The Farm House Essay -- Personal Narrative Essays

Throw a dart at either year in the over-sized target that is the 1960s and you will hit on something big in American history. Nineteen sixty-three has the March on Washington, the publication of The Feminine Mystique, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Humanity was marching ever onward with ceaseless bring forward in science, medicine and engineering. The first ever telecast of a live murder by NBC as Jack Ruby assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald. With the U.S. on the eve of yet another war against communism as over one hundred fifty thousand military advisors are stationed in southern Vietnam the C mature War still creeping amidst the nightmares of millions fearing nuclear holocaust. However, for the Geis of Lexington, Kentucky, they will see a regression to a life much more arduous.My grandparents, along with my become Betty and her sisters, were about to leave the easy living and conveniences of nineteen sixties metropolitan life behind. Howard and Regina Geis had a dream that lay well away from the urban center life. Well away indeed. This dream lied within the backwoods of Barren County down an old pastoral road obscured by the forest itself. An old country road that ran for a good mile down into the hollowForty-four acres of liftland that--building from memory and photographs--would eventually become the epitome of rustic charm. The old homestead was surrounded by the kind of eerie, primeval wilderness that can only be truly felt by the unfiltered imagination of youth. Never more truer than when the fog would roll out of the thicket, over the rise and fall of the hills and creep up to the doorsteps.Even though one could call upon memory to reconstruct the family farm and the subsistence farming lifestyle, to really tell this story... ...est daughters dairy farm. Before writing this I took the opportunity to venture back into those fabled woods, down that cover of country gravel to see for myself what remained of the place where my mother grew up and so many fond memories were shared out between my cousins and I. Suffice to say, no wild understand was needed to assume what to expect once the farmhouse was within view. I was not surprised when my eyes fell upon the solemn sight. That place which held a lifetime of memories shared by three generations was nothing more than a shadow left in shambles. The farm house had been swallowed up in the years passed as any sign of life and cultivation has been slowly returning to natural order. Gone away were the verdant fields, the shrill laughter of children, and the nostalgic smell of the seasons that always mingled with the aromas of grandma Geis country cooking.