When I was a very little girl, my PopPop would sit me on his knee and sing “Froggy Went a Courtin’”. When I grew up, I thought everyone sang it this way, but apparently not. I have no idea if this is something he made up, or if this is an old Appalachian way. When I googled it, I learned the song PopPop taught me is a lengthened version of the bridge. So, I’m going to include a link to me singing it the way I was taught and to a recording of Elizabeth Mitchell & You Are My Flower from her fourth album with Smithsonian Folkways. Hers is decidedly MUCH better than mine…but here it is for posterity!

Me:   https://youtu.be/mZI1OnUyP2M

Smithsonian:   https://youtu.be/0XIT_xMHKJI

I can still remember sitting on his knee when I wasn’t any bigger than this little sprite. And now? That little towhead I’m teaching is our great granddaughter! Where did the time go? I taught it to my babies. I sang it to my grandbabies. And now…here’s a new generation begging me to “Do it again!”

Oh, this back porch. Right behind me there was always an old wooden rocking chair. Maybe another old dining room chair or two. We spent many a night out there…us kids running around catching lightning bugs in a jar or eating watermelon till it dripped off our chins. We’d have seed spitting contests because my Uncle Bud would warns us not to swallow them or vines would grow out of our ears! 

This is on the cool side of the house as the sun sets on the other side. You could always be sure to feel a cool breeze coming down out of the holler, brushing over us so blissfully. We might find a toad in the hostas Grandma planted out behind the new cinder block bathroom they built for her. Later on, a big upright freezer sat on this porch for many years, along with an old wooden table with linoleum nailed to the top that could be pulled out into the yard whenever we needed a place to work. 

I remember an old wringer washer that was powered by a hit and miss engine that sat out here. There was one memorable fall when we made apple butter in a copper kettle over an open fire just off this porch. At one time, there was a double washtub with a washboard and a bar of lye soap. The old smokehouse used to sit right off the back yard. Now it’s up near the barn and “leaning towards the peach orchard”, as my grandma used to say.

This is the porch where my PopPop played “Turkey in the Straw” on the fiddle I have at home. My great grandpa danced a soft shoe across the porch while he played. I have his walking stick and his spats. I gave his bowler hat to my cousin Tammy. This is the porch where grandma sat in a chair and waited for us to get out of the car and run into her embrace when we came home from so very far away. She cherished having her family around. Consequently, I came home every summer, dragging my babies so they could learn of the never ending love that springs from this place.

I know my kids have fond memories of the farm. I also know, it couldn’t possibly mean the same thing to them as it does to me. This was “home” to me…it was “vacation” to them. My oldest grandchild had a bath on this back porch when she was nine months old in the same galvanized tub I had MY Saturday night baths in. My youngest daughter and I took “moon baths” in the yard, not ten feet from where I’m sitting here singing. We’d get a bucket of warm soapy water, strip down in the dark yard, wash off, then pour buckets of cool rainwater over us so we would cool down enough to go to sleep.

Just shy of 67 years ago, my grandma carried my chubby one-year-old body in one arm and my birthday cake in the other and made a beeline for the yard. She wanted to get a picture of me digging into my cake with the single candle. Everyone else just sat there, mouths agape, wondering if there would be anything left to eat for dessert once I was done with it.

The fact that I got to share the farm today with our great grandchildren, and got a video for them to remember, means the world to me. After all, what are memories shared?

Well…stories, of course!

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“For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

Matthew 13:12 ESV