When Jeff was a baby, in 1966, Marvin and I lived across the road from the "Dean's Trading Post" on 41 Highway. Esco Dean, Marvin's step dad, had rented an old house to store his furniture that he bought at auction sales. This was the old home place called the Tom B. David house. It was a five room house with a bath. Marvin and I used the living room, bedroom and kitchen and the other two rooms contained furniture. The thing that I loved most about the house was the big front porch. Just off the living room was a smaller area that used to be a pantry. I used this for the baby bed since it had access from the bedroom. The kitchen did not have built in cabinets so we had one of the older cabinets that contained a flour container with a sifter on the bottom of the box. I don't remember what they called it but there was a roll door in the middle with 2 doors above. It had 2 doors on the bottom where we stored pots and pans. There was no double sink here just a single one. I learned very quickly that dishpans come in handy.
It was getting further into Spring and every night when we went to bed, we heard a buzz saw. Buzzz-Buzzz- This noise kept us awake for many weeks. We could not figure out where it was coming from so I asked the next door neighbor, Ann Hall, if she could hