CARL EDWIN  and MARY LAWRENCE (BURNETT) OSBORNE

by Tom Osborne (tlosborne@aol.com)

Page 2

In the fall of 1935, Mother and Daddy  moved out to a rented house on the Hinkleville road, called "the old Houser place".   The picture on the left shows me (Tom) sitting on the back steps of the Houser place playing with two of Daddy's birddog puppies.  The house had a back porch with lattice all around it.   The picture on the right shows me in the back yard with the dog house and Daddy's car in the background.  The car looks like it might be an old Chevy.  Daddy had an older birddog named Duke which they had when they were in the apartment in Paducah, and Daddy had to put it out on a chain.  They still had Duke at the Houser place, but Mother thinks Duke died before they moved to Lone Oak.  All of his life Daddy had a large portrait of a birddog named Hector, which sat on the floor in front of the fireplace; it was one of his favorite pictures.  I still have that picture.
 

One of Daddy's favorite pastimes was fishing. He belonged to a fishing club that had a clubhouse on a lake over in Illinois;  they referred to the lake as "the Club lake". ( I don't know which lake it actually was.)   The lake is in the background.  One of his best friends and fishing buddies was Lee Schroeder.  Lee and his wife, Helen, had a son about my age named Billy, and they called him "Little Lee".  Daddy and Lee would often go fishing and Mother and Helen and us kids would hang out around the clubhouse.  They would save up their fish and have "fish fries" with the other club members.  I always enjoyed the fish fries because there were lots of other kids around.  This picture shows Daddy with a days catch.  On the back of the picture, which he or Mother apparently sent to Jim and Dot Johns, is written "One days catch...all Bass...& I got the biggest."

This next picture again shows Daddy with his fish; probably just after he got home from a fishing trip.  In the background is the same tree and old car as in the picture of me above, so it was probably again taken in the back yard of the Houser place about 1935.  In the background, the trees are in the edge of Noble Park in Paducah.  Daddy's fishing trips lasted pretty much all his life.  Later, after we moved to Lone Oak, they had their fish fries in Noble Park.  Daddy occasionally took one of us boys fishing with him and that was a major event for us; usually I wouldn't sleep the night before I was so excited.  Years later, Lee Schroeder took me fishing on Kentucky Lake and I caught a big Bass; I still remember that day.

The Houser place was also the scene of another of lifes traumas for Mother and I; the hornets!  One day, Helen Schroeder and Marie Hall (Mother's sister) were visiting, and "Little Lee", Larry Hall, and I were playing in the yard riding tricycles.  The other two were in front of me and ran over a hole in the ground which was full of hornets.  They stirred them up and got a few stings, but by the time I rode over the hole on my tricycle they were ready and stung me all over.  The best thing they could think to do was to put tobacco on the stings, so Helen made an emergency trip out to Mama and Papa Burnett's farm to get some tobacco for all our stings.  I had nightmares about the hornets for many years.  But it was understandable and we all lived through it;  today it would be called PTSD and I would be going to a shrink.

Mother and Daddy visited the grandparents regularly, usually on Sunday afternoons after church and Sunday dinner (always the middle of the day).  It was always fun for us kids to explore our grandparents homes because both lived on small farms with interesting outbuildings and places to discover.  The picture on the left is me with Grandaddys old dog Mickey in front of Grandaddy Osborne's house, probably taken early in 1936.  In the picture on the right, I'm sitting on the front steps of their house playing either with a baby squirrel, or a toy squirrel.

 

My brother "Bobby" (Carl Edwin Osborne, Jr.), was born in June of 1936 while Mother and Daddy still lived at the Houser place.  He got the name "Bobby" because I called him Bubba, which became Bobby. This is a picture of Bobby and I with Mickey, again at Grandaddys house.  For those of us who remember, this picture is taken in the side yard next to the railroad with the bend in the driveway on the left.  The railroad bridge is in the background, and the railroad tracks were just behind the telephone pole.  The picture was probably taken in the fall of 1937.

 
Mother and Daddy lived at the Houser place through the famous 1937 flood in Paducah, when the water got into their basement.  In the spring of 1938 they bought a house in Lone Oak, where Daddy had a little mini-farm of about 7 acres.  They lived there for 14 years. This is a picture of the side and rear of the house in Lone Oak where we lived until moving out to the new house on the Clinton road in 1952.  This picture has a lot of memories in it.  The picture was probably taken about 1948 because the house has the extension on the back in which Daddy installed an indoor bathroom and indoor steps into the basement.  Daddy usually had a plug horse for plowing the garden and miscellaneous other jobs.  He had harness, but no saddle, so we always had to ride bareback.  That's probably Jim on the horse.  Daddy also usually had a Pointer birddog(s)  which he kept in this pen; you can see one by the doghouse.  The dogs were always getting out by digging under or jumping over the fence, so he had electric wire top and bottom.  There is a Bluebird house on the fence post.  The window on the right was Mother and Daddy's bedroom; the kitchen was along the back near side in the new addition.  The house was only about 4 small blocks to the Lone Oak school where we all went to school for the full 12 years.

 
The picture on the left shows Bobby and me standing in the "sideyard" of the Lone Oak house with the Nalls house in the background, probably summer of 1938  after they moved there.  The picture on the right shows Daddy and Jim in the "sideyard" of the Lone Oak house, probably in the summer of 1942.  This side yard was between us and the neighbors, the Nalls, and although it seemed to be at least an acre at the time, it somehow shrunk to be only about 50 feet wide and 150 feet deep when I grew up.  The clotheslines were shared with the Nalls.  The tall post is the side of a set of swings that Daddy built for us; and later we had a basketball goal to the right of the swings.

 

This is Bobby and me standing in the same sideyard in our Sunday clothes in 1944.  I hated the knickers and hat, but Daddy wanted us to wear them anyway.  The old barn is in the background.  Behind the doors was the main part just big enough for a car but Daddy never put a car in there until after he got the '48 Dodge in about 1950.  Up under the peak of the roof was a hay loft, and on the left were two small rooms, one a small workshop.  We spent MANY hours playing cowboys and indians in an around the nooks and crannys of this little barn.  Before Daddy built the addition on the house, the outhouse was through the gate to the left of the barn and down on the back corner.  Daddy usually had a cow in the lot behind the barn, and we milked the cow in the stall on the right.  On the hill on the left was the house of the Schmidt family and we also spent many hours playing cars over at Jamie Schmidt's house.

 

One year Daddy sold his horse to the Gholson's who owned the farm across the road from Mama and Papa Burnett.  They needed to get the horse from Lone Oak out to the farm, probably about 6 miles away; it seemed like a long way at the time.  They decided I was old enough to ride the horse out there, so apparently Daddy borrowed a saddle, and we plotted a route that would avoid major roads because the horse didn't behave well around cars.  I rode the horse at a walk the whole way.  We think this picture is of me in front of the Gholson house when I arrived.  It was probably about 1944 and I would be 10 years old.

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