A NEW HOME

“Oh, it’s moving day. You can pack up your things and live out in a tent, but it’s moving day, it’s moving day.”

Yes, it really was moving day. We packed up our things and traveled to a more mountainous, more uncivilized, and more beautiful part of Arkansas, to a little village called Omaha, in Boone County, where my daddy was to build a new lime kiln, and where we were to live in the rambling house which has a white-oak tree growing up through the center of one of the rooms and spreading its branches above the flat roof.

And how did we travel this distance of about sixty miles as the crow flies, but twisting in and out among the mountains was much more than that? By automobile? My, no, automobiles had hardly arrived then, and besides, the roads. By train, then? Only a part of the way. And the remainder with horse and buggy? Oh, no, not even a buggy could stand the bumps. So, after going as far as possible by train, we packed our goods into lumber wagons and ourselves into a buckboard behind a team of strong, sure-footed horses, though mules would have been better.

Such a ride as that was. We flew down hills and crawled up hills; went around one curve after another, over roads so thickly covered with loose smooth stones that the horses skidded; we missed the trunk of a tree by the fraction of an inch; splashed through ‘branches’ of clear, cold water of which the horses drank so eagerly; forded a wider and deeper stream which flowed so swiftly that it seemed we were surely going down stream; we caught our breath at pine and boulder-clad slopes rising almost straight up on one side of the road and going down, down, down on the other; zigzagging in this way until we would finally reach the top of a ridge and look out over lesser hills and valleys thickly covered with timber where a faint fog rising from water in the lower places tinged it all a delicate purple.

We did not quite reach our destination the first night, but stayed at the home of some people whose acquaintance Daddy had made on a previous trip. Tired though we were, inquisitive eyes noticed that the unplastered walls were neatly covered with newspapers instead of wallpaper, (not everyone in that locality had newspapers with which to cover their walls, either), and the bare pine board floors were scrubbed until they glistened. Keen appetites helped us to make quick work of the bacon, baked sweet potatoes, corn bread, and home-made molasses. After supper a panful of raw peanuts shoved into the oven and left there until their shells turned a golden brown, made delightful munching.

The next morning we took our places in the buckboard and wended our way a little farther amidst scenery similar to that of the day before, only a little more rough and rugged. At last we came into the village which consisted of Main Street flanked on one side by a meat market, two general stores, a drug store, cobbler’s shop, and a board sidewalk; on the other side by the hotel, a long empty space, the flouring mill, and no sidewalk. After traversing this dusty thoroughfare a block or two farther, we reached our journey’s end, and what did we find awaiting us?

The dwelling had been used as the headquarters of a lumber camp so had been rather temporarily constructed. The main room was large with ridge roof and no ceiling, open rafters; the three other rooms were smaller with flat roofs; all were joined together in a hit and miss fashion and the whole thing covered with black tar paper and decorated with rows of tin nail caps. Where were we supposed to cook and eat in the summer time? Why, in the cook shack, of course. This consisted of kitchen, dining room, and cook’s room and missed the rest of the house by about a hundred feet.

We had truly found a home in the woods, as the ground on which it stood was densely covered with trees, mostly oak, pine and hickory. Time alone would tell what new friends and strange adventures we would meet here in this little tucked away place, named after the immense city of the plains.