The Pond House: A Season of Rude Awakenings

Though I didn’t always appreciate it, one of the nicest things about attending college in the same small town where you grew up and your parents still lived was, whether as a matter of convenience or of necessity, you could usually go home. At least that’s what I thought at the beginning of Spring break in 1972, when I started spiking a fever and ended up in the hospital with severe abdominal pain. Consequently, I didn’t make it back to school or to the pond house that quarter, and my friends had to find another place to live.

This might be a good time to mention how in late August of 1971, four months before I moved out to Screven County, I’d joined a group of students on an “Art Studies in Europe” tour. Orchestrated by the department’s art history instructor, this two-week, whirlwind overview of cultural sites and museums for fine arts majors between quarters began with an afternoon at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and ended with a three-hour final exam that was taken on the flight home for which upon passage, we received full course credit.

The first seventy-two hours of the trip, my eyes never closed. After arriving in London, we visited the British Museum, the Tate Gallery, the National Gallery during the day, and at night my roommate and I met as many locals and discovered as much night life between Piccadilly Square and London Bridge as physically possible. By day four’s Sunday outing to Westminster and other cathedrals on the Salisbury Plain I was exhausted, in fact, once we finally got to Stonehenge, after wandering around a bit, I lay down on the biggest flat rock I could find and fell asleep. When our instructor discovered me and excused me to go to the bus, the long rear seat at the back seemed the best place to continue my nap.

As the lumbering bus drove the Amesbury Expressway back toward London, a small car carrying an elderly couple and two grandchildren crossed the line and we plowed into them, head-on. I awoke as my head hit a large metal ashtray. I dropped four feet onto the divider in the foot-well. The grandparents and one of the children, a small girl, died at the scene. A second child, a little boy, was taken in the same ambulance that transported me, the bus driver, and our art instructor to Salisbury Infirmary. I never knew what became of the boy, but our instructor, who’d been seated at the front of the bus, was treated for cuts caused by shattered glass and released the following day. I was admitted with a hairline-fracture, a mild concussion, and pain in my lower back and left side, but didn’t receive medication due to the concussion. My only relief was sleep, and for the first two days, I slept so much the doctors feared the concussion was causing it, and kept me under close ‘observation.’ The other students, though badly shaken, had escaped injury, so the tour went on to Paris without me.

I was four days in the ward before I was up and walking around. But on day six, they determined me well enough for release, and with help from the British consulate and a Londoner friend I’d met at the Wimpy’s hamburger shop located across from our motel, I was able to fly to Paris and rejoin the tour for its duration. Fully rested and youthfully resilient, I made it through France, Germany, Italy, and the exam on the way home with little problem. I had paced myself, but I was far from over it.

We arrived home in the States as Fall Quarter was beginning, and life at school went on as anticipated until right before Christmas break when my parents announced they were ‘separating.’ As a young adult living across town, it came as no surprise. Just a big disappointment, and in some ways, a relief—they’d been heading in that direction since at least the Spring of 1968. But for my younger siblings—one, off at college in Athens, the other attending high school in North Georgia, this Christmas would be a double-dose of reality.

A staggered load of one-to-five-hour courses during my Freshman and Sophomore years, had often required me to be at school all day and many times, at night. I was currently living five minutes away from campus in a trailer that my mother had talked my daddy into purchasing new in 1970. With three bedrooms and a bath and a half, it was cheaper with two rent-paying roommates than on-campus student housing or off-campus boarding elsewhere, but the situation was quickly escalating into “fruit basket turn over.” Come January, Mama would remain at their house, and Daddy would move into the trailer. After securing living arrangements for the upcoming Winter quarter, my trailer mates packed up and left for the holidays.

In truth, my desire to finish what I feared might be a useless college degree was waning. After securing living arrangements for the upcoming Winter quarter, my trailer mates packed up and left for the holidays, but when I suggested I might drop out for a while, get a job, and rent a place of my own, Daddy mentioned the pond house as a temporary solution. Bless his heart – he wasn’t about to let me quit school. While the property in Screven County seemed worlds away from campus, I decided to take him up on the offer as long I could keep my 1969 Ford Maverick up and running.

