As a former navy-brat I lived in many houses. Most were duplexes, some were townhouses. A few were stand alone houses of varying kinds. But one holds a special place in my heart.
It wasn't a grand residence yet it lingers in my memory as the perfect house: a two-story white farmhouse that stood at the bend of a dusty county road, surrounded by acres and acres of corn and soybeans and a huge yard often littered with children's toys and bicycles. It didn't have many rooms but those it had were roomy, with large windows open to the breezes blowing in from the Carolina coast only a few miles away. Our family gathered around the table in the large country kitchen for every meal, shared a single bathroom, and enjoyed one another's company in the living room at night.
The house was part of a working farm and there were plenty of outbuildings in which to explore. My brothers and I spent many happy hours in and out of sheds, playing farmer on old tractors and hide-and seek in the rows of corn. We'd catch Mom's back turned and visit the pigs in their feedlot a half mile away or dare one another to jump the drainage ditches that outlined the crop fields. How we avoided getting snakebit I'll never know.
Located as it was in a semi-isolated area, people occasionally set their unwanted dogs out at the edge of our yard. In the course of our playing, we managed to bring home an entire litter of eight puppies and four other grown dogs. We already owned two dogs, which brought the total number of canine companions accompanying us on our adventures to fourteen. A dog-lover from birth, I was in heaven.
I remember morning glories winding around corn stalks and telephone poles, their trumpet blooms vibrant against the thick morning fog. Beside the house was a towering shrub covered with roses and several rose of sharon bushes bloomed beside the farm road out back, and there were many small trees around the yard, one of which my brother, Steve, one day took a notion to cut down.
Unfortunately, my idyllic life on the farm came to the end when housing came available on the base where my father was stationed and we returned to the world of duplexes and townhouses. My canine friends were sent to live in new homes and I made new, human, friends with whom to share my adventures. Time passed and I grew up, but I never forgot the short time we spent in that big farmhouse.
