Saturday, April 2, 2011

Living - Down In The Country




Country Life

Now who can’t enjoy living in the country in Southwest Alabama than viewing the rare snow scene pictured above?  

This scene is my home place, Lonesome Pine Farm, including the house where I was born and reared in.  We had a very rare snowstorm on February 10, 2010 that produced about four inches of accumulation.  

The scene is picturesque in itself, but my nephew who is a professional photographer actually took seven shots and using his software “sewed” the seven shots together into one continuing panorama.

This scene was enabled by the hard work of my father, J. Sam Wood.  He retired from the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1965 and returned home to a badly grown up pecan orchard, pastures and an old, rotting barn.

The sad part of this time was the fact that my wife of 52 ½ years, JoAnne, had died the day before from a brain hemorrhage.  We actually had to move her funeral day back one day to avoid folks dealing with a snow storm in the south.  Snow is so rare in the deep south that governmental crews just don’t have the funds to let removal equipment sit for years and not used. 
Over the years, I had said that I would like to retire back to Millry and JoAnne  would say, “I don’t want to go back in those sticks to live.  Those folks are not friendly.  Well, after I retired from Construction Safety Management work in locations all around the country and she retired from Gulf Lumber Company in Mobile, we began spending quite a bit of time at the farm that I named “Lonesome Pine” after my mother died and I inherited the old house and barn with some acreage, we made a couple of improvements to the house by updating the old bath room and removing the old, crumbling double fireplaces and chimney and created a new, large walk-in closet.

Later, we did decide to update the old house with new plumbing, wiring, insulating, all new floors, new central heat and air conditioning, a large room added to the back of the house and a new bathroom.  We lived here for 10 years until JoAnne’s death in February 2010.  Only a week before she died, we were riding down Airport Boulevard in Mobile and she made the statement, “I’m so thankful that we don’t live down here with all this traffic.”  

 She really grew to love Living the Country Life.

2 comments:

  1. Jim, I am so glad you are writing again. You have a talent for making everyday life interesting. I look forward to enjoying your post on Living The Country Life!

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  2. Looks like you are off to a great start. Keep up the good work and I will keep reading.

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