One of my dearest hometown friends came over to help me pack. Neither of us had money to spend on gifts that year. Three days before Christmas we collected milk cartons, bought food coloring, vanilla extract, cloves, cinnamon, and a large box of paraffin, and gathered all the plain white tapers we could find. After repurposing the wicks, we spent the evening in the kitchen at the trailer melting them down with the paraffin to make layered scented sand candles to give to each of the members of our families.

Christmas 1971 was on a Saturday. We opened presents together at our house in town and ignored the elephant in the room. Everybody liked the candles. Around eleven, Mama, my sister, and I picked up Mama’s mother, “Grandma,” while Daddy and my brother picked up Daddy’s mother, “Gran,” and we all drove out to Screven County in separate cars. Both Gran and Granddaddy had lived with the aunties at the farmhouse at different times as had my daddy in his youth. By 1971, Great Aunt Lottie had been dead ten years, and only Granddaddy still lived there with Great Aunt Mary, the last of the five surviving sisters along with her seventy-two-year-old nephew, Eugene.

☼ ☼ ☼

As best I remember, Cousin Eugene lived in the attic. A gentle soul who never married, reserved, and slight-of-build, he dressed as if he were always headed to town or to church. He didn’t talk much, and even after the aunties’ single downstairs bathroom was fitted with indoor plumbing and running water, he preferred to use the outhouse in the chicken yard. “That’s just his way,” Aunt Lottie would say. “Eugene keeps to himself.” It made good sense to me. Eugène was a walking enigma—not exactly a “Boo Radley,” just an unassuming eccentric, a smiling bee-charmer, content to share a slice of honeycomb with me at the farmhouse counter.

For many years, a deep well adjacent the kitchen had provided fresh water for washing and drinking, first by crank and bucket, then by a powered pump. As a child I remember thinking how even in summer, the handy faucet anchored above the porcelain sink yielded some of the coldest water I’d ever tasted. Enclosed by a window with folding panes, the well was perfect for storage, and over the years the shelves that lined its inner walls continued to keep food from spoiling when space in the electric refrigerator was limited. The well’s outer structure still braced the back steps leading up to the kitchen door.

The last time I saw Cousin Eugene was in October of 1974, three months after Aunt Mary died. He was standing on those back steps looking much the way he’d always looked. He let me snap a photo. The family had come together there in December 1973 for Christmas dinner, but I’d moved to Atlanta in January and was in Western New York State when news came of her death a few days into July. When I arrived back home that October, Daddy said her property was on the market, so I rode out to Screven County with my camera, and stopped in at the farm house on my way to the pond.

It was beyond strange, being there, without Aunt Mary. The last time I saw her was on an evening in January before I left for Atlanta. Oddly enough, as I slowed to make the right turn into the field, my headlights spotted her standing in the driveway of her house near the cattle grate, just a ‘hollerin’. When I stopped the car, and walked over to investigate, she told me she was worried about Granddaddy. He didn’t show up for supper, and it was getting late. I walked her to the house, hugged her, said I’d go looking for him, and went back to the car. Just past the middle of the field, my headlights fell upon a figure in the road crawling around on all fours. I slammed on the brakes, and put the car in park. Good Lord. It was Granddaddy, and had I not been paying attention, I might’ve run him over. Startled in the headlights, he stiffened, and squinting with blurry-eyes, laughed in my direction and patted the ground. “I lost my darn glasses,” he cried, “somewhere around here.”

Jumping out to join the search, I found them in a rut nearby, but as I helped him into the car and started backing out toward the highway, he protested. “Where are you going this time of night?” When I replied, “To take you home,” he shook his head, and eyed me. Then, suspecting where I was headed, he insisted upon coming with me. Obviously, he was lonesome and had a lot on his mind. I called Aunt Mary from the pond to tell her he was okay, made us a strong pot of coffee, and before dropping him up at her house that night on my way back into town, had one of the most memorable visits ever with my grandfather,

Nine months later, the old homestead was quiet. Though both he and Eugene were there, in the stillness of fallen oak leaves, an eerie solemnity had settled over the place—as if it were frozen in time, but about to change forever. The house, the barn, the chicken yard, and the scuppernong vines all looked the same. The fallen pecan tree I used to climb still stretched to the smoke house. The only thing missing was the huge live oak that had shaded the west side of the house. Granddaddy said it had recently been struck by lightning and had to be taken down. He’d been picking up pecans in the orchard next door, but he showed me the stump, posed for a photo, and offered to ride over to the pond with me—”like old times,” he said. It was plain that the end of an era had come.

