Mama Kat Thursday: Country Living

The Mama Kat blog prompt option I'm doing today is,

 "Your Childhood Neighborhood."

The trick is--back when I was growing up in rural Indiana camera's used film and personal computers didn't exist. I never imagined forty years later I might want pictures of the old homestead to load on a blog on a personal computer!


Thank goodness for Google Earth!
 In order to  screen print a couple views, I had to go to street level view and actually "drive" down the road until I found the proper location. 
Funny thing is: things don't look that much different from 70's, when I lived there, to 2009 when Google collected these images.
A few more homes here and there, older trees, but pretty much the same.

When I say rural, I mean rural. Here's a Google Earth shot
of where I did my growing up:

This house isn't actually the one I grew up in, though it stands on the same site. The original was one built by our Dad. It was a single story, gray cinder block house with a flat roof. 
The property is surrounded by deep forest and the trees here are the same trees I grew up with. Just older.

Next photo is a view of the state road that runs where I grew up:
Lots more trees on the other side of the road. Same trees as when I was a child. Lots of trees to play with, not much in the way of other kids.

When I was young, the only thing in the woods across the road was a split-wood cabin. Perhaps it was a hunters cabin. I remember it had tall windows, a fireplace and a mounted rack of antlers inside. In the late 60's a family built an orange brick house across the road on the right; about where the yellow line disappears is their driveway. A girl named Berrita lived there then.
Later, after I was grown and gone, I think another family built a home roughly across the road from our driveway.
But you can see there were no sidewalks, no where for riding bikes or anything of that sort.  Cars would speed by at 55 miles an hour and that curve made being out on the road fairly dangerous as drivers wouldn't see you until they were already on top of you!


Finally, a photo is of the lot adjacent to our homestead:
You can see the large garden with corn in it. It's the same old garden in the same old place planted by neighbors who've lived there since I was in grade school. Last I knew their daughter & her family still lived there.
Also the trees in the background are the same old trees I grew up with, too. Though one beautiful benefit of living among so many trees is the autumn color show was always magnificent!
In the foreground there looks to be a round rock-garden. Probably a bit of my sister's handiwork of a more recent nature.


















In general, the wooded property my family owned at the time my sisters and I were growing up was an extensive 22 acres that included a valley with a creek, which is why a photo of a stony creek is at the top of this post. That photo is not our creek, however, but is one from elsewhere in Indiana.
 Our creek had many more rocks. It was rich with a lot more granite and quartz that ranged in size from huge to tiny. 

 My sisters and I lived like Hobbits in the woods, running about, exploring, building swimming pools for our Barbies among the stones, having leaf-boat races and endless other adventures. It was an amazing magical childhood I'll always remember.
*****
So, what was your childhood neighborhood like?

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