We had some horses that were riding horses. My sister Irene used to ride and jump her favorite horse in the field in front of the house. Once I was thrown from a horse and landed on my back and couldn't move for awhile. My brother Jonathan (my family called him "Jonce" and Jim and I called him "Donce") used to ride a horse called "Flash". He used to brag about how he could keep up with and even pass cars whenever he rode "Flash" into town.

     This is a story about my brother Jonathan(Donce) that happened back when we lived at Pinecrest, who occasionally walked in his sleep. One night when Papa was away, Mama said she was awakened by a loud noise coming from the outside like somebody was tearing off a board on the meat house. She went to Jonathan's room and woke him up and told him what she had heard. He got out of bed, loaded the 12 gage shotgun,and went outside to look around. A few minutes later he came back into the house and said he hadn't seen nothing. He put the shotgun away and went back to bed. The next morning at breakfast Mama recounted what had taken place the night before. Jonathan spoke up and said, "Why in the world didn't you wake me up so that I could have gone outside to check?" I heard Mama tell this story many times and each time she always said, "My land! I really was scared then, to think that he had been walking around in his sleep with a loaded shotgun. If I had any idea that he was walking in his sleep with that loaded gun, I would have been more afraid of him, then whoever I thought might be breaking into the meathouse."

    Another sleep walking story that Jonathan told himself was one time when he had gone to Arlington, Va. to visit Mama's Brother Uncle Fred Bladen. After he had gone to bed that night, he awoke finding himself standing on a street corner under a street light, in plain view, about two blocks from Uncle Fred's house in nothing but his under shorts. He said he didn't know what to do. There he was out there two blocks away from Uncle Freds in nothing, but his under shorts, thinking that if a policeman came along he would be locked up for indecent exposure. So he decided that the best thing he could do was to run back just as fast as he could. Luckily it was about 3:00 AM and he made it back without anybody seeing him.

    Some of the work that had to be done on the farm was not much fun. Jim, Robert and I had to get in wood every evening for cooking and heating. Sometimes this required cutting and splitting the wood before carrying it into the house. Other jobs were weeding and hoeing the big garden that was planted every spring. Papa planted potatoes on the 17 March, even if it was snowing. We raised just about every thing we ate, including butchering our own meat.

    There was no electricity on the farm, so the milk, cream, butter, or anything else that needed to be kept cool, was stored in one gallon or half gallon tin buckets with tops or fruit jars with lids. They were then put in a springhouse, that was located behind the farmhouse. The spring house had a pool of shallow cool water where we sat the milk and other things. Almost every night, Mama and I would go out to the springhouse and bring in a jar of milk, so we would have a glass of milk and sometimes a piece of one of her big crust apple and raisin pies, before going to bed.

    Then, there were the cold days in the Fall when I would get up about daylight and go with Papa to take a load of grain, to be ground into flour or corn meal to Old Beverly Mill near the town of Haymarket. Old Beverly Mill was built around 1745. It was about 15 miles to the mill and this would take a whole day by horse and wagon to get there and back. Some of the time was spent waiting for the grain to be ground. The mill would keep some of the grain for payment and Papa would sell some so he could have some cash to spend for other things that we might need for our family. On the way home he would always stop at this little store and buy him and I some candy.

    We Had to go through the town of Haymarket whenever we went to the mill. Just as we entered town Papa would sit up straight, pull his hat brim down over his forehead and say to the horses, "Get up there." I think he wanted us to look good to the people out on the street. If there were women on the street, he would tip his hat and say, "Good morning madam," Or,"Good evening madam," which ever was appropriate. After riding all day on the wagon over some pretty rough roads, I usually got a bad case of stomach cramps that lasted most of the night, but I wouldn't have missed one of those trips to the mill for anything.

    The saddest thing that I ever experienced on the farm was the "Hobos" as they were called in those days, who would stop by asking for work just for food or a place to sleep. These were normally young men and boys in their mid to late teens or early twenties who could not find work, because of the great depression. Most were from large families and due to lack of enough food and no work, could not afford for them to stay at home any longer. Many were traveling without warm clothing in extreme cold weather.

    Once my brother "Jonce" traded one of them a big black cowboy hat for a guitar. It was wintertime and the "Hobo" said he needed the hat to keep his head warm more than he needed the guitar . "Jonce" soon learned how to play the guitar, and continued to play for the rest of his life. These men would chop wood, or do any kind of work, just to get a few sandwiches and a warm dry place to sleep for the night.

    Because of our large family, we didn't have room in the house, but Papa always let them sleep in the barn hayloft. I can still hear him say, "If you boys have any matches on you, give them to me! I can't take any chances of burning down my barn".

