What Can Be Said 002

In 1978, Massachusetts was already becoming a very taxable state. My father had spoke often of wanting to purchase a small farm or ranch. That being the way his father had raised him; I guess he wanted to pass that on to his own children. To learn how to be less dependant on the government and the worlds ways of doing things was important to my parents. I doubt he ever realized it, but God was starting us on a journey and a walk of life that would change our lives forever, and the Spirit of God would continue His teaching as the years continued to pass. My father in his earthly nature was being directed by God in His Devine nature.

So with things being what they were my folks decided to move to Maine. It was said that the State of Maine was still ten years behind the rest of the country, the growth of that state was still gentle, slow to grow, slow to populate. There was still good land and forest that had been untouched, unspoiled by the hands of man. Upon arriving we rented an old farm house and moved in to stay the winter and wait out the snow.

After a long cold winter my folks began looking for their “utopia“. After what I remember as being several months they found what they were looking for. It was a large parcel of land which was half fields and half wood. The parcel was close to a mile from the nearest town-maintained road, only drivable under the best of weather and certainly not in the spring or winter. We spent the spring in a old rusted out mobile home that we had pulled up the road, or at least as far as it could be pulled up what could be considered, hardly more than a cow path.

We began clearing and digging holes for the post of what would end up an octagon shaped log cabin. Dad in his “wisdom” chose a sight that over looked a large section of the front boarder and ran along the only road up there. The only problem with that was the house would be built into a rock hill. You can imagine how challenging that particular task was. Once the first level floor was built we moved under the floor, hung plastic from the sides and there we stayed untill the roof was finished.

My brother Dan recently reminded me of an incident that happened while we were still living under the house. We were having a particularly rainy week which slowed working on the house down to nearly a stand-still. We had to lay more plastic on the top side of the floor because the water was leaking through and onto everything we owned. That one particular night somehow more water was leaking through; we hung even more plastic from what would be our ceiling, or the bottom side of the floor. While we were all scrambling for a dryer spot to sleep in, the plastic had gathered up quite a large amount of water. It seemed that most of us had finally fallen to sleep. When like a cry from the wild, my dad screamed and stood straight up on my folk’s bed! It seems that there was not only a large amount of water hanging over my parents’ bed but it turned out it was extremely cold as well! I still remember him standing there in his one piece, pair of long underwear, teeth clinched together, saying, "DON'T TOUCH ME" to my mom as she tried to help him. I'm glad for the reminder.

As the house walls grew we were face with another difficult task, we had to find water. The first whole we dug out by shovel and bucket ended up becoming the out-house. Six feet down, four feet wide and not a drop of moister was to be found. Then we chose another sight to start digging, this one had more rock in it than dirt. This hole we dubbed, “the dry hole” and became a place for the old make-shift washer’s water to be drained into.

We had at some point came across and old burnt out foundation, at some point in history there had been another family living on the same piece of land. We reasoned that they had to have had access to water being so far from any town. Once we found the old surface well we realized that someone had filled it at some later point. We found things in there that we never expected to find in a well. Even an old double headed ax head and a broken handle. Once we got it all cleaned out the water began flowing into the old well once again. When the water finally filtered itself clean we could begin drinking it. However, we still had to get it to the house. It wasn’t difficult to figure out how we would get it there, what was difficult was lugging five gallon water buckets through tall grass and over a distant of near a hundred feet away. Wasn’t all too difficult after we got used to it, we got stronger and there was my dad my older brother and myself to take turns. Unless mom was doing laundry that day for the six of us!

So to catch up, we were living in a log house stuffed with moss to fill in the cracks between the logs, hauled water from a surface well which was too far away, we used kerosene lamps to see by at night, cut our own fire wood to cook with and heat the house when it was cold and walked nearly a mile to catch the school bus. Still you know, whith all that and probably more that I have forgotten about, I still loved every moment that we lived there.

And more than all that! God would soon pay us a visit… continued