☼ ☼ ☼

But on Christmas Day in 1971, despite the gloom of my parents’ pending separation, the farmhouse was as merry and bright as ever. Aunt Mary’s old kitchen now sported an electric oven, but its originally vented wood stove continued to function as a backup. Consequently, you pretty much knew what was cooking as soon as you pulled into the driveway. Cousins from Jesup had already arrived. Others from Dover and Cooperville would be stopping in to exchange season’s greetings. Some would stay for dinner. Except for Sundays, holidays, and special occasions, the formal rooms of the house were normally closed off during the winter, but now they were open with oil furnaces burning. A cedar wreath with red holly berries graced the entryway and mistletoe hung in the central hall, but there were never any electric lights on the tree in the living room. Usually a cedar, sometimes a holly, it was decorated only with handmade ornaments and silver strands of garland.

The long hardwood dining-room table was always dressed in white linen, its candled centerpiece sported crimson camellia japonica blossoms and green magnolia leaves with a watered-down buttermilk shine. A sideboard cornucopia of traditional southern fare included a roasted turkey stuffed with cornbread dressing, country ham from the smokehouse, red-eye gravy, mashed Irish potatoes, sweet potato soufflé, steamed yellow squash, baked macaroni casserole, butterbeans, fried okra, field peas, hot biscuits, fresh-churned butter, scuppernong jelly, and bee-tree honey. After the main course, there were side-porch delights such as pecan, coconut custard, and lemon meringue pies, banana pudding, chocolate or traditional pound-cake, and fresh-fruit ambrosia. After the table was cleared and the leftovers covered, the furnaces were lowered, the rooms in the front of the house and the hallway were closed off, and the dishes were washed in the residual warmth of the kitchen. While the spryer men went hunting, the rest of the family retired to the sitting room at the back of the house to talk, watch TV, play Chinese checkers, or nap by the fire. By the way, though the farm folks liked my candles, I don’t think they ever lit them. Granddaddy said they smelled too good to burn.

I spent the next few days in town and at the trailer, packing, and on the evening of December thirtieth, my hometown friend accompanied me out to Screven County. It was twilight and chilly as we hauled my belongings across the threshold. We didn’t stick around—New Year’s weekend found us partying with friends. I took the last load of boxes from the trailer out on January third. The day before Winter quarter registration, I ran into a couple who happened to be looking for off-campus housing. When I asked Daddy about roommates, he agreed it was a good idea since we’d be twelve miles out in the woods… Not long after, I was given a three-month-old Labrador-shepherd puppy who soon grew into a super watchdog as smart as he was friendly. Of course, Daddy and Granddaddy were always dropping by to check on us—Daddy had left his loaded rifle over the fireplace and made sure plenty of extra shells were handy. As the quarter progressed, we thoroughly enjoyed the experience. We all had ended up with afternoon and evening classes, making the time and distance more manageable, (even with late nights by the fire). The thought that we may have encountered ‘supernatural oddities’ only added to the fun, in fact, everything was going pretty well, until some of the masked injuries I’d apparently sustained during the bus accident in the U.K. suddenly began to surface—a flock of significantly debilitating symptoms sent me to the Emergency Room during Spring Break.

First, I was diagnosed with a case of severe ulcerative colitis, prescribed antibiotics, put on a restricted diet, and ordered to bed. Everyone insisted that I stay in town with Mama. So much for continuing school or living in Screven County. For three months, I remained with Mama, and was in and out of the doctor’s office. Still hoping to be well enough to attend summer-school to make up for lost time, I resigned to recuperate at home,  … but even that was about to change.

Toward the end of April, my parents decided they needed to sell the house in town and wanted to be out of it by the Fourth of July. The new plan was for my sister to continue in Athens that summer, Daddy would live at the trailer with my younger brother, soon to be home from school, and Mama would move out to the pond house. I was welcome there, too, but all I wanted was to be in town and get well enough to get back to school in June…a notion I had to abandon after nearly relapsing toward the end of May. Again, school would have to wait, and by the time my parents’ house went on the market in July, my grandmother had offered me the sofa bed at her apartment in town until I could make other arrangements…

☼ ☼ ☼

© 2024-2026

Copyright ©2024 – 2026 Cynthia Farr Kinkel. All Rights Reserved.