The English style, two story, frame house on this farm where we grew up was far from new, but there were beautiful things about it.  Built many years before by a family from Tennessee whose people had probably pioneered from Virginia, they brought with them not only ideas of substantial architecture, such as this house with its large rooms and tall chimneys, but, undoubtedly with a thought to beauty and to the memory of their former home, they placed around the house trees rarely found in this part of the country.

Figure 5: Spencer farm.

Figure 6: Road near Spencer farm.

On the east side of the house, toward the back, stood a tulip tree.  It was old when we moved there but it still bore colorful tulip shaped flowers in the spring, and when it died we really grieved.

In the back yard was what we called a coffee tree.  It was tall and leafy, and produced a lacy white flower which later turned into a pod containing three or four hard seeds resembling small chestnuts.  We sometimes drilled holes in them and made bracelets and charms from them.

The front yard was shady from “paradise trees” which seemed to be as strong as the house itself.  But the tree we loved the best was a great spreading hedge apple that stood east of the house, a sort of Swiss Family Robinson affair, as the children not only played under it, but in it.