CHAPTER 27- PART 1
It is circa 1900, the McCoy family is struggling but they all pull together for the greater good. Reminds me of the saying, “One for all and all for one!” As you will read their world as they knew it was small but life on the farm surrounded by those that loved them and the Word of God made a major impact on their moral character as they grew and took on the ways of those gone before them.
To leave an inheritance of land in this world and a Godly teaching that would entitle their heirs to an inheritance in the next, my Scots ancestors drilled two precepts into their children “Save your money and buy a farm,” and “Fear God and keep His Commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” One would almost think that the former was connected with the latter as a command from Holy Writ, by the zeal of teaching that went into both.
When grandfather Wickerham went to collect his inheritance above, he had but sixty acres for his three heirs (Lois, Victoria and Cargill) to inherit here. He had done better with the latter precept. Eight children had already passed on to the other shore.
Not long before grandfather died, he invested all of his small saving except what he laid by for “last sickness” and burial expenses, in twenty acres of land a quarter mile down The Ridge Road. He preferred to have all land, little as it might be, to leave each child. This piece had been a good buy because father and mother would be giving Aunt Lou a home. Mother received the twenty acres with the farm buildings. Uncle Cargill received the other twenty acres of the home farm and Aunt Lou the twenty-acre tract down the road.
Father (Andrew McCoy) rented Aunt Lou’s twenty acres, clearing most of it from brush land until its value increase yearly; then he would pay her a higher rent.
Aunt Lou was frail and in her early forties when I first remember her, but able to get around and go places and was keen-witted, attractive spinster. The rent money was ample for her few personal needs, and she was always well groomed.
Occasionally some widower she had known in her youth as a single man dropped in to call and usually made it a point before, he left to propose marriage.
“He can’t fool me,” Aunt Lou would say to mother later. “He knows my twenty acres will outlast me long enough,” So, Aunt Lou, with true Scots’ canniness, never married.
As soon as father and mother could see their way clear to go in debt, they bought her brother’s twenty acres. This transaction I can dimly remember only because the quince tree and the pear trees became ours.
The purchase price was $400. This was borrowed in full, from a private money lender and the word mortgage was added to my growing vocabulary. As the meaning of the word became impressed on my mind the quince trees and the pear trees seemed something that might be ours today and only something to gaze longingly at tomorrow.
This impression was deepened by a local debater, M.P. Liming who, (Maxwell Pierce Liming) (1857-1939) had a high clipped rapid fire speech similar to today’s Water Winchell.
M. P. was a thin, wiry little man, with a goatee. He always debated in a leaning-forward posture and gestured much. When he thought he had made a particularly impressive point, which he often did, he would pause, stroke his goatee, survey the audience with quick darting glances as he uttered a sort of sizzling laugh that sent chills though me. This seemed to be meant to direct the thought to his opponent, “I guess that one will stop you!”
At this particular school-house debate M.P. had the side against the advisability of buying on time.
“What is a mortgage?” he asked. “I’ll tell you.” and he quoted a definition from some source. Then he gave his own interpretation, “It’s the death grip.” Chill! Chill! Chill! He clenched his point.
It seemed he was looking right at father who by this time was showing signs of going ahead a little faster by going in debt than had been the custom on The Ridge. Little shivers of fear crept over me but I glanced at father and he was laughing with amusement.
Before this purchase mother had not allowed my brother Ellis and me to touch the fruit unless given to us by uncle Cargill, aunt Mary or our cousins when they came to pick some. This was a great restraint as Uncle’s land came right to our yard fence and the trees were just over the fence.
The quince tree was small and the only one in the neighborhood, but Aunt Mary always gave mother, three or four fruit when they picked them.
Quince jelly, to us children, was the most wonderful spread in all the world but those few quinces only gave us a little for special treats now and then. I’ll never forget when they seemed to be slipping away from us forever.
