I’ve been going to Maine since my first summer here on Earth. My earliest recollections are my family summers at the Grady farm. Long after we stopped going there and my parents had past, I had asked several cousins what our connection to them was and all they knew was that Harold was a cousin of some sort. Finding out was important not only for my own fond memories but when I look at the old photos you could see a close friendship my dad and my grandmother had with Harold and his mother Alvenia.
For a little boy like my self, there couldn’t have been a better place to visit. Where should I start but at that big old farm kitchen with the wood stove that heated your hot water, warmed the kitchen and produced the best biscuits and baked beans. The kitchen had a sink with a hand pump for water and a sluice out the back for the drain. It also contained the cream separator and the butter churn which I would operate and then help to make the butter into one pound cakes for sale at the kitchen table. Dinner was always an interest as I watched Chester the very old “hired hand” eat his peas with a knife. Before nursing homes people took care of each other, beside Chester there was another at the table. Her name was “Nellie Whitehead” and was probably another cousin with no other family. I was also fascinated with the crank telephone that hung on the parlor wall, perhaps that’s what lead me to a “telephone man”
Out the back door and you entered into a world that eventually ended in the barn. First was the wood supply for the wood stove, then “the facilities” contained indoors. OK, it was an Outhouse or was it an Inhouse, and it had 3 or 4 different size seats for daddy, mommy and baby bears.
Out at the barn, my sister and I could climb up to get hay for the horses and send it down a chute to their stall. One was named Pete and the other a name that escapes at the moment. They were still used to pull the hay and manure wagons. Then there were a dozen cows who would come in from the fields to be milked and fed by Chester and Harold. Haying was always a part of our vacation as my dad would help get it in. When I was a little bigger I would ride on the hay rake that the tractor pulled. I would have to pull the handle at the right time to get the hay in the rows for pickup.
The Black Smith Shop was across the dirt road and I’ve found records that Harold’s father was a blacksmith and Harold did some also as well as farming. It was a dark and dusty place with the big bellows and fire pit but ready to fall down by the early fifties. My dad hitched up the tractor one summer and down it came. What stories might that place could tell?
Besides the fun on the farm, we all went down to the sea for a clam bake down on the coast or go to the ice house and come back with a large block to break up to churn homemade ice cream. We would always bring two of Harold's favorites a box or two of salted codfish and large loaves of Italian bread from the Westerly Bakery. and we can't forget the Fiddle Heads Gladys had put up would always part of the meal.
This summer I followed my dream to find the old place. I had scoured maps and located it with only memories of the turnoff off the main road, it being close to Albion Me. and the fact their neighbors the “Tylers” down the road were in Albion. We were visiting friends in a nearby town and my friend knew the road and off we went on an adventure. We found the house, traveled thru Unity and Thorndike as I point out places of my past. Oh, we also stopped at an Amish Store in Unity, it seems they are moving into Maine and buying the old farms. That is a good thing!
Here’s what I found, the house has been kept up, no longer clapboard, but looks very neat. The facial detail beneath the roof is the same, but the barn is long gone as too many in Maine are.
The other neat thing that happened was that our friends have breakfast most mornings with friends of theirs and told them about our trip. It turns out the women grew up on that road and knew all about the Gradys and remembered them well. It really is a small world when you talk and share yourselves with each other!
So what is the family connection! I had found some info on census forms but still could not link to the Larrabee line. I found a family tree on Ancestry.com, made by a second cousin of mine who I do not know personally, and it had what I lacked. My Great grandfather Truman’s sister Phebe Jane married Steven McKenney. Their child Alvenia was the first cousin to my grandfather. She married William H. Grady and their son Harold was my father's second cousin. There you have it a family connection that lasted 4 generations, not to bad if you ask me.
