Roger Keith Casto

Some of my earliest memories are from living over on the old Perry Haggart place on Hemlock Road in Ravenswood. We had a dog that ran the hogs all the time and made them lose weight. I remember Dad being mad at it all the time. Once Mom and I walked to the store, just her and me. Once we walked out to the point that looked down over Silverton and we could see the old mill that was there.

We lived in Washington bottom for awhile and we walked to the railroad tracks to gather coal to burn in the stove. Then we lived on the Rader farm. I can remember a big snow in 1951 that was so deep it was over my head. Dad and the older ones made paths to the chicken house and the barn. I could not see over the edges of the paths. Once Dad made homemade beer in that old chicken house and sold it to my uncle Tony, who took it to New York to resell.

One time a bunch of the kids were swimming in the creek. Dad said it was time for Darry and me to learn to swim since we were 6 and 7 years old. He picked us up and threw us in. We came up kicking and sputtering, but by the end of the summer, we could dog paddle for hours. We would also play hide and seek in the big hay shocks in the field by the creek.

Dad used to raise a big crop of watermelons. One year he had a great big one that he planned to enter in a contest. John, Dean, Donald and some of the neighborhood boys and I stole it and took it up to the barn and ate it. He made us gather up every seed of his prizewinner then gave us a hiding.

I remember some school happenings too. Dad wasn't real happy about us going to school because we were needed to work around the farm, but we were really too small to help much when we started. John, Barb and I started at the Buffalo School at Marshall, a one room school. The teacher would pick us up and take us home. We went there a couple of years, then in second or third grade, we went to the Victory School on Joe's Run taught by Edwin Parsons. Sometimes we would walk over the hills or ride in Mr. Parson's jeep. Many times we had to get rocks off the hillsides to put in the holes or ruts to get there or home. In the mornings we'd carry coal in and start up the coal burner to warm the school before classes started. We would break at noon for our lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and water that we pumped ourselves from the pitcher pump. Since we had an hour, we would play tag, baseball and cowboys and Indians in the woods. We played baseball without gloves or protective gear and often with a cracked bat. Then it was back to class until 4:00.

After school we had to milk the cow, feed the chickens and gather eggs or do other chores. Then we might play in the big, old beech tree or play "Keep Away" or "King of the Mountain." In the winter, we'd ride sleds made of car hoods and slide down the hill behind the barn. Four or five of us at a time would fit in the hood and we would fly. We had a big old workhorse named Dan, and a black horse. I think it's name was Nick. Darry and I rode Dan and Dean and John rode Nick. We decided to ride down the creek bottom. A snake reared up and scared the horses. Old Dan di okay, but Nick bolted off and dashed down the bottom at full tilt. Dean and John tried to stop him, but he threw them off in the ditchline. Both of them were bruised, but okay. John is still scared of horses. Dean doesn't much like them either.

In the eighth grade, Darry and I walked the three miles to school each day. Taking a shortcut through Mr. Coon's farm one evening, we heard some chickens cackling and decided it would be fun to find their nests. So we sneaked into the barn and rummaged around in the hay. We were reaching into one nest to check for eggs and suddenly a squirrel jumped out and scared both of us. We ran for home, no eggs.

Once Darry, John, Dean and I were helping Dad cut timber on the "big creek". We cut down a big old oak tree with a nest of baby weasels in it. We wanted some for pets, so we tried all day to catch those weasels. They were slim and quick and we never caught a one. Dad sat and laughed at all four of us. He knew we'd never catch them.

Coming back from Joann's house one day where we had been cutting mine props. We were riding in the back of the wagon in the props. The wagon hit a bump and Darry fell under the wagon and got run over. The ground must have been soft because he only got skinned a bruised. We not only cut mine props, but also logs for sawing. We stacked slabs across the little run and had the road run between the piles. Dean, John and I were helping Dad load some crossties when Steve, Denny and Darry came flying up the road on bicycles between the slab piles. Steve's chain broke and he hit a slab which flipped him up in the air. He landed between two crossties instead of on top of them. He was scraped up and sore, but otherwise fine.

One summer we were hoeing long rows of field corn. Dad told us that when we got too hot, we could swim in the creek. So we took off our clothes and went skinny dipping. Barb and Doris Simons Blankenship crept over the bank and stole our clothes. Dean and John offered Darry and I a quarter to go get our clothes. So we ran across the field naked as jaybirds to catch the girls and get our clothes. Before we got out of the corn rows however, Dad caught them. We didn't get our quarter, the girls got a switching and had to bring our clothes back. Next time we kept our drawers on.

In the wintertime, besides sledding, we would often skate on the pond at the mouth of Joe's Run. Darry had a motorcycle and would ride it on the ice pulling ten or fifteen of us behind him. We could go real fast. We also skated on the creek. Denny, Rick and Joe McKowen, Ernie Coon and I got cold skating there one winter. Ernie stole a quart of Gus' homemade wine and we all got higher than kites. When we got home, we were all pretty sick. Must have been some kind of flu.

I loved to coon hunt. Once I was old enough not to be afraid of the dark, it was great fun. We had an old mixed breed dog named Brutus who liked ot hunt with me. One night, coming up through the bottom with Brutus and another dog, something got in my face in the dark and started striking at me. The dogs turned on me and started barking at me. It made my hat raise right off my head and I raced for the house. Dad said he figured it was some kind of owl. Put me off of coon hunting for a while.

Times were hard, but many of them were happy. We always had each other.