Indiana

Just weeks later we would be in Indiana...

Huge red and juicy tomatoes we picked…
in the ever increasing cold of the North Country
in which we all found ourselves trapped.
We were desperate to get enough money to get back south -
back home!


Mama was there, too, taped tightly across the chest, with broken ribs!
This due to a terrible turn of fate…
a car wreck, which occurred on my sister’s 8th birthday! It was August!
Mama and Daddy had gone into the little town to get a cake and some gifts
when the accident occured.


So we picked those tomatoes ...We had to get back home!

We had started school there, but knowing we would be leaving before any kind of
friendships could be formed with the local kids. That would not have been likely to happen,
regardless of how long we might have been there. The gulf between us was too wide...


We finally left Indiana on a cold October day, with a bag of fresh baked biscuits and country ham; provided by the folks who owned the farm on which we had lived for the past couple months…

We left with some fond memories…but more bad ones, for this period of our life.

We were sad to leave the new little friends we had there ...Steven , Michael and Rex – the little boys of the farm- and, the farm, itself! The big dairy barn had been interesting – the milking machines- and, too, the fresh, foamy, warm (fresh from the cow) milk offered to us - and taken, once or twice - straight from the milk pail :) I had been enchanted, too, with the free roaming bantam chickens of the farm, in their fluffy, colorful, splendor!

With our bedding and other belongings loaded, and a quickly assembled ‘crate-cage’ made for the chickens our farm friends had given us, once again, we headed south!
… A long ride, mostly faded from my memory now – except for the part about the chickens escaping as we traveled on our way!…Escaping on some long forgotten road, In some state between Indiana and Florida.

But ... all were not lost! :)

We eventually arrived in South,Fl.,with some chickens still captive!


Perrine (So.DadeCo.-Miami) would prove to be our home for the remainder of my own and my sister's childhoods. We were able to make friends there…friendships that would carry over into the next school year…and the next!

Mama was happy to get back in the tropical clime - and so- we were too!


…Remembering…
Nov.’03


Photo #1
This is the day we left for back south- Oct9, 1952
I had turned 11 in May, My sis was 8.
My older sister had gone back by Grey Hound bus!


Photo #2
This is me, back in So. Florida, with one of the hens that made the trip from Indiana-and some chicks she hatched.
The cat is Tom!
This was when I was 12 years old, I believe. A few months after our return south!