Grandmother Maude Griffin's picture
(Rabbit and Chicks)

Rabbit & Chicks

This picture was my grandmother Maude Griffin's favorite and as best as I can remember, the only framed "art" picture that she had.  When she and my grandfather Lindsey lived at Mole Hill (later re-named Mountain) WV, it hung in their bedroom.  Then when they moved to Vienna, WV, a suburb of Parkersburg, to the little house that dad and his brothers bought for them, it again was placed in their bedroom.  After Lindsey died, the house was sold and Grandma Maude moved in with Uncle Floyd Griffin in Parkersburg.  I remember in 1951 when I was 12, driving to Vienna in Dad's new '51 Chevy Sedan Delivery.  All the remaining belongings were to be divided up amongst the four brothers, Floyd, Eddie, Carl and Dad.  As I remember there was relatively little bickering over items, with each brother getting pretty much the things that were dearest to him.  This picture was among the first things that Dad chose so I have to think that it was in their home when he was little, probably even before he was born in 1916.  After Dad died, Barbara and I brought the picture home to Illinois, so it's now come from Mole Hill, WV, Newell, WV, Clearwater, FL and now Park Forest, IL. 

But the memories this picture brings to me are those from Mole Hill and that West Virginia hill farm where Grandpa Lindsey raised sheep, a milk cow or two, chickens for eggs and eating and gardens to supply the root cellar.  There was a water well just a few feet out the kitchen door with a "picture book" roof over it and a crank to lower the galvanized bucket down on a rope which yielded the sweet cold water that I still remember to this day.  Grandma Maude did all her cooking over a wood cookstove.  She had a "pie safe" in the kitchen, a wooden cabinet with tin door panels that were nail-punched with holes in a decorative pattern.  This kept the flies out but still gave circulation of air.  My cousin Jeannine and her husband Bud retrieved that and restored it years ago just before the house fell down. 

Mole Hill, WV


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