our farm's story matters

Ed's Miracle...

My dad, Ed Page, was a gentle, humble man. Even now, I love to hear people tell me 1) what a good man he was and that his 2) property on Hunter's Street was the prettiest land in Abbeville County. He was "the middle" man in a family of 5 sons. He grew up with very little. He dreamed of owning land and some "white face" cows! I have found some old, old bank payment books recording his meager monthly payments for his land. Mr. Sam Carwise was our neighbor. He had never married, he loved my Dad, and he worked with Dad; allowing him to buy his land one parcel at a time. My Dad would leave General Telephone Company every day at 5 pm and go straight to his land. As a family, we knew we got supper when it got too dark for him to work anymore outside! Like most men of the Greatest Generation, he smoked too much. He was tall and lanky, a raw-boned man! I can still see him sitting on his truck's tailgate, with one foot resting on the ground. At the end of the day when everything got quiet and still, he found joy in smoking and watching his cows graze. I understood that my WWII veteran Dad was an excellent shot. His bird dogs were housed in a big pen behind the barn. 

My sister, Becky, was 17 months younger than me. One of our neighbors, "Miss Jenny" Martin, had a granddaughter my age, Abby Martin McCord. We three played in Miss Jenny's flower filled yard. We chased butterflies, tied string around a June Bug's leg to watch it dance, cooled off in the heat of summer in Miss Jenny's huge wash buckets where she hand washed yards and yards of organdy fabric for the customers with curtains. We pretended to cook our mud pies filled with china berries. We tried our hand at picking Mr. Martin's cotton. We strung buttons when it was too rainy outside. We smacked on cold biscuits filled with blackberry jam. Miss Jenny was like a Mom to my Dad and he loved her dearly. She talked my Dad into getting a milk cow. He did the milking, and she sold the butter and buttermilk. 

I remember an article in the Press and Banner praising my Dad for sharing his farm with the neighborhood boys and others. Many of these men now tell me about the fun they had chasing cows, learning how to drive a tractor and helping with the hay mowing, bailing, and hauling. In the Fall everyone came to gather pecans for "free!" My youngest sister, Betty Jo, loved horses and loved to ride all over the property with her horse-loving friend, Karen Woolbright. 

I recently brought a very big rock from the pasture to my home in Mountville. Although, I knew it wasn't practical to keep the land, I was having problems "letting go" of my Dad's "miracle."