Our Home on State Route 18
I should apologize in advance for the woeful supply of pictures I have of my old home. I was able to get some images from Google, but they’re from very far away and show several things not present in my childhood.
Sometime after my brother Lee was born, but while I was still 2 we moved from Marion to Tiffin. Tiffin is located about 40 minutes North of Marion. We moved into a two story house with a flat roof. We used to say it looked like a lunchbox without a handle. It was about three miles to the edge of town, technically located in Clinton Township.
We were mostly isolated from neighbors with cornfields partially surrounding our house and a small forest and a farm across the street. 
We had one neighbor, the Drolls, who lived next door to our property. Our houses were separated by a worn out old wire fence and a line of trees. It was roughly about 100 yards from our front door to the fence and then maybe the same distance from the fence to the Droll’s house. The Fence ran almost the entire length of the yard. It ended just a few yards before the street. Where it ended, there was a small patch of trees with a little brook. The brook had a small bridge over it on the Drolls’ side of the fence. Considering the fact that we lived next to the Drolls for most of my life, I hardly knew them. They were elderly with no children living at home. They had a dog that used to come into our yard and take our toys. We would get in trouble for leaving toys out where the dog could get them and every so often we would go to the Drolls house to see if any of our toys had been dragged over. I think I was inside their house one or two times, but I can’t say that I remember anything about it. I picture him wearing dirty old jeans and her with dark hair done up “old lady style.” I’m not sure I’d recognize them if I ran into them on the street—that’s how little we saw of them. I can remember him bringing over things from their garden a few times. The only other thing I can say about the Drolls is that in later years they put a sign out that said “Droll’s Hair Fashion” and they outlined the sign in reflectors so that you could see it from a distance. The sign eventually became my landmark to slow down so I could turn into our driveway.
When we moved into the house, we moved into the top floor. The Runion family rented the bottom floor. I have few memories of them. They had a daughter named Tara who was maybe a little older than Barbara. I remember being in their part of the house just once while they lived there. They were watching Hee-Haw. I also remember being mad that Tara got to hold my sister Sarah before I did. I think they moved out shortly after Sarah was born. I was 7 when she was born.
Our house faced the yard with a driveway between the house and the yard. The 
driveway always made it unappealing to go outside with barefeet because you had to cross our gravel driveway. I remember the few times I did go out without shoes, I hated the way the little rocks poked my feet.
Trees lined the borders of the yard. There were two big trees across the gravel and directly in front of the door that were too big for climbing. Most of the trees along the street side of the yard were much smaller. Our favorite tree to climb was the one along the street at the end nearest the Drolls’ house. There was a low branch that you could grab a hold of and then walk your feet along the trunk of the tree wrap your legs around the branch and then pull yourself up. From there it was easy to go up a few branches. I had some fear of heights that kept me from climbing much higher.
At the end of the yard was an overgrown weeping willow. It had long vines that hung down almost to the ground that we loved to swing on. At some point my parents got a wooden swing-set with a small clubhouse which they placed at the end of our yard by the weeping willow.
The house was built on a small hill and the yard sloped downward toward the Drolls house. Another hill rose up on the SouthWest (the house faced West) side of our property. An old red barn was located on that hill. The barn was close to the fence bordering the Drolls’ house on the far side of the yard. When we first moved into the house, it was a regular old barn with hay all over the floor and old animal bones. I didn’t spend much time in there. I think I found it spooky and their was no electricity to the barn.
The driveway led past the house to a garage with a carport. The garage had a small storage area with a door on it. The storage area became my dad’s first office when he started his hybrid seed corn business. The garage was used for storage. I don’t think we ever parked a car in it. The carport had a roof with beams of wood on the non-garage side connected at the bottom to a concrete pad. Behind the garage the land sloped down to an old pond. We never swam in the pond. The mud at the bottom was squishy and murky and there were crayfish living in the pond and possibly diseases. 
Our backyard was the smallest part of the yard. There was an old clothesline and a white lilac tree. Beyond that was a cornfield that belonged to someone I didn’t know. It was a corn field most of the time I was young. At least once it was full of soybeans and I remember finding lots of milkweed there at least once. My dad eventually bought that land and planted a huge strawberry patch.
Across the street and to the West (across from the Drolls house) there was a small street that lead into a circle where we rode our bicycles. There were houses all around the circle. My parents didn’t allow us to cross the street to the circle until we were older or unless we had someone with us since we lived on a State Route.
Directly across the street was a small forest with a stream running through it. The stream had sandy banks and small islands inside it. We loved to explore back there—I will describe it in more detail later. Next to the forest was a cow pasture and a barn. The pasture was mostly full of cows, but had two horses named Penny and Copper. As children we enjoyed crossing the street to moo at the cows and feed grass to the cows and horses.
I have SOOO many memories of playing at your house. Do you remember the time that Barbara used an old plastic baby pool as a boat on your pond? We spent a lot of time in the stream across the street from your house too. I can remember eating strawberries and peas from your garden until I was literally sick! yummy! I also remember collecting buckeyes from off of your property and walnuts too. We also used to drag toys out under the willow tree to make a “play house” of sorts. Good memories–thanks for the blog!!
