In a short time my parents bought a little farm just a short distance north and east, and on June 13, 1929, my parents were blessed with another daughter- me, Norma Lou. Our barn was located close to the creek and during the spring rains, water came very close to the ham   Our house was on a high hill west of the barn and located on the main road. This farm had been known as "The Robinson" place.

     My earliest recollections of my life begin when I was three or four years old   My family consisted of a loving and hard working father and mother and a sister three years older than me   We lived on a little 50-acre farm with a large garden, chicken house, bam and a 5-room house located on a small hill   My daddy had a team of mules, named Polly and Skeiter   I remember their names well. Polly was smaller than Skeiter, who was taller and bigger. One day while playing in our side yard, the team broke into the yard, running very fast . As they ran between the two cedar trees where I was playing . my mother came out on the front porch to check on me. I was hugging the trunk of one of the trees as they came pounding through   All I could see were pounding hooves coming my way. I'm sure when they were gone, I ran to mania as fast as my little legs could carry me. We had a little brown, black, and white dog named Teddy, whom I loved and with whom I played; wrapping a little piece of thread around his neck and wrapping it around a chair leg  I am told he would stand for hours if I did not untie him. One day, Teddy was missing and Daddy went across the road to an open field and walked until he found my dog's collar. I was without a dog until one day my Mother and I walked to a Bethel Ladies Aid meeting at Herbert and Alice Man's home; I was probably about five years old. When we were ready to start for home, Alice showed me their new little puppies and told me I could have one. I was delighted and so off we started walking towards home. It was a long walk and I would carry the puppy for a while, then put her down and rest before resuming our walk When I arrived at home, after walking, probably , 4 or 5 miles, I ran to show Daddy my new puppy. Daddy didn't seem too happy about this little white puppy! I wanted Daddy to be so pleased and I said, "Daddy, what can I call my puppy?" and he said, "well, call her Joopy". So I was delighted and had my little rat terrier for many years until she passed away at the age of fourteen

     We had a horse named Freidie, and a buggy  My mother could drive the horse and buggy. We had a Model T Ford with side curtains. My mother never learned to drive the Model T; however she would take my sister to meet the school bus at Bethel School in the buggy where a big yellow school bus would transport the children to New Marion with a grade school and high school.

     We lived on our little farm until I was six years old. My folks had many friends come visit us , Clyde and Goldie Kerns and their son who was between me and my sister in age. came one Sunday. After our noon meal which, I'm sure, consisted of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy, green beans, and sliced tomatoes, and pie After eating and while playing on the outside cellar steps, the boy tailed a black snake and chopped it with a hoe; I ran screaming to my mother because of all the little snakes which ran out of the snake. I was always frightened of snakes because another time my sister and I were playing in the creek, Little Graham, which had large ledges; and was just east of our barn. We had been playing with the Mathews children, a boy, Marshall, one year younger than me and his sister , lone, a year or two younger than my sister; and, after playing in the creek, we were running back home, with me on the inside track of a ledge and my sister on the outside when a large water moccasin came out of the ledge and struck me on my little toe. The pain was not severe but we were scared and ran to the house crying for mother. In a panic and not knowing what to do, she ran to tall a young chicken and placed it on my toe. Daddy hurried to the neighbor to get him to help him break the ledge and to retrieve the snake. The snake was a huge non-poisonous water moccasin, which the neighbor, Charlie Wiley, killed. My daddy was about as frightened of snakes as I have always been and many times I've heard him tell of the big snake that was as big as his arm! My mother had a canary which was in a cage on a hanging stand in the kitchen window. When the canary died, my sister and I put it in a match box and had a funeral for it and buried it beside the garden. When I went to bed at night, my Daddy always carried me upstairs to bed, but he always wound the clock, and ate some raisins before he went to bed. Daddy would rock me to sleep in a big rocker and sing little songs which he made up as he sang. These many years later, I now have the big rocker in my sun room. Because I was small and frail and would not eat very good, my mother would fix me a warm glass of milk right after she had milked the cows   She would put sugar and vanilla in it to try to get me to drink it. I'm not fond of milk yet today.

     After the summer I was six, Mr. Alexander Thomson came calling and made Daddy an offer on his farm   As times were hard , he sold the farm. I was sad to leave because my mother and sister and I often walked down to my maternal grandparents to visit them. My grandfather was elderly and sat in a big arm chair by the dining room window on the east side of the house. How long he had been this way, I'm not sure.

