We were in the states from the summer of 1964 until school was out in the spring of 1965. Mom and dad had a very busy travel schedule since their partner churches were widely spread across the country. Usually, we stayed with mom’s parents so we wouldn’t miss school. I liked that. For me, it was much more comfortable than long car trips, staying with strangers and all. It was beautiful and interesting at their place. Their house was built around a core that had been built soon after the Civil War when Northwestern Pennsylvania was settled.

Above is a photo of the house and my school photo from 1964. What was outside the house war far more interesting to me than the house itself. They had about 300 acres that included

a big barn that was as old as the house, a large kitchen garden, a tractor shed, more than 100 acres of wood land, pasture, hay field, and a bit of farmland planted with corn. I was most fascinated by the two black and white ponies, Trixie and her grown colt Duke. Duke hadn’t really been trained yet, and he was rather lame, so we couldn’t ride him. Trixie was trained and could be ridden, but she was an opinionated fat little mare. Sometimes Grandpa would catch and bridle her. Trixie would let me ride her for a half an hour or so, then she would often head back to the barn at a jiggling pony trot. Doing a neat side to side move with both front feet, she would dump me outside the barn door. I didn’t care. I loved to be around the two ponies and often begged for grandpa to catch and bridle her for me.

The barn was a whole enthralling world to me. It was a huge weathered gray structure with enormous doors. Grandpa showed us the ax marks on the huge hand-hewn beams. The ladder to the loft was made with round straight tree branches set into two hand-hewn beams. The barn leaned very slightly to one side, making it even more interesting.  Not long after we arrived, we “helped” with haying done the old-fashioned way. Grandpa had cut the hay in long rows and left it several days to dry.  Then uncles, aunts and cousins came to help. Grandpa put tall side panels on the wagon and hitched a “ground driven hay lift” behind. He drove while the clattering pickup lifted the loose long dry hay into the wagon.  My sister and I and two uncles were in the wagon. The uncles caught the hay with pitchforks as it fell off the lift onto us and laid it in patters to make a stable heap. My sister and I were to jump up and down to pack it. It smelled lovely. But talk about itchy!!  Hot humid air and sweat, left us covered in grass seeds and itchy bits. Finally, we were high above the tall sides of the wagon, and it was time to go to the barn riding high on the swaying heap. We slid and climbed down as Grandpa unhooked the tractor from the wagon and hitched to a rope running over pulleys high in the barn with heavy long hooks at the end. The uncles set the three hooks like a clawed hand deep into the hay. When grandpa drove carefully away, the hay went up, then slid sideways until it stopped above the hay mow. An uncle pulled a release, and the hay fell and was safe and dry in the hay mow loft to feed the ponies and grandma’s cow all winter. We did this repeatedly until all the hay was in. Grandma and the aunts had made a big meal for us. That day was itchy, hot, and exhausting, but such fun. The hay mow high in the barn was a lovely golden place under the roof of the barn. Shafts of dusty sun light came in through small windows and cracks between the barn boards. Swallows swooped close above to their clay nests in the beams. All that year, I would often climb up there to read a book there in the golden space. When our cousins or friends came, we would jump of a beam into the hay or play hide and seek. Once I slid too far down between the barn wall and the hay and had a terrified few minutes wedged between slippery hay and the wall before I managed to turn around and push my way up the barn wall.

There were barn cats too. When one had kittens, the babies would be wild unless we could find the kittens and tame them while they were little. I remember laying quietly on the big beams listening and watching to see where the mother cat went. The tame mother cats would let you touch the kittens without moving them if you were very gentle and quiet. So fun to play with them as they got bigger.

Twice a day, grandma would milk her cow. I remember the first time I came with her. Grandpa brought her shinning stainless-steel pail that she had cleaned with boiling water. I soon learned that no one was to touch grandma’s milk pail! “Come boss! Come boss, come bossy!” Grandma called in a sing song. Nothing happened right away. Lady the brown collie dog was with us. “Go get her lady!” Lady dashed off and a few minutes later the big black and white cow ambled in from the pasture with Lady trotting behind. Grandma’s Freisien cow was way bigger than cows in Kenya.  She walked in and put her head between two pipes, her station, grandma swung the lever that brought the vertical pipes together so the cow couldn’t pull her head out. There was a comfortable munching sound as the cow contentedly ate the grain grandma had put there for her.  Grandma sat on a stool, leaned her head against the cow’s flank and milked her.  Grandma let me try. The thick warm teats were a bit rough. Milking was harder than it looked!  It was oddly intimate, forehead on warm fur, the cow’s warm animal smell. “Stroke from top to bottom as you squeeze,” grandma said. Eventually, over several weeks, I could make milk a for a little while, but my small hands got tired quickly. Grandma was good at it and made the milk sing into the clean bucket in a rhythmic pattern. It foamed up and the sound changed as the bucket filled. Barn cats sat in a circle around us waiting their share.

