1944: THEY TOLD ME I LIVED IN "THE STICKS"

Don't let that more recent photo of the Glover home at 131 Hartley Avenue fool you. That house didn't look anything like the one that reposed there during the war years. The front porch was open and we communicated with our neighbors whose porches were also open. During the war years, the Glover's had a mini farm with a gaggle of geese, flocks of "Rhode Island Reds," "Barred Rocks," and just plain white "Leghorns," along with nocturnal weasels, skunks, racoons, and other predators. Did you know that geese are as vigilant as a watchdog, replacing the bark of the dog with the shreaky, panicky, blare of a goose honk that would scare the daylights out of a city slicker. (Our reply to whomever chose to tell is we were from the sticks.) The above photo of Mom Glover feeding our chickens was a daily and nightly process with which we were all familiar. It was taken during the height of WWII here on the home front when we depended on them for our major food source. It was my mom who usually did the feeding. She knew those chickens, and they knew her as they would come scurrying across our yard as she came down the back steps with their food. Today it is more familiarly known as "the boondocks." Back then the term was "the sticks." We did live in the sticks and I am very proud to admit it. There was nothing like a trip over to Kuser's pond to catch tadpoles, frogs, and float on one of those huge old metal cement mixing "boats" and make like Captain Kidd. That little goose with a crutch was a pen and ink drawing I did in order to enhance the column. Sorry to say tha over the years, poor Herman lost a tail that was once there.