Category Archives: Uncategorized

Autumn came and school started up again, I was in second grade and five years old. We had a hard winter, right after Halloween, we got a big storm that dumped two foot of snow, then it got real cold, they shut down the church because it took too long to get it warm. ChristmasContinue reading “Autumn 1927 in West Virginia, Snow Storms and Flooding, Barn Fire and a Fishnet”

My mother had a neighbor, Charles and Minnie Harshbarger. They had the farm next to ours, the houses were close enough that you could hollar and get their attention. Charley was a scraggy little man that said very little, he had three black horses, and down the hill he had a saw mill, in theContinue reading “Then Lightening Struck the Huge Tree That we were Playing Under, the Whole Tree Burst into Fire…”

School started in the fall, I was to be four years old in September. I watched Dora wash up again, after we came from the barn. She would comb her hair, and wash the cow dung from her shoes, as she got ready for school. As soon as she was finished, I would wash upContinue reading “Guthrie School House 1925 & Ward Fike Thomas”

Ethel went to work for a Charles Kelly’s, a neighbor farmer. She tried to help out at home, by buying us things, she bought me a sweater and a toothbrush, the first I ever had. We all hoped the depression would soon be over. Then one day mother was hurrying around, gathering eggs and gettingContinue reading “She Bought Me a Toothbrush, the First I Ever Had, We all Hoped the Depression Would Soon Be Over.”

As I said in the beginning I was born in those West Virginia hills, northern Preston County, two miles south of Brandonville, on a farm of one hundred and fifty acres. My father owned this farm, it was once owned by my father and uncle Norton, and it was three hundred acres. Then Uncle NortonContinue reading “I had Gone to School Barefooted, as I always did.”

The upstairs in grandmother’s house was two bedrooms separated by a hallway, the bedroom over the living room was where Lucy and Bertha slept, it had two double beds two dressers and two chest of drawers and a trunk, the house didn’t have a chimney, a stove pipe came up through the bedroom floor andContinue reading “Always Chew your Beans at Supper”

Well that was my dad’s family, Now I’ll tell you about my mother’s family. My grandfather was Freeman Maust, he was a tall slim man, clean shave, he always wore felt boots and a suit coat, he had blue eyes and was Dutch, he lived on a small farm seven miles from my dad’s farm.Continue reading “Hog Bladders Make the Best Sounding Banjos”

Then there was Uncle Ray Guthrie, he was also a school teacher and farmer, he married Rea Frankhouser, I liked her, she was short and fat, and laughed a lot, she wasn’t a very good cook or housekeeper, she did what she had to do, as quickly as possible, we had a lot of funContinue reading “West Virginia Icehouse’s, Amos and Andy, Black Tea, & Uncle Roy Learning to “Drive””

Oh those West Virginia hills, how majestic and how grand, with its summits pointed skyward to the great almighty land, is it any wonder than that my heart with rapture fills as I stand once more with loved ones in those West Virginia hills. That’s, the song we used to sing, when I went toContinue reading “Oh! Those West Virginia Hills how Majestic and How Grand”

September 27, 1921 – September 17, 2005 When Ada Guthrie was born on September 27, 1921, in Brandonville, West Virginia, her father, James, was 42, and her mother, Carrie, was 32. She had one son and five daughters with John W. Boyd. She died on September 17, 2005, in Pittsgrove, New Jersey, at the ageContinue reading “Ada Guthrie”