a story from my youth...

 Our ride on the canal boat yesterday reminded me of a memory from my youth that I would like to share.  After my sophmore year in high school I had a summer job as a house keeper/cook for an elderly lady (she was probably the age I am now).  I would stay with her all week and go home (only a few miles away) on weekends when one of her grandchildren would stay with her.

It was not a hard job.  Mrs. F was not a demanding person except for her unfortunate liking of breakfast at 6:00am.  When we were not busy we would talk and I really enjoyed her stories of what life was like when she and her husband (long since passed) had first moved to their 80 acre farm.  This would have been in the late 1800s.  I'm not sure what the price of farm land in north east Indiana was at that time but I'm pretty sure it wasn't very much. 

A side note here, when I worked for her, Mrs. F had just sold 75 of her 80 acres to BF Goodrich for a very handsome price (or so I was told).  Goodrich built their plant on what had been her land and a couple of years later many of my classmates got their first jobs after high school graduation there.  A few went on to spend their entire working life with BF Goodrich. 

But back to Mrs. F's story.  When she and her husband first moved to their farm the Wabash and Erie Canal ran along one side of their property.  Years later we could still see the remnants of the canal in the deep ditch on the north side of Highway 24.  

She told me that all of their furniture and farm equipment was delivered by canal boat.  The boat would stop at their landing and unload everything they had ordered.  I found it so fascinating that she had lived through an era in history that we had learned about while studying Indiana History in school.  

Born about 1880, died about 1964, imagine all the changes she had seen in her life.  

One more note about the canal.  When my west coast brother, who is 10 years younger than I am, was about five years old our family was driving along Highway 24 and my dad commented that the deep ditch along the road was the site of part of the old canal and that it had all been dug out by hand.  "Weren't they allowed to use shovels?" asked my brother.