The Jon-Jon Stories are a collection of stories about growing up on a farm in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania. If you’re interested in reading others, click here.
In the fall of 1958, my family moved from Ingram, outside of Pittsburgh, to a small farm in Somerset county on the top of the Allegheny Mountains. While many families in the city were relocating further out into the distant suburbs, my parents purchased a farm for raising their four children - not recognizing the harsh reality of that decision.
Our farm was located on Route 31, or the Somerset Pike as it was known, nine miles from the county-seat of Somerset and about a half-mile beyond the crossroads of Brotherton. The 35-acre farm offered much for my parents to love. A doctor and his wife who owned the property previously had torn down the old farm house next to the barn and built a modern, L-shaped, one-floor ranch house about a quarter-of-a-mile away on the top of a hill overlooking the fields and barn. An active dirt road between the fields went directly from the house down to the barn, while a more pristine, paved lane from Route 31, with twenty-five poplar trees lining either side, provided a beautiful scenic drive directly to the house. Two ponds, extensive fields, and a small quarter-acre of woods on the back side of the house, along with a much larger track of woods beyond the fields, completed our property.
Within our house a long wall of picture windows in both the living and dining rooms overlooked a sizable patio with rose gardens, an extensive lawn, our fields, the top of our barn, and ridge of hills in the distance. The view from the house was spectacular, especially of deer crossing our fields, geese flying overhead, and thrushes and pheasants rising up startled from our dogs running wild and free.
That first year on the farm we all were caught up in our new farm life – quite the mysterious adventure after living on an urban street five miles from downtown Pittsburgh. Our mother became the perfect gentleman-farmer’s wife, joining an art class in Somerset, while Daddy commuted daily the hour-and-a-half drive to his office in the city. Moving up from Ingram in the fall actually allowed them to get us kids, my older siblings, Charlie and my two sisters, Holly and Allison, situated in school without having to worry about the demands of the farm until later that spring.
Still, our first winter was eye-opening in its harshness. The well-below freezing temperatures and the amount of snow that fell on our little farm at the top of the Alleghenies woke us all to the fact we weren’t in the city any longer.
Perhaps the day I remember the most occurred during a blizzard that first January on the farm. After a particularly bad, two day-stretch of falling snow, Daddy and Mother knew they had to feed our livestock and, rather than Daddy going to the barn alone, or both Daddy and Mother leaving us kids, they decided we should all trudge through the snow to feed the animals together. As kids, we were very excited to get out into the snow, once again, and this time to help at the barn. Mother looked concerned, though, as she eyed the snow falling without let-up outside our picture windows. Though we couldn’t see the top of the barn or beyond, Allison and I, the two youngest in our family, were over the moon: a group outing with everyone in the snow!
Once bundled thoroughly - Mother checking Allison and I, in particular - off we went, heading for the barn. The mid-afternoon snow had let up a little to allow us to cut a path where we thought the dirt road to the barn should be. However, even with our backs to the wind, it didn’t take long for Allison, who was only a year-and-a-half older than me, and, don’t you know, I was five, to realize hiking down to the barn was not nearly as much fun as pulling our sleds and making snow angels around the house.
Allison immediately wanted to go back. Daddy, though, led the way, then Holly, Charlie, Allison and me, with Mother, her gloved-hand against my back, bringing up the rear. Allison and I soon were covered in snow from stumbling along behind Holly and Charlie’s big steps, and when we tried to move to the side to walk on top of the snow, we quickly sank up to our waists.
As we pushed through the snow, Mother became frustrated and yelled ahead to Daddy, “Chuck, slow down. The kids can’t keep up.” Holly and Charlie turned and gave us a look of disgust. Daddy, too, stopped, then forced his way to us.
“Helen, we’ve got to push on,” he said to Mother, facing the wind and the blowing snow, “or we won’t get everything done. The storm will only get worse.”
He looked at Allison and me shivering up to our thighs in snow. “You two can keep up with Charlie and Holly, can’t you?”
Before we could tell him we wanted to go home, Mother answered for us, “Yes, we’ll try,” she said, smiling at Allison and me. “Just a little longer.”
