesnut Hill!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 23, 2006
• ISBN: 9781467072571

Winona C. VanLandingham

This author was born in the quiet little southern town of Chipley, in the panhandle of Florida.  She attended Chipley High School and Chipola Junior College and graduated from the University of West Florida with a degree in Elementary Education.  She earned a degree in Art Education from Florida State University and certification in Exceptional Education.  She taught many years at Kate M. Smith Elementary School in Chipley and retired in 2003. Art and writing have always been special interests.  She taught scores of children the art of creative writing.  She has written copy for a local radio station; reported for an Alabama newspaper; has numerous short stories and poems; wrote a cake decorating manual; was published in the Best Poems and Poets of 2003; wrote and directed a children’s operetta, “It’s for the Birds!” in 2001. She and her husband have one son and recently celebrated forty-eight years of marriage.  She laughingly says, “I’m the only person I know who grew; got married; moved across the street and still lives there, forty-eight years later.  I’ve traveled other places...but never had any desire to live anywhere else.”

Book preview

Contents

Introduction

Chesnut Hill

She Loved Us Anyway!

F.L., Jr. Our Brother… Bud

About My Other Sisters

Green Peaches

Grammar School

Daddy’s Mail Route

Hog Killing Day

The New Electric Refrigerator…

School Days…School Days!

Oops! I Shouldn’t Have Done That!

Snaggle Tooth

My First Lesson in the Facts of Life

The Rhythm Band

The Exploding Stove

Another Year Older

Ma Hasty and the Fishing Trip

Third Grade Troubles!

Measles…Oh, my!

And Then I was Nine…

Where There’s a Baby Gator…

There’s a Mama Gator!

The Ice Man Cometh!

Ah…The Magic of Summer

Teacakes, Anyone?

A Perennial School Bug

Grunt and Squeal

Table Manners and More

Daddy… Fishin…Huntin ‘n Stuff

A Short Lesson in the Art of Dipping Snuff

Mudder

A Tribute to Tunkin

Our Cousins…Just Down the Hill

Christmas on Chesnut Hill

The Roller Skates

The Year the Christmas Tree Fell

Riding the Mule

About The Author…

I dedicate this collection

0f Poetry and Prose

Based on the Growing Up Years

On Chesnut Hill

To

My Husband and Son…

Roger & Lowell

To

My Sisters…

Lorena & Fayletta

And to the Memory of

My Parents and my Brother…

Fred L. & Irene Chesnut & Fred Jr.

All of Whom played a Key Role in

Making me the person I am today!

Introduction

I’m the only person I know who grew up; got married; moved across the street and forty-eight years later I’m still here. At least, I’m the only person living on Chesnut Hill who can attest to that.

It might sound like a really dull hum-drum existence, but I can assure you, that life here has had deep meaning; excitement, enjoyment, as well as pain and sadness. We’ve traveled other places but I’ve never lived anywhere but here on Chesnut Hill.

In these days of folks high on drugs; lack of morals; parents more concerned with themselves than the needs of their children; the memory of my childhood on Chesnut Hill is truly beyond price. I wish today’s children could live and grow, in the same kind of safe and sane environment that I grew up in. Alas, I’m afraid it is a thing of the past. An entity that sadly, no longer exists.

Snuggled in the heart of northwest Florida, the little town where I was born and raised was definitely, in the country. But we were close enough to larger places such as Tallahassee, Panama City and Pensacola in Florida and Dothan in Alabama that we could occasionally shop there.

Our daddy built the first house on a hill south of town and ours being the only family dwelling there for a number of years; it came to be known as Chesnut Hill. Years later the streets were just given numbers, but in my mind and heart, the place will always be Chesnut Hill.

Life on Chesnut Hill was interspersed with myriad daily problems; sometimes joyous…sometimes sad. The astounding thing to me, as an adult, is that we were kept unaware of most of the bad things that happened. Our parents, and indeed even our neighbors, were protective of all the children in the neighborhood. Being shielded from many of life’s shady aspects enabled us to just enjoy being children.

As a teacher, I worked with so many children who were trapped in situations that no child should have to deal with. These children are not free to enjoy childhood but are forced to deal with adult problems before they are physically and emotionally mature. Society, has failed them!

We were the most fortunate of children. We were not abounding in material things but received the most valuable legacy possible; a stable childhood with wonderful memories.

