The Old House

Graphic © IGK (DW) 2003

The old house was built before the Civil war by members of my ancestry

From Virginia, to Tennessee, then here to the Ozarks they came to be

Sturdy oak timber Frame, with sharp axes they hewed

They cleared their eighty acres with hopes and dreams anew

The boards were not weathered when the civil war began

A time of death and destruction had swept across the land

The visitors the old house saw, no living toung can tell

The James’s and the Younger brothers and even William Clark Quantrell

There was a hand dug well in the back, 6 feet by 45 deep

Lined with stones to the bottom where the cold spring waters seep

My great-great Grand-dad ,at the age of ten drew many buckets of course

From this well he drew the pails when he watered Quantrell’s horse

Good times were seen by the old house when new-born babies came

A proud progeny of sons and daughters to carry the family name

The old house had seen sad times too when many felt the pain

Of the two strong brothers who went to war, never to return again

I still recall when I was five and the winters seemed so cold

You could lie snug in a feather-tic mattress and watch your breath’s vapors blow

I remember the sounds of Mama cooking breakfast on the old woodstove

The smells of bacon ,eggs, and gravy are memories I dearly hold

Often coons and possums would get into the attic ,make lots of noise

“It’s ghost’s!” my brothers would say to scare us, they were ornery boys

In the middle of the night our Granddad would pound on the wall with his hand

Scare us all half to death by saying”I see Old Boogie-man!”

He grew beautiful red roses, that sometimes I’d pick

He’d scold me good and tell me , that he’d beat me with a stick

I said “After you’re gone I’ll pick em, then what will you do?”

He said “I’ll come back from the grave and I’ll haunt the hell out of you!”

He was quite a drinker, which led to his final demise

He laid down in the house one day, and of cirrhosis he died

I was only six years old, I remember well back then

What he’d said about the roses, I never picked them again

The old house still stands, it was moved a half-mile down the road

With new metal siding and a new roof it doesn’t look two centuries old

Years back my father sold the house and the parcel of land

I guess the ghost’s of the past was more than he could stand

But etched into my memory, never to be erased

Good times and bad we experienced there at the old home place.