Stories from the Farm House....Burning the past and saying good bye to dear friends...

In my last story from the Farm house I told of the lost of my Granddaddy, if you missed it you can go back to the farm house and read all about it...
Today I want to continue the story of our loss, We all missed Granddaddy, and things were never quite the same after his passing. When Granddaddy retired from the Freight hauling business he asked Emmel to come live on the farm and help him, you can read about it here...
Before he died he made Emile promise to take care of Momma and his precious girls, Emmel and Clementine did their best. Granddaddy passed in March and everything just seemed to go down hill, Jim and Emmel and EL's sons planted the spring crops and they were rained out, they replanted and the heat got them, even most of the corn that we used to feed the cows and Mules, burnt up in the field. The thing was; other farmers had no problems at all that year with their crops. Even the garden Granny planted that usually made good, didn't yield much.. it was like a dark cloud of sorrow covered the farm as if the land had died with Granddaddy,.
Our barn was outside our bedroom window there was about 40 ft between the house and the barn, it was a long barn with a loft where hay was stored. Looking out our bedroom window on the left end of the barn was the crib where Granny kept that stupid Demon Turkey then next there was a corn crib which was pretty empty by now, then the stalls where Jake and Jill, Granddaddy's pair of mules were kept, about 10 ft from there on the right side was a car shed, where Granny kept her old Plymouth Car.
That fall Jim ordered his 100 biddies to raise and sell like he did every year. When the Feed Store called he went and picked them up, he put them in the barn like he did every year and at night he put the biddy heat lamps up.
I want to tell you what happened next will live with me the rest of my life, I have never been so scared or lived though anything so surreal in all my life, we were awaken by the loudest crackling and popping I've ever heard in my life, the room was an erie red and yellow and so hot, it was like a scene from Hell, The air was thick with smoke, it was hard to breath and the smell was sickeningly sweet, it was the smell of seared flesh...The barn was ablaze and it lite up the whole sky, you could see the fire, I was told all the way into Brookhaven, which was 2 miles away, Momma jumped up and ran outside and Granny called the fire department, Emmel and all his boys came running and the hardest thing for me was hearing the screaming and whining of the 2 mules, the fire was so far gone that no one could get to them, Jim tried and was nearly killed by the falling roof, he did ran to the car shed and managed to get the car out just before the roof collapsed. Neighbors came from miles around, but it was too far gone, they mainly concentrated on the house; wetting it down to keep it from going up in flames...it was so hot in our bedroom, ... and the siding was melting off the outside. It was the old asphalt type that looked like brick that was used in the 1920s. They kept water on the outside wall until the danger of it flaring up was gone. I still remember the eerie quite after the mules stopped screaming and the fire stopped crackling and popping. The Demon wasn't in the barn that night,so he was still with us, the biddies all died of course. It was determined that the lamps used to keep the biddies warm had turned over some how and set the hay on fire...but Emmel didn't believe it, he stayed all day and helped Jimmy and Uncle Norman get the mules and other stuff moved to the back pasture and buried and the next morning he packed up his belonging, his wife and kids and left the Farm for good. I will never forget crying and holding on to Clementine and Mary, I loved them dearly and knew I'd never see them again, because they were moving so far away. It seemed like our whole world had just finished falling apart.
Emmel hugged Momma and cried, he told her, "MS Sara, I can't stay here no longer this place is haunted, Mr. Moxie done told me that if they ( meaning Granny and Uncle Norman) mistreated his Baby and try to take her part of this farm, he cursed it and nothing will ever grow again, he also said he believed the fire started where the mules was cause Granddaddy loved them mules and wanted them with him....
Now I'm not saying I believe that Granddaddy put a curse on the farm or that everything that happened didn't happen naturally, but I will say before Granddaddy died it was a very productive farm, a happy farm and a good living was made from it, but after his death no crops ever grew in the fields again, Granny made a living by milking a few cows and selling the milk. Momma was already working and she worked everyday that we lived there. Granny did grow a beautiful flower garden ever year, but then, Momma loved that garden and spent hours in it when she had problems, it relaxed her to walk among the beautiful blooms....so maybe Granddaddy let it grow for her. Life just became life after Granddaddy passed, it seems like nothing worth remembering happened after that, or maybe Dean and I just grew up to young. But I will always remember the 2 yrs we spent in childhood bliss in the old Farm house.....before our world changed for good.

We lived at the farm for another 4 yrs, until Momma met Mr Warren

a friend she had gone to school with and had grown up with, they never dated in school or even thought about it, he had moved out of town after High School and married, but it didn't work out either, just like Momma. He was a truck driver and had come back to town to visit his Momma and walked into the cafe where she worked and into our lifes in 1954, they started talking and he soon moved back to Brookhaven, he and Mom married in 1955, he was good to Momma and Shirley came first in his world. I will alway love him for that.