Life in our house was interesting, exciting, happy, sometimes sad but rich and fulfilled. There was no abuse. We respected our parents and other adults and were taught what my mama called necessary everyday manners. We were punished with a spanking when were disobedient and it did not affect our growth, either mentally or physically. We also learned to respect and like ourselves. Something many of today’s kids haven’t learned; so they turn to drugs, alcohol, tobacco, illicit sex and worse.

Travel back in time with me, to the days of my sojourn as a child and experience tales based on the sad and happy times we lived on Chesnut Hill.

Chesnut Hill

I was born in the big old white clapboard house where we lived. It was trimmed in deep forest green and crowned with a green roof from which sprouted two tall chimneys and a brick flue for the wood burning stove in our kitchen. It faced the west and the sun always came through my window in the morning, since my bedroom faced the east. For some reason that always gave me a secure feeling.

Two magnificent oaks stood like giant sentinels beside the front walk and pecan, peach, pear and fig trees dotted the side and back yards.

There was an enormous garden where daddy grew vegetables for the family, with gobs left over to share with neighbors and friends.

The family milk cow resided in a pasture adjacent to the barn where there were usually a few kittens tumbling about.

On the south side was a large fenced area where daddy’s ‘Birddogs’ resided. We were not allowed to pet the hunting dogs, so about the first thing I had, when I grew up, was a little Fox Terrier named Perky.

Out back was a small wooden structure called a smokehouse. Inside there were lengths of sausages and hams being cured over a slow burning hardwood fire.

The southwest corner of the yard sported the playground daddy built for us. Daddy didn’t have a lot of spare cash but he could build just about anything. He cut down big trees and built a frame for a swing and gym set that he designed himself. He also constructed two see-saws; a large and a small one. I think the modern name for them is teeter-totter. At the time I didn’t realize just how talented daddy was. He only had an eighth grade education. That was as far as school went in our county, when he was growing up. Years later, following his retirement from the post office he was to design and build fishing boats as a hobby. I always said that if daddy had been able to go to college he could have been President of the United States! Just recently, a friend emailed me a copy of an eighth grade final examination, from the early eighteen hundreds. I was overwhelmed! It was much harder than the Florida State teaching examination that I had taken, after graduating from college. Never again will I say that daddy Just had an eighth grade education! Judging by that test, he was better educated than most of today’s college graduates.

A porch stretched across the width of our house with four fat columns flanked by wide stone steps.

Inside were nine rooms and one bathroom, all with sixteen-foot high ceilings. There were two wood burning fireplaces and a little pot bellied stove in the long room on the south side of the house, that was called a sleeping porch. In the kitchen were two stoves; an oil burning, or kerosene stove and a wood burning range of chrome and black cast iron.

It was a large, airy, cool house in summer …and in winter! When frigid temperatures came; and they did, even though it was Florida, and the wind whistled around the corners of the house, we gathered around a cozy wood fire sipping hot chocolate and later slept warmly, bundled under fourteen or so handmade quilts.

It was altogether a perfectly lovely place to spend a childhood!

She Loved Us Anyway!

She_loved_us.jpg

It was a crisp, cool fall afternoon, drenched with Indian Summer Sunshine. It was a perfect, peaceful interlude…at least that’s how it would have looked if you had happened by.

Mama was sitting at the kitchen table when my sister Hannah’s screams rang out! She ran out the kitchen door and across the lawn to the big pecan tree at the southeast side of the house. There Hannah lay writhing in pain. She had fallen from the tree and grated her entire backside from her neck to her knees, on the trunk, as she fell. She was a bloody mess! Mama gathered her up and rushed toward the house. I trailed behind with my eyes trained on the ground. The sight of blood wasn’t something that I handled well.

As we walked under the next pecan tree mama didn’t notice Ruth hanging on to an upper branch.

Hannah was gently laid on the bed and mama began to carefully remove her torn clothes so she could doctor her back. She didn’t let up in her crying, so at first we didn’t hear more frantic screams from outside. Suddenly, mama dropped the bloody towel and dashed out the door. Rounding the corner of the house she caught sight of a pink gingham bundle crumpled against a fence post. There was Ruth! Her face was covered with blood. Mama picked her up and ran to the back porch. Hurriedly she grabbed a clean towel and began mopping blood from her face. There was a gash in the middle of her lip and splinters of wood. It appeared that, in her unexpected flight from the tree, she hit her mouth on the fence post. By that time she was simply moaning and mama couldn’t seem to get her to wake up. When she couldn’t, she carried her to