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by Debra Noye (Author)
Perry Countians growing up, in the 1920S-1960s, living on a family farm were nothing more than "work-horses" just like their draft-horses Molly and Ben, who pulled the plows and wagons through the fields. Farming was labor intensive from sunup to sundown with every member of the family pitching in to make sure there was enough food raised to feed everybody sitting at the dinner table. Once the crops were harvested, the taxes and the bills paid off, there might be enough money left-over to put some candy and oranges in the Christmas stockings.
Even the townsfolk had large "truck gardens", which kept the children busied weeding before bicycling throughout the small towns, where everybody knew your name and your business. Many a teen from town were recruited to help with making hay, husking corn and picking apples or gathering eggs. It was a time of helping out one's neighbor with no strings attached.
These children became the "back-bone" of Perry County and their enterprising nature shaped today's farming and business communities. Their stories are told from hand-milking cows to robotics milking systems, from being drafted during WWll to surviving multiple wounds, from hunting white-tailed deer to playing town baseball after the milking was done, from walking to one-room schools to picking up and delivering cans of milk prior to and after school, from home remedies to butchering "free range" hogs, from going to church every Sunday without fail to enjoying annual community picnics and family reunions. That's what they did and who they were. They are your neighbors today. Remarkably, they cherish their "growing up days" in Perry County and were eager to share them for Cherished Memories - Volume 2.
Just like in the original Cherished Memories, these stories are truths not tales!
Debra Kay Noye, can relate to the penned and told stories of Perry Countians printed within, because she, too, lived on a family farm in the western end of Perry County during the1950s-1970s. Therefore while compiling Cherished Memories, Debby didn't mind rubbing elbows with the truck drivers, barbers, artists, EMT or volunteer ambulance and fire truck drivers, historians, war veterans, businessmen and women, law enforcement officers, clergymen, mechanics, hunters, rural mail carriers, educators, baseball fanatics, railroad enthusiasts, and of course, Perry County farmers. Being passionate about preserving Perry County's history, Debby also authored and dedicated The Treasures in Great-Granny's Scrapbook and City Cousins Spend the Summer to Perry County's youth.