It came as a relief when Daddy finally pushed open the barn door and experienced the welcomed respite from the storm and the bone-numbing cold. It seemed to me the animals were happy to see us, especially after a day or two of starving while the storm raged outside the barn. Charlie and Holly started filling the cow troughs with feed while daddy worked to spread fresh hay around in the pens — work our hired hand would have done if he weren’t stuck at his home seven miles away. Mother, Allison, and I checked in on the chickens, who remained huddled in their cubicles.
I could hear the storm outside and it seemed to be getting louder. Looking at my wet outer clothes, I thought maybe we should all stay in the barn — at least until the storm had passed, but, after an hour or so, Daddy insisted we had to get back.
“It’s getting dark,” he said to Mother. “We’ve got to go.”
This time, in preparing to leave the barn, we knew what was in store for us. I stood inside the door as mother pushed on my mittens, tightened my scarf, and zipped my coat as tight as she could.
“We can do this, Jon-Jon,” she said. “You have to be strong and stay with me.”
The expression on her face, and on Daddy’s face too, when he looked at each of us before opening the door, sent a shiver through me. As each of my siblings followed him out of the barn, I turned to Mother in a panic, but she led me out the door and immediately the force of the wind pushed me against her and the barn’s wall.
Daddy closed the door behind us. The storm had grown in intensity in the late afternoon hour, and, as I stood against the wall peering into the driving snow, I could see that drifts had completely covered our earlier tracks.
“Everyone hold hands,” Daddy said. Then with a heave of determination, shouted, “Stay with me,” forcing himself forward into the stiff wind and driving snow.
Mother at the rear pushed us ahead, too. “Come on Jon, Come on Allison,” she urged as we stepped away from the security of the barn.
“The house is just up the hill and dead ahead,” she said, but I couldn’t lift my eyes to see anything without the snow blinding me and quickly lost Allison’s hand. I started crying and Allison did too, and, unfortunately, we were still within yards of the barn. Mother remained adamant, holding my hand tightly and now grabbing Allison’s too. ”Just keep stepping into Charlie and Holly’s footprints in front of you.”
When I fell, she picked me up. “Jon, please, you must be careful. Don't get covered in snow or you’ll freeze to death. We’re nowhere near the house.”
Allison and I were crying harder now and struggling to go forward into the storm. Daddy and Mother refused to give in and forced us to keep walking up the hill, pushing through the knee-deep snow and waist-high drifts. After a bitter wind knocked me back, I couldn’t walk any further. I stood there crying in the snow feeling the cold tearing me apart.
“Chuck, stop! Stop! Stop!” Mother kept shouting until Daddy heard her. Again, he trudged back to us. “They can’t go on. Where’s the house? Where's the house?” She demanded over and over.
“I don’t know,” he said, “"It’s up ahead.”
"You don’t know?" she shouted back at him.
“It's got to be just ahead,” he responded, leaning down to Allison and me and avoiding further discussion.
“You’ve got to keep going.” he said to Allison and me. “You can't give up.”
He squeezed my shoulders with his gloves, trying to give me strength, and picked up Allison and gave her a hug. “It's only a little bit further,” he said, reassuring Allison, then me, then Mother.
Mother held me against her waist as another gust of wind threatened to curtail her confidence. “Okay," she said, not all that assured by his statement. "Come on, kids,” she said. “Follow your daddy; it's our only way home.”
I tried to stop crying and focus instead on the steps in front of me; I lost all sense of time but remember the feeling at one point of no longer walking up hill, of crunching against what felt like corn stalks.
Mother felt it too. “Chuck, we’re in the corn field. Where are you going?”
Daddy turned back to her and, in doing so, spotted the house behind us off to our left. We were way off track from where he thought we were, and we had nearly walked past the house in the field between the house and Somerset Pike.
Shouting his surprise, he pointed to the house, and Holly and Charley agreed, struggling through the drifts in that direction.
"Thank god," Mother said, and with a final push, coupled with an immense sense of relief, Mother and Daddy, together, hurried Allison and me through the snow and across the field to the warm house.
We had been on the edge of disaster that day and, even as a five-year-old, I knew it. We all did. That afternoon, it became abundantly clear that, living on the farm, anything could happen; our parents’ knowledge of what they were doing was the only protection we had to keep us safe. Though they were bound and determined to do just that, keep us safe, what we didn’t know was this: they had extremely limited knowledge of farm-life nor any life experiences to draw upon. All of us, essentially, were on our own.
What a great example of the strength of your family. I loved it!