Belonging & Special Places

I belong to a very large family with loads of cousins on both sides. My first birthday was celebrated in my maternal great-grandfather’s farm house. I learned to swim in an old strip mine lake from a wooden dock hung over a 50-ft-plus dropoff by my paternal grandfather.

These places—the Dunning Farmhouse and the Doyle Cabin—are home to cherished childhood memories, but their mystique was due to the people I loved who congregated there.

THE DUNNING FARM

Mom’s family held an annual reunion at the farmhouse that regularly drew 100 or more family members from across the country. It was held at her maternal grandfather’s home the first weekend of October near his birthday.

I don’t know how long the 40-acre farm belonged to the family, but Grandpa Dunning raised his nine kids in that white farmhouse on Wheeling Road NW of “Frisco” (Gibson County, IN).

The long sloping front yard had a pair of large (oak?) trees up near the porch that served as goalposts for the large football game every year. And every year, it morphed into a contest of male strength to see who could throw the football farthest into the cornfield across the road.

The men threw horseshoes and told tall tales while the women served up some of the best home cooked meals in Indiana. Oh my, Grandma’s blackberry cobbler…🤤🤤🤤

In later years, long after Grandpa Dunning was gone (died aged 92 in August 1977), my Uncle David began the tradition of taking the kids on a hayride up through Wheeling, past the covered bridge, and up to Union just across the Pike County line. There he’d treat “the youngins” to ice cream at the country store before the slow tractor ride back.

There was always a bonfire and weiner roast the night before the big reunion. The first weekend in October was always a date I looked forward to and a hallmark of my childhood.

THE DOYLE CABIN

Dad's family gathers at the cabin every 4th of July, drawing his five siblings from across the US, and the two to four generations that followed them. My Grandpa Doyle built that log cabin from old utility poles, using a block-and-tackle system. It featured a corrugated tin roof that could lull you to sleep on rainy afternoons.

He built it in the 1950’s on land he won in a lottery at the utility company he worked for in Sullivan. It sat on a large, upside down Y-shaped lake that formed in a Sherwood Templeton coal mine named Robin Hood. Fed by fresh spring water and partially surrounded by shale gob piles, it was a hidden gem between Sullivan and Shakamak State Park, an area known for its shallow-depth coal deposits. We dubbed the deep lake Greenbriar.

It was a scary body of water to me as a boy, but plenty of peer pressure had me diving in by the time I was 10. By my teen years, the cousins would race several lots over to a dock with a corroded, and none too springy diving board, and make the Olympic-sized swim back to our dock. We’d run this circuit like a biathlon until we were spent.

My favorite memories were made around the firepit, roasting marshmallows that rarely made it to s’mores, singing silly songs and telling ghost stories. We killed many burgers, dogs and chicken at the bbq pit. And at night, many cousins would lay on the dock in a circle, heads on an innertube, stargazing at the Milky Way.

Plenty of bluegill were pulled out of that lake right off our dock with nothing more than stale bread. A few times we had a bountiful bucketful enough for a fish fry. In later years, when my girls were little, we’d drive into Linton for their County Fair and 4th Fireworks display.

These are the most treasured memories of my Indiana childhood. Having such a large, loving family gave me a strong sense of belonging. Those places and those people are the reason.