     He had a great long white beard and I loved to visit. My grandmother always had a cookie jar in the dining room cabinet and I was allowed to get me a cookie. Of course, we had walked through the fields stopping to visit one of my favorites, Stella Caplinger. Stella lived with her father and I guess her mother had passed away; she was a favorite friend of our family; so we always stopped to rest and visit with Stella each time we went to visit my grandparents. She, too, always had cookies for the journey. Today, I own Stella Caplinger's family Bible, having bought it at a farm sale of Barbara and Virgil Huelson. Barbara and Virgil were our future neighbors, as well as, Barbara was somehow related to my father, and, perhaps, somehow related to Stella.

     We walked south of Stella's past a house where my parents had lived when my older sister, Mary June , was born. Later the home of the Robert Knox family, a family of five or six who came from Kentucky-a wonderful family as I remember. They had attractive daughters and sons; one daughter's name was Nell, whom I remember. At least, I remember my parents speaking well of the Knox family and we visited with them. The family lived up on a high hill and after passing their house, we walked down the hill to the creek and crossed over the creek to my grandparents. If the creek was up, we would have to go down the creek a short distance to the high foot bridge and cross over. My grandmother had a large snowball bush in the front yard and always a large garden. They carried their drinking water from a spring with a large hanging rock overhead; of course they had a cistern for catching water to wash, bathe, etc.

     In the fall we moved to a farm, owned by Mr. Thomson, located west and north of our farm. This was a temporary move as the former owners, Mr. & Mrs. Simmons, were elderly and were moving back to Indianapolis. They had a big collie dog and wanted us to take him. We children were delighted; he was a beautiful dog and we loved having him. I still had my little Joopy, and now we had two dogs. After spending a long cold winter in this home in December, my paternal grandfather died.  (I loved to visit my paternal grandparents too. My grandfather would talk to me about his shoes which had little holes in the top and he would tell me they were air holes, which I thought was funny . They had a mulberry tree out by the fence and my little cousin and I would climb up to pick and eat the mulberries. When we went to visit them, my grandmother always had a good dinner; but what I remember about the meal was her delicious strawberries preserves, and I got to listen to her radio by earphones while my parents visited. } We had many experiences living here. I still had a small creek in which to play and I started to school. I loved my bus driver, Howard Andrews, who, on occasion, would carry me in to the house, if I had happened to go to sleep on the way home. He was a kind and loving father and we lived a short distance off of the main road, so he would not awaken me, but carry me to my home. He later had two or three daughters of his own and I always kept in touch with them in his later life. While we lived in this house, other interesting things happened, such as, in the fall, the house was re-roofed. The gentleman who did the work was a friend of my family, Red Powers, and as he tore off the old shingles, I picked them up in my little red wagon. I liked Red and he would talk to me and the work was fun and I was helping! We, also, had an old gentleman, known by some as "the hermit" He lived in a little shack on the back of our farm and Daddy would take food to him which was left from our meal and I would go with him to see Leander Hans. He ate mostly cracked corn and his house was not very warm and Daddy checked on him many times that cold winter.

In the early spring of 1937, we moved to another farm that was much closer to "Old Timbers" where Daddy was working and this was the original plan. The house was a large eight room house with a large glassed in porch. The house which had been recently remodeled was located back a lane from the main road. It had a barn, large orchard and we had lots of room for a garden and pasture for our milk cows, pigs, chickens, ducks, geese, etc. We were farmers and were still able to have our own farm.. Each day my father went to work over at the big barn - tilling the farm grounds, along with others, maintaining the buildings, cutting firewood, or whatever work was necessary. My father was paid a monthly salary and my mother cared for two daughters. Later we added a baby sister, July 11, 1940. Her name was Wanda Lee and mother told we girls not to nick name her, but before the week was out, mother called her Peachie and she is known by that by many people yet today. My mother was a hard working farm lady who milked the two or three milk cows, tended a large garden, canning 7-800 quarts of food each year.. She picked black berries, cherries, grapes, and apples, besides raising chickens, ducks, and geese. d

She picked feathers from the ducks and geese to make our pillows.

     Then, in 1937, I had a serious health problem which required two surgeries and approximately two years of recovery. I tell you this to remind you of the "depression" years which had begun the year of my birth. Many trips to the hospital at Batesville and to the doctor (Dr. Geo. S. Row), at Osgood kept my daddy busy working, as well as, worried. My mother was busy and staying with me at the hospital. My maternal grandmother, now a widow, came to live with us in 1937-38 and did so until her death in March of 1942.

