When I was little I lived in this house.  My grade school friend, Beth Rich Brown (Yes, she now has MY maiden name) was in Hannibal, Ohio recently and took a picture of my old house and sent it to me.  How sweet was that??? I have very fond memories of living here –at least for the years that I can remember.  We moved here the summer after I was born in April so the first few years are a bit of a blur but I do remember this old brick house with fondness.

I remember the spiral staircase.

I remember the great hiding places.

I remember my room I shared with my sister.

I remember the bunk beds that I broke when I jumped on the top bunk while my sister encouraged me from the bottom bunk.

I remember being distraught when my Easter basket had ants devouring my Peeps after it was hidden early one Easter morning.

I remember our rabbit Sniffy going under that front porch and having to get a cornstalk that we called Stoney Stonewall (My brother says it was a cornstalk but I only remembered it was some kind of stick) to coax the rabbit out.

I remember playing dress up.

With my Daddy’s old Navy sailor hat and some weird dress type thing I posed for a selfie of sorts.

Hannibal was a pretty small town back then and today it only has a population of a bit over 400 people so yes—it was small. My dad was pastor at the Methodist Church there as well as having 3 other churches on the charge.  To say he was busy is an understatement.  But he always managed to find time to spend with the family and one of my memories is of him mowing the grass.  It was funny when Beth sent me the picture of the house because I “remembered” those banks in the front yard being MUCH bigger than they appear to be in that picture.  I remember they seemed very steep.  I remember Daddy putting a rope on the handle of the mower to lower the mower to the bottom and pull it back up to get them mowed.

I sent my older sister, Paula, the picture of the house and said that I remembered those banks being much steeper and she said that was her first thought when she saw the picture also.  Funny how memories change over time.

I also remember that the Hannibal Locks and Dam were being built when we lived there and since the Ohio River was right across the road from our house (below those two banks which are smaller than I remember) we would watch all the construction workers from the banks and I even remember throwing them apples from our stations on the banks.  I do not remember if we threw them butternuts –oh those dreaded ugly butternuts that I wrote about recently.

Isn’t it interesting how memories linger?  This week I loved how a picture of a house triggered a multitude of memories for me.

The Brown Family circa 1960