I was ten years old when my grandfather, Charles Herbert Lynch, died. He was not a very large man and had a long, white beard. He was known by almost everybody in the community as Uncle Charlie and was a familiar sight riding around in a buggy pulled by a white horse named Button. If grandpa went to sleep, Button knew the way home and always brought him home safely. There were no cars in those days to frighten horses. He spoke English with such a pronounced accent and with a Gaelic word thrown in now and then, it was hard to understand him.

He was born in Ireland, and after his parents died, was brought to Canada along with a brother by a woman who had cared for them since they were small children. I suppose they were teenagers at the time. Later they came to the United States, and after the woman died they went their separate ways. Unfortunately, they lost contact with each other. Grandpa must have been an adventurer going from place to place and from job to job. He went to California during the gold rush. The only gold I know of that he found was a nugget he carried in his hip pocket. I didn't know he had that until everyone was looking for it. He had worn a hole in his pocket and lost it. It was never found.

During the Civil War he wanted to enlist in the Union Army but couldn't because he was too old. He then misrepresented his age as being younger than his actual age and that became his official age the rest of his life. I heard him tell many times about being five years old when Queen Victoria was born and his memory of all the celebration. She was born in 1819 which would have made his birth date 1814. He died in 1917 and 103 years of age. I don't remember how his date of birth is recorded on his grave stone, but it is erroneous. He must have been middle aged when he married Mary Elizabeth Osborne whom he called what sounded to me like Bette. I later realized it was his way of saying Beth.

My father, Charles Hayes Lynch was the oldest of the three surviving Children, and I've heard him tell how grieved he was at having to leave his Kansas home to come to Arkansas. He went out behind the barn and wept. His two sisters, Ella Sullivan and Adie Smith, were too young to be concerned. When they came to Arkansas, grandpa claimed sixty acres of land as a homestead. Highway 68 now cuts off the north twenty acres on which the house was built. I remember the path from our house, on the south side of the land to grandpas house. I traveled it many times. There was no road where 68 highway now is.

One of my fondest memories was of my father going to Springdale in a wagon and bringing home a chunk of ice wrapped in a quilt. We would take it to grandpa's house where we would make ice cream. That was really a treat in those days. The only difficulty was finding milk from a cow who had not eaten bitter weeds which made the milk bitter. The cows did not prefer bitter weeds but in a summer drought they sometimes had no choice. I can still see my father under the shade of a huge oak tree east of the house as he patiently turned the crank of that ice cream freezer. It seemed to us to take a very long time.

The first great grief in my life was the death of my grandmother. Grandpa lived four years after her death. He died in October, 1917 just a few days after Dale and Vayle were born. My father woke us in the middle of the night to tell us about our new twin brothers. He was so thrilled and so very proud of them as if he didn't already have five little mouths to feed.

We had very few material possessions but so did almost everybody else we knew and we were a very happy family. Grandpa used to love to visit with other civil war veterans and talk about the war. He had a very special feeling for the young men of the neighborhood who were leaving to fight World War I and read every word in the newspaper concerning the war. And he read without glasses. They said he had worn glasses when he was younger but received his second sight whatever that meant. Anyway, he could read newspaper print.

We used to hoe strawberries during the summer and pick the berries the following spring. We were paid two cents per quart for picking them and earned enough money to buy our schoolbooks, clothes, and a little extra to spend foolishly. Needless to say, we appreciated what we got much more than children who have everything given to them. No, I'm not going to tell you how far we walked to school or how deep the snow was for you have laughed enough about the tall tales of your elders without my adding to your amusement. I will say that our one room school education compared favorably with the present elementary schools. I might even add high schools judging from some of the products of present day high schools I have met.

The first car in the community was owned by Doctor Cooper in Elm Springs. My first ride in a car was in that car. Doctor Cooper had been called to see daddy and he met Darrell and me as we were on our way home from school with the news that we were to ride with him to Tontitown to get a tonic he had prescribed for daddy. That school and the road are no longer there but I will always them. And what a thrill that ride was for two little kids. We just sat in the back seat of that car and grinned at each other all the way. We didn't mind at all walking back we were so impressed with actually having ridden in a car. It was a long way. As I've said, 68 highway was then pasture land so the road was long and crooked. But we didn't even notice.
 

One cold winter day when a big snow was on the ground and the temperature near zero, Wendell was trying to get Doyne to help him pile brush in and orchard just across the road from our old house. Two Kelly boys whose father expected them to care for the orchard, had pruned it and offered Doyne and Wendell ten dollars to stack the brush so it could be hauled away. That was big money in those days and Wendell was in a hurry to collect it. Doyne wanted to wait for a warmer day and the parents insisted upon the waiting. Wendell said, But this may be the last cool day well have. They were about ten or eleven years old. That has been a family saying ever since and Wendell heard it the rest of his life.

There was a pond below the orchard on our place. The orchard obscured the view of the pond from the house. Our mother insisted that dad take the twins and Ted to the creek and teach them to swim. The older boys hadn't learned when they were very young and she thought it would be easier if the younger ones started early. Daddy took them to the creek and when she asked how the swimming lesson went, he would just laugh. He finally said he would tell her if she would promise not to scold the children. He said they swam off and left him. He asked where they'd learned to swim and they said, in the pond.

We used to like to ride the horses to the barn after daddy quit plowing I asked Doyne not long ago if he remembered the time one of the horses went out in the middle of the pond and started pawing the water and then laid down and rolled over in the water with one of the boys on his back. He said, "Do I remember? I was the boy."

You may have heard Jimmy tell about someone asking him about what was going on at Dale's one Sunday afternoon when they passed there not so many years ago. Darrell had always been the strong man of the family and Wendell, though younger, was taller and outweighed Darrell. He always thought he would feel he had really arrived if he could just beat Darrell one time wrestling. Every so often he would challenge him, but Darrell always won. That was one of the times and maybe the last time this happened. This person said, Two Lynch brothers were rolling around on the ground and the other five were dying laughing. Of course Jimmy knew what was happening but I don't know how much luck he had explaining it to someone outside the family.

At least one brother of Grandma Lynch came to Arkansas and settled in the White Oak community. He was a primitive Baptist preacher and was pastor of the White Oak Church. He died before I was born but I remember his widow, Ann Elizabeth and two sons and one daughter in their families. We visited with those cousins often. In those days, we had no telephone. And one family would just load themselves in a wagon and go to visit overnight and the next day unannounced. It was really fun. One family had a surrey with a fringe on top and we thought that was so very elegant. One son was a primitive Baptist preacher and took his fathers place Willy Osborne. He also was a very much loved schoolteacher.

My mothers father was Ruben Gray and her mothers name was Mary Elizabeth Orange. She died before I was born. My mother was the youngest of their five children and was born in Nebraska. They'd begun their trip to Arkansas in a covered wagon when my mother was five weeks old. Grandpa Gray was a carpenter and many of the houses he built are still standing including the one in which we were born and grew up.

It is sad to think of all the loved ones who are no longer here, but the memories are so precious and what a meeting there will be some day. I'm very thankful to have lived long enough to be a senior citizen though I certainly do not feel like one.