This will be the 100th posting on the Hubbard Music Mountain and I though I would post the songpoemstory or whatever the hell it is that kinda started the whole thing. I started Hubbard Hill Memories in 2005 and it grew into a 12 verse memory of events on Hubbard Hill almost by itself. I remember singing the first and last verses of the song as it now is to my mother in a nursing home just before she died….
I was born in late September and some things that I remember are a pair of new red rubber cowboy boots.
In the Catskill Mountain sunshine, I remember like in dream time how I ran the fields with happy shouts & hoots.
And in the summer on a sultry day,
While my mother worked the windrows making hay
I was still a baby on a blanket neath a shade tree and I played & napped the afternoon away.
When my father brought the horses then they stacked the hay in courses on a steel wheeled wagon that my grandpa made
As I rode down in the haystack and my father held the horses back, my mother sang a hymn or softy prayed.
And in the barn the dust and hayseed swirled,
As I reveled in this fascinating world,
Then my mother brought us all a drink from the hand pump by the kitchen sink while barnyard sounds & smells around us curled.
In the winter it was cold as hell and every week the boys as well as Dad would go to cut some firewood.
With that old Farmall and Mall chainsaw we’d find a tree and make a fall and cut it up as quickly as we could.
For the winter wind and chill was bearing down,
As we struggled in the that cold and muddy ground,
Then we loaded up a half a cord and shivered while the tractor roared and took us tired half frozen homeward bound.
In the springtime we would load manure from piles that we had to store because we could not get through winter snow.
When I think of all the jobs I’ve had and some of them have been real bad, well that job has to be an all time low.
'Cause the springtime winds could blow it in your face,
And every load turned out to be a race,
Between the spreader breaking down or getting stuck in muddy ground and leaving the whole rig there in it’s place.
The third time Wayne drank kerosene from old Coke bottles he had seen sitting on the shelves in the wood shed,
Grandma Bessie said to Mom, "I know you mean nobody harm, but if he keeps doing that, he’ll soon be dead".
Doug’s eye got hurt while hunting from a car.
When Marilyn burned her hands it left some scars.
Merle Jr chopped my middle finger, thoughts of all that blood still linger, those are things that made us what we are.
When LaVerne turned over that old milk truck on Earl’s hill when black ice he struck, what happened after always makes me smile.
As I drove the Farmall to the spill I hit that same damned icy hill and skidded almost to the milk can pile.
To turn that old truck upright took an hour.
And on the road the milk began to sour.
Then I put that Farmall in low gear and towed that wreck till almost near the barn where we just stared at it awhile.
In the fall we’d often kill a pig and hang it from a tripod rig and gut it out to take inside to treat.
When mom would cook the tenderloin with home made pancakes we’d all join in dining on a meal called “ fit to eat”.
And the rhythm of the family filled our veins,
And the autumn breezes hummed in soft refrain.
Then we laid on the grassy lawn to look at stars until we’d yawn then go to sleep and start it all again.
Sue could take a .22 and hit the nail heads that popped through that old wood shed roof baking in the sun.
And we shot rats and dogs and chipmunks, hunted squirrel and deer and woodchucks, some for food and others just for fun.
And we hunt 'coon on Autumn rainy nights,
With dogs and guns and beer and big flashlights.
While that hound dog pack was barking "treed", we’d crash half drunk through brush and weeds, to get that scared raccoon in our gun sights.
Susan sat with a BB gun while all us kids were having fun looking at Bonanza on TV.
A big gun fight at a mountain shack and Susan thought she'd fire back, she hit an outlaw with one brass BB.
The television set just buzzed then died.
While Susan grinned and looked around wide eyed.
And we stared at that tiny hole till Carol dropped the popcorn bowl then we all laughed until we almost cried.
Thanksgiving came with hunting season and lot’s of family found a reason to come “up home” to join in meals and song.
We gather around that old piano, Dad sang bass Mom sang soprano and uncles , aunts and cousins sang along.
And the old time Christian hymns would soar and chime
With harmonies so sweet and so sublime.
Then all the men went to hunt deer while all the ladies helped to clear the table for the meal at supper time.
Of the windows in that old farm house, some faced directly west and south and all the family many times a day,
Would check that eighteen mile view to guess the weather coming through and then you’d usually hear somebody say,
“When the rain comes it’ll be to wet to plow",
Or “The snows too deep there’ll be no school bus now",
And those windows from that farm house knoll were also windows to our souls and taught us love of hills and life somehow.
In this age of space and cell phones with those idiotic ring tones I return to those old times on Hubbard Hill.
And of often think of going back but now the house is just a shack and so I know I probly never will.
Still thoughts of friends and family gently bind,
As I think about those pure and peaceful times.
So when I need a quiet spot to go when troubles are a lot I go to Hubbard Hill just in my mind.
So when I need a quiet spot to go when troubles are a lot I go back to the Catskills in my mind.
So when I need a quiet spot to go when troubles are a lot I go back to my old home in my mind.
