When I was 10 years old

When I was 10 years old we got electricity on the farm and in the house. Bill Clinger was the electrician who did the wiring in the evening after his main job and I helped by holding the flash light when he had to work in a dark area. It was a big deal for us to get electricity. For one thing it meant that we could have a radio that didn’t run on batteries. And we could have a real bathroom with water pumped to the commode, and sink and shower. No more house! We could have an electric washing machine rather than one that ran on a one cylinder gasoline engine. We got lights in the barn and didn’t have to carry a kerosine lantern. And we got an electric milking machine.

That was the year my sister Susie got married. The reception was at our house and there were a lot of people there. Mostly big people. No kids to play with. During the afternoon a big thunder storm came up, so everyone was inside.

Dad had drilled a water well close to the house and the rig was still sitting there. A bolt of lightening struck the drilling machine and shocked some of the people who were sitting on a metal daybed in side the window about 8 feet from the rig. No one was seriously hurt but it did cause a lot of excitement.

We learned later that the father of one of the people at the reception was killed by lightening that afternoon while he was working on a dragline at a stripmine. That was a sad thing.

I think Peggy started her senior year in highschool that year and Ed was a junior. That year I started 5th grade at Summerville. Helen Wesson was my teacher and she was a tough old girl. Helen and her sister Mary had been teaching 4th and 5 grade forever, or so it seemed.

Coming from out of town and being one of the 3 Catholics in the school I had to defend my rights for a while until the kids got use to me. Glenn Reed, Dick Garis, Don Getty and Tom Fitzsimons turned out to be pretty good friends. Later on Tom Eshelman (Mouse) and Jack Snyder got added to our group.

During April at the end of 5th grade. Roy Gourley’s parents bought a farm around the hill from us. Roy was one day younger than me and he thought that he had to prove how tough he was so he tried to bully me on the school bus. I took it for a while and then decide that I needed to do something, so I turned around to face his seat and hit him on the nose. I broke his nose and it bled like everything. We have been friends ever since.