From ’20 –’20, More or Less

Chapter 5

[This chapter begins with another correction. Been talking with my brother Jack, who gave me some info about our maternal grandparents I’d like to share: first, I said my father had built them a house on the East end of our farm. NO, he provided them a plot of land, but “Dad” built the little house. In fact, he built  that one, then it burned and he built another. When we sold the farm and moved to town, he built the 3rd house exactly like the first two. I guess he only wanted it one way or he only knew one house plan. Anyway, just a minor correction.]

Somewhere in the ’52-’53 era, my father began to get more work as an independent contractor; built a concrete block house just South of Lick Spring Cemetery, a room addition here and there, new roofs, etc. He also worked for Camp Atterbury for a while during the Korean War (that was not a war.) The old wooden stoops on the WW2 buildings were rotting and had to be repaired (mostly replaced.) On one such repair, he was stung by several bumblebees to the point he was too sick to continue and he had to be home in bed. But, the next day, as he had scheduled it, he got up and drove about 50 miles of country road to preach a funeral. Sickness never caused him to miss an appointment to preach in all his years of preaching. He told us that often. I always enjoyed hearing him say it, sort of like thinking I would be that healthy always, I guess.

In 1954, the old house had just about seen its day, at least in the way it looked. So, daddy designed and began to build a “new” version of our house. The way it had been built was very inefficient for heating in Winter and for staying cool in Summer. It had all those gables, therefore all those offsets creating real problems moving warmed air to any room other than a living room which was not at the very front or a kitchen which was more isolated at the rear. So, the plan was to put in a central heat system and re-shape the rooms to be ranch house designed: living, dining, kitchen on one end; bedrooms and hallway to them on the other. The bathroom, more or less, in the center of the house.

Some things the old design had done was have high ceilings, yet with the high pitched roof, it had enormous attic (wasted) space. The new design meant adding to a squaring up of the exterior style, then adding a new low pitch (3/12, I think) roof. This was done inside the old spacious attic mostly! One day the house looked like its old self, then with almost all of the new roof built inside the attic, in one day we tore off the old high roof and decked the new roof for a completely different new style house! It was the talk of the town! (Of course, I was only 12, wasn’t much help, and had stepped on a nail during this great feat and mostly just watched.)

Winters were often rough and bitter during those times before we remodeled that old house, but often us boys would get inventive about how to “play” basketball inside. We had transoms over the doors, both exterior and interior doors. So, we invented how to take a “ball” of socks and pretend dribble the ball (rhythmic up and down hand movement while holding the ball of socks), running around the defensive man and shooting the socks into the transom panel! 2 Points! I don’t remember how often we did that, but I remember some heated moments—“that shot didn’t go in!” “yes it did!” “no, it didn’t!” I suppose, since I was the youngest, I always must have lost those arguments. 

But, if the weather was one of two different ways, we played basketball outside: if the ground was frozen, we would play till either we got too cold or the ball we had went flat (for quite a while we had an old ball that leaked slowly and we would put it close to the stove and the heat would swell it to capacity—for a few minutes.) Sometimes, though, Winter would have mild days and we could play on the outside court at the school, unless it was muddy. Mm,..sometimes we played in the mud. We liked basketball. Somewhere in those years, we had a Christmas day above 50 degrees! We played ball till dark! Outside, on Christmas!

My father never played basketball as a youngster, but he used to play baseball. Got pretty good, he said. He had a good throwing arm till he was about 60. In fact, I believe he was 61 when we had an amateur league team there in Trafalgar with, I believe 4 Lockharts listed on the roster. On July 4th, 1962, we were scheduled to play a game in Whiteland and my father came to watch. We only had 7 players and the league rules said to start you had to field at least 8 players. We only had 2 Lockharts in the 7, so we just put Daddy in right field as a Lockhart roster player and got the game started. He played two innings, I think, before other players showed up. I don’t think he had to field any hit balls, but he batted! Ground out, but he did at 61, hit the ball.

From 1939 to 1960, all eight of E.H. and Lenora’s children went to Trafalgar High School and all graduated. My oldest sister, Roberta graduated in ’43 and I, as the 8th, graduated in 1960. Quite a record. From 1946 to ’60, there was a Lockhart boy on the varsity basketball team all but two years. In ’49, there were 3; in ’50 & ’51 and in ’57 there were two. All the boys earned 3 years of varsity letters except me, I earned two. We all played baseball all four years. The oldest 3 played softball in the Fall, baseball in the Spring. The youngest 3, we played baseball in both the Fall and the Spring.

(Paralleling us, almost perfectly, was the 6 Dehart boys—only they went from ’44 to ’61. That’s not about the Lockhart family, but it is an interesting side note. In both families, when someone would see us in another part of the county, they might would ask, “are you a Dehart or a Lockhart?”)

The next chapter might be harder to write. Tragedy came our way and taught us many things, both about ourselves, our parents, and our community.

To be continued

Thanks for reading, the Elder