Didn’t Barbara once send your bags and things to the middle of the pond on that baby pool? It’s weird how just writing about a place brings back so many memories. I had to limit what I wrote because I try not to make my posts too long, but I plan to write about some of the things I remembered about our property (like when it used to flood and our adventures in the forest across the street).
i’m with jenn–sooooooooo many memories! i forgot about people renting the bottom half of your house! but i oddly enough, i do remember them once you brought it up. from the air, that forest across the street from your house looks so small! but, i remember exploring for hours there. wasn’t it the droll’s grandson, richie?, that used to come over and play with lee a lot? i used to turn at that sign too :) and you really didn’t go barefoot much? i thought you all never wore shoes! hahaha! it must have been your siblings, and not you :) keep up with the sharing, it’s like, i grew up there too ;) so fun to remember!
I don’t remember a Richie, but when I was a little older we discovered that this family that lived in the circle across the street had a pool and grandchildren including a boy who spent some time at our house. I think he had red hair and went to Catholic schools. There was also a house built next to the Drolls with a boy Lee’s age.
Sarah still goes barefoot all the time, but I always hated crossing the gravel with no shoes on, so I don’t think I did that much.
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I used to go over to the Droll’s house to play with their dog Gabby. Almost every time I visited Mr. Droll would tell me about how dropping out of highschool was the best decision he ever made. He would show me things he was making. He made things out of gourds and buckeyes and other things. They had a bell outside their house he would let me ring sometimes. When Gabby died they got this really huge gravestone and marked her grave in their yard. My understanding is the gravestone was purchased for one of their loved ones who had passed, but for some reason two stones were bought. The stone is taller than me. I am not certain if it has a name on it, I just remember them putting it up and my friends would always ask about it.
Great memories! Way to go Kath! Thanks for writing all this!
I remember the Droll’s dog Gabby would come over and take things from our yard if we ever left toys out. Then, Mrs. Droll, who was our afternoon bus driver (I’m sure she was the one running Droll’s Hair Fashion, as she always had nicely set, curled, and shaped hair) would tell us to come over later to pick up something her dog had come home with. I think I liked going over there to pick things up.
I did send my friends’ belongings out on the pond in a baby pool/raft during a sleepover. I think it was payback because they froze all my bras.
I think when I was in high school, a family moved in on the other side of the Drolls (I think they moved a prefab home onto the property, it had dark tan colored aluminum siding), and their son’s name was Richie. I never knew he was related to the Drolls. He and Lee would play together, but we were always teasing Lee about it, ‘cuz Richie’s pants hung a little low… kind like a plumber, if you know what I mean.
A couple other followups (I’ll try to be brief, or else my comment will be as long as your post!)
– Do you remember Sarah getting stuck at the top of one of the trees in the front? I have a vague recollection…
– How about Lee and Krista bungee jumping out the “door to nowhere”? or was that off the porch?
– I remember trying to ice skate on the pond, one of the first years we lived there, and we saw some kind of fish, frog or something below the surface of the ice. We also liked to take a sled from the top of one side of the pond and slide down, across the ice, and go half-way up the other side.
– **warning. graphic details** I remember throwing crab apples (especially from that one, really gnarled tree) at frogs. Once, I actually succeeded at hitting a frog and I thought I had killed it. I put it in a bucket and after a little bit it sprung back to life. I must have given it a concussion.
-I remember there being a turtle in the pond, or at least we suspected it to be a turtle, though turtle sightings were rare. We were always looking for it’s head to poke out of the water. I sometimes thought it wasn’t a turtle after all…
– One day Kathy and I (I think Kathy was there with me? I must have been between 8-10 yrs old) were across the road in the “forest” (we did a lot of exploring over there) and I still have a vivid memory of seeing a giant turtle by the stream. It was as big as those tortoises you see in the zoo- maybe a couple feet across. I ran immediately to get Dad (both to verify its existence and to protect us, since I was afraid it could bite me), but by the time Dad came, the giant turtle was no where to be found.
– last one… remember how I used to play tricks on my siblings when I had friends over? We’d TP their rooms, hang an underwear/sock rope out the window, put peanut butter in their underwear… we were pretty mean! And it turns out, they were usually awake the whole time and just liked the attention! ;)
It’s amazing how many memories a place brings back! Thanks for the comments. I will write more about some of them and add some of them to my personal history that I’m writing.
Yeah, I did get stuck in that tree. I remember being up there for quite a while yelling for help, then Mr. Droll helped me down. I went inside to find Mom and she was folding pantyhose in the room underneath Mom and Dad’s, I told her it was the worst day of my life.
I also remember Krista told me that Lee would think I was the coolest if I bungee jumped off of the porch, so we tied one end of a rope around my waist and the other end to the playcube. I was scared, but I was going to do it anyways when someone found us.
I was the one that found you and Krista. If I remember correctly, one end of the rope was tied to Sarah who was going to jump and the other end was tied to Krista and the rope was longer than the fall.
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