Bethel Bunch
When I was about five years old we lived in a little block house in Bethel.
In the center of the side yard(about where the back of that old station wagon in the photo) was a big sunken in place that would fill up with water when it rained and we would pretend that was our swimming pool.
We also thought it was great fun to stand in the ditch line near the road, so we could get splashed when cars drove through the puddles of water, until mommy caught us and whipped our wet legs with a switch.
That little house had a basement that always flooded with water when it rained.
Dorothy Razor lived in the big farm house next door and sometimes her grandchildren, Selena and Chris Cook would come over to play when they visited.
The first time I met Selena, she was standing in her grandmother’s yard and was singing “This Land is Your Land, this Land is My Land.”
I probably started singing along with her, I’m not sure, but we did become friends that day and we graduated together 12 years later.
After Mrs. Dorothy moved away, Mr. Gay and Mary Rawlings became our neighbors.
Mr. Gay's son Herschel and his family lived in a mobile home located next to Mr. Gay's barn.
You can see the top of that barn in the photo above.
On the other side of our house was the home of Mr. Gay's parents Pop and My Rawlings. I don't recall the correct names but we called them Pop and My for some reason.
The Myers family lived in an old two story house behind where Mr. Pop lived.
There was a huge concrete cistern at the back of our house and a tree grew next to it and I remember falling out of that tree one summer.
Me and April made lots of stews and mud pies on that old well top.
Down in the far end of the back yard was an outhouse.
Dwayne had the bright idea that we could climb on top of that toilet with a make-shift cape and would be able to jump off the toilet and fly.
One time we thought if we used an umbrella we could glide slowly to the ground for a soft landing.
The house had a coal burning stove in the living room and we loved to melt our crayons on it and watch the colors drip down the sides.
I remember one summer we had a garden but there was always an old white horse that ate all of the carrots and cabbage and what ever else we had planted.
Across the highway over in the field was the Kidder farm and in the winter they would build a bonfire and go sledding.
I started school when we lived in Bethel and that was the year Claudia, Dwayne and I were in the Tom Thumb Wedding.
We lived in the little block house a few years before we moved to Sharpsburg sometime in the early 1970s.