One day grandma told us that she and grandpa had bought us each dairy calf that would grow up and “freshen” and be sold as a milk cow. We were to help care for our calf as it grew up, and the money would be saved for us to go to college. She’d done the same for some of her children. The calves seemed to have longer hair than the cow. Fuzzy and often muddy they were loud! Bellowing “Maaa!!” at us. Each morning and evening, after the milk with filtered and separated to take crème off for butter, some milk for each calf was put into two smaller buckets. My sister and I carried these to feed “our” calves. That was harder than one might think. The calves, taller than my waist, were strong. Sometimes they would butt the bucket with their hard foreheads while they eagerly and messily sucked down the milk. One had to hang on to the bucket like grim death. I don’t even remember my calf’s name. I liked the ponies MUCH better.

Sometimes Grandpa would take us walking in the woods. He showed us the different types of trees. There were huge hemlock and beech trees. One smooth gray beech trunk had initials and a face on it that my uncles had made when they were kids.  He showed me spicy watercress growing in the cold spring under a huge oak tree. It was so fun to be asked to run and pick some for sandwiches.  I loved the woods. Grandma took us blackberry picking. Yum. Then she put which hazel on our scratched arms. Ouch!! There were white tailed deer that would often daintily come near the house to eat apples that had fallen off grandma “spy apple” trees. She used to make gallons of apple sauce each year. Grandpa had an old tractor that was about 30 years old with a kind of bar behind the seat low even with the axel behind the big back wheels. I often stood on that bar, hanging on behind him as he checked fence, or checked the spring, or looked for the trees he would cut for winter firewood. Pennsylvania was a rich sensory feast. I was safe and loved there, but it felt somehow claustrophobic. One couldn’t see out. The horizon was non-existent in the humid air, hills and trees. I missed the dry open space of Kenya.

On occasion, mom and dad took us with them. It was good to be with mom and dad, but the long car trips to made me feel a bit sick, sleepy, and trapped. Trips with mom and dad usually included speaking at a church. They were often visiting speakers in evening services or for Bible clubs for children.  My sister and I sometimes had to dress up in supposedly Kenyan outfits. Often, I was a Masai warrior . . .  with a shuka blanket over my shoulder, and holding a Masai spear Dad had brought back. We weren’t even in the Masai area in Kenya, so this seemed odd to me. There were two songs we had to sing. I didn’t mind much because mom and dad told us we were helping them in their service to God, and I was okay with that.  Still, it was rather uncomfortable.  We sang in Swahili and English. With my complete lifelong musical inaptitude, I doubt the musical quality! The words of the songs were lovely. “The lord is love, and he loves people, the Lord is love and he loves me.”   I still sing them to myself while I’m alone sometimes. Often, we went to someone’s house for Sunday dinner after church. We had to sit for what seemed forever as the adults talked. Once they said we could go play in a fancy parlour and gave us each a fresh ripe peach. That’s the first tree ripened peach I remember, a flavor revelation! But so juicy! I remember being very anxious as I tried to eat it without getting me and the parlour sticky.

We were taken to New York to see the Statue of Liberty and the World Fair. Mostly I remember flags and way too many people. Dad read aloud the plaque on the inside of the pedestal where we paid and waited to go up. Sticky with humidity and sweat, we joined a crowd filing up the long spiral stairs to the statue’s crown.  It all seemed heroic but not all that convincing to me.  I still liked Kenya better.

In Spartansburg, that year we went to the school that we were told had looked the same since mom went there, a tan two story building that looked like a big brick. Ronnie and Gail from up the road above Grandpa’s house used to walk the mile to school with us, down the hill, through the little town, to the school. Above is my school picture from that year. I liked the walk to school under the arching trees, along stone sidewalks, past the small stores. I wasn’t as worried about fitting in at school as I had been at boarding school since I knew I was only there one year. When I said I was from Kenya in Africa, the kids asked about animals. One boy asked if I’d ever been eaten by a lion!!  The schoolwork was easy. Although it wasn’t hard there, I felt I didn’t belong. I missed the wind and the view down the Rift Valley from RVA. Somehow, even pain of being on my own at boarding school seemed more real. I’d be heading back to RVA where life was, full of risk, pain, and wide-open beauty.