     While I was recuperating many people came to see me. I was unable to go to school from October until the following May. My sister brought my school assignments home and I was even permitted to take my examinations at home, but I passed the third grade of school with the help of my family and my teacher, Miss Ruth Haft. The pastor of Bethel Baptist Church , Rev. Malone came to see me. Mrs. Alexander Thomson would walk over from Old Timbers when she was there. Many friends, Basil and Eula Harmon and their two children, Jerry and Marjorie came, Florence and Everett Richardson and Virgil and Barbara Huelson, Lester and Mable Furlough and son, George, and my little playmate, Don Miller. Many others, too numerous to mention, besides my many relatives ,visited my family and shared with us. We were eternally grateful and I shall always hold them dearly. My little playmate, Don, son of the caretaker of Old Timbers, would slip away from home and come to play, he was only five, but his mother, Hallie, knew he probably was at our house and she would send one of the men to come and get him. Others who came were Bacil and Eula Harmon with their children, Jerry and Marjorie. Marjorie and I would play for hours out under a shade tree where we had a bed sheet wrapped around my mother's bean poles , our wigwam, with a batch of green apples and a paring knife. I don't remember getting a stomach ache!

     When my daddy came home from work one evening he told us what the government planned to do. We were shocked and it seemed we had been through so much turmoil, but the war news was not good and the government did what it had to do - PREPARE - FOR - WAR! We, like many others, wondered why it had be our homes, farms, churches, cemeteries, schools, and our entire families, parents, children, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles,-- why this particular area? People were in a state of shock and panic. Where could we find another job, farm, home, school, friends, and church? But, after checking several different possibilities, and finding nothing to compare, a decision had to be made before March , 1941. About March 15-31 we were moving to the northern part of Jennings County on a county road with a farm situated next door to a Baptist Church, Bear Creek, and near to three other families who were friends, neighbors, and family in the Proving Ground. We were situated, but homesick. We entered the Scipio school in March, many new faces, made a few friends and only knew the few we had met at the church Sometime in April or May our entire family had the mumps, baby sister first, then mother, my older sister, and last, Daddy and me. We were all very sick,; one barely able to go until another would go down. Finally, school was out and I was helping my mother with new baby chickens We still had our horse, Freidie and our two dogs, Joopy and Rex, our collie, but Rex had come up missing shortly after leaving the Proving Ground and Daddy had gone back toour old home and Rex came from the garage to meet him. He thought we were only visiting and he walked the fifty miles to go back home. Thank God for Rex, Daddy and God's love and care of us! Life was not to be the same, just yet.

     In July we had a severe electrical storm, lightning struck our house and it burned to the ground. We were devastated again. Daddy and I had gone to the barn to scoop oats which had just been threshed and had broken through the floor. Not knowing that the house was on fire, my mother called us and , with no telephone, no one knew. I was told to hold my baby sister in the car and blow the horn. My mother and daddy tried to carry canned goods, which my mother had canned, tried to keep my grandmother from going back into the house and, I'm sure my sister was grabbing anything she could get from the burning house. Very few things were saved; however my mother and daddy dragged the piano down over the porch which later took six men to load on a truck. We were fortunate to have known the doctor, Dr. Norton, who had treated us when we all had the mumps, because he owned a little farm in Decatur County and north of our home. He had a small five-room house, which he said we could move into until a new house could be built at the present location. Daddy had to travel back to the farm daily to care for the livestock for approximately ten months. In March of 1942 my maternal grandmother passed away and we returned to the original farm for a few years.

We had gone to the Decatur school while living in Dr. Norton's house and Daddy had us transferred there for the remaining years until my sister graduated from high school in 1944. The years we attended the Decatur school are remembered with fondness as we were once again able to attend school with the families who we knew in the Proving Ground. In the fall of 1944, we moved into Bartholomew County and I attended Columbus High School until my graduation in 1947. This was difficult for me, because I was now without my sister and the Columbus school was so much larger than to what I had been accustomed.

     I have told my story from beyond the Proving Ground to explain the affect of the move upon my life. I realize life goes on for everyone, but circumstances do change our lives in unexpected ways. I'm thankful for my life and all the things I have experienced. I thank God for His care and guidance and I'm grateful for my family and the many friends I've made along the way.

     Norma Lou Adam Irwin July, 2005