By Staff
Way back in 1940 when we first moved to our house at 611 Orchard, known back then as the old Garrett place, in our back yard were a plum and a sour cherry tree and back along the backyard fence line was a small patch of rhubarb and one of asparagus.
Also, near the back line stood what was a so-called garage made out of what looked like old barnwood.
It had two pretty good-size doors, each held up by four large iron hinges.
This old garage was probably large enough to put one of those little Model T's in, but my guess was it was built to maybe keep a horse.
There was a house on this lot in 1872, according to my Dowagiac city atlas.
On the backyard line to the south of the old garage that had lath-covered sides and back, was a small storage shed.
This looked like it was built later than the garage.
On the back of our house was a wooden-covered porch. On one side was our coal bin. On the other side was where we kept our old wooden ice box.
Just outside was our old cistern that collected rain water.
This was probably used for clothes washing and watering our garden and flowers.
If I remember, the melted water from the ice box had a tube that let the water go into the cistern.
This old cistern was quite a large one and made out of stacked bricks shaped like an upside-down funnel, small at the top and very large at the bottom.
It was covered by a large wooden cover and it took us quite a few years to fill it up with our old cans, bottles and other trash from the Gill household.
I would sure like to dig into it and see some of the old things we disposed in it years ago.
But no way now as we have put another addition on our house and the old cistern is now completely covered by it.
As I sat at at the table the other morning, putting a little salt and pepper on my breakfast eggs, it suddenly reminded me of when a few years ago my wife Peg and I used to meet "Big" Bill Hess and his wife Phyllis out at the little Pastimes restaurant on M-51 North (now gone).
Bill would always order the same thing - a large order of biscuits and sausage gravy.
I was sure amazed the first time I saw Bill take off the top of the pepper shaker and proceed to smother it black with enormous amounts of the stuff.
He did this every time we ate at Pastimes and we enjoyed our weekly get together with them in years back.