    Sometimes they would stay as long as there was work that they could do. Mama always felt so sorry for them and fixed them something good to eat. She often said, "If these were my boys I would want someone to treat them the same way." She always fixed sandwiches for them to take when they left.

    There was a saying that when the "Hobos" were treated good, that they would always leave a sign when they left for the next fellow, like a stone on the gate post. I don't know that this ever happened at our place, but I'm sure if such a thing were true, it happened to us also, because I can't remember a single time that anyone was ever denied a place to sleep or something to eat.

    Uncle Joe wasn't able to help with any of the farm work, but was always curious as to how much work was done each day. For instance Uncle Joe might ask "How many shocks of wheat did you put up today" and My brother Andy who liked to tease, would start to count on his fingers out loud real slow, "1...2....3....4....," and Uncle Joe watching and listening, and chewing his tobacco real fast as he did when he was anxious to hear the answer, would become exasperated and say, "By geminy!, I should have known better than to have asked."

    Uncle Joe called the outhouse a water closet. During the summer months, some of our cousins would come out from Arlington to visit for a week or two at the farm in Buckland. Mary Studt, a rather large girl for her age, I believe she was about ten or twelve, was one of these cousins. Anyway, Uncle Joe had gone to the outhouse and while he was in there, the wooden button on the door either turned by itself and locked the door, or somebody purposely locked the door from the outside. Now this was a pretty hot day to be fastened in the outhouse. When Uncle Joe discovered that he was locked in, he immediately began calling Mama, "Oh Ollie, Oh Ollie, somebody locked me in the water closet." He called several times before Mama heard him and let him out. He was fit to be tied and blamed my cousin Mary for locking the door. The next morning at breakfast, Uncle Joe asked Mary where she had slept last night. This really scared Mary and she said to Mama after breakfast, "Aunt Ollie do you think Uncle Joe was looking for me last night to hurt me cause he thinks I was the one who locked him in the toilet?" Of course Uncle Joe wouldn't have harmed her in any way, but it was rather strange that he asked her where she had slept. He never explained what he had meant and the subject was never brought up again.

     Uncle Joe would sit in a chair outside on the side of the house facing the highway (route 29), and count the traffic going both ways. He would come in each night, sometimes after dark, and tell everybody how many cars he seen that day. One night after dark, Irene got a flashlight and a white bed sheet and sneaked out to the chicken house, which was in sight of where Uncle Joe sat, but quite a distance away. She put the sheet over her head with the flashlight turned on and came out of the chicken house, walked around awhile and then went back into the chicken house, took off the sheet and turned out the flashlight and sneaked back to the house. Uncle Joe came into the house and didn't say a word about what he had seen. Being suspicious that maybe somebody was trying to scare him into thinking he had seen a ghost, he waited for about 3 weeks before he finally mentioned that he had seen something strange that night. As far as I know no one ever told him what had really happened.

    Papa and Mama used to tell a story about another time that Uncle Joe had an encounter with a ghost. This was long before I was born. Not long after they were married, they were living with my Grandmother Ankers along with two of my uncles, Uncle Harve and Uncle Oscar, in an old farmhouse.

    This farm had been owned by an old woman named Martha Harrison who had lived there by herself for many years before she died. The place was known as the "Old Harrison Place." It was said that Martha had buried money on the property, (the money was never found) and the superstition was that anytime people buried money on property where they lived, they would come back after they died to look after it. So the old house had a reputation of being haunted. It was said that doors would open by themselves, pots and pans would rattle in the middle of the night, footsteps could be heard on the stairway, etc.

     Uncle Harve claimed he awoke early one morning to the sound of pans and dishes rattling downstairs in the kitchen. Thinking it was Grandmother Ankers preparing breakfast, he got up and dressed and went down stairs. When he entered the kitchen it was dark as pitch and not a soul was up but him. He looked at his watch and it was 2 A.M.

     Once when Uncle Joe had come for a visit on an extremely cold winter night, he had set up to keep the fire going in the cook stove. According to him as he sat there in the kitchen, the outside door kept opening. He would get up, go shut and lock it and go sat back down by the fire. He would no more than get sat down, than the door would open again. He claimed that this happened several times before he finally gave up and said, "Well Martha, you can't scare me out, but you sure can freeze me out," so he went to bed leaving the door wide open. It was still open the next morning when my grandmother and mother went down to fix breakfast. The fire had gone out in the stove and the kitchen was freezing cold.

    Throughout the years as I was growing up, I often heard about the strange things that went on at the old Harrison place. Our home was only a few miles from there. Sometime during the 1930s, Papa, who was a carpenter, was hired by some people who had bought the place to remodel the old house. He installed new windows and doors among many other things. He said that after he had installed the doors with new locks and shut and locked them, they would often be open when he came back to work the next day. This surely substantiates Uncle Joe's account of what happened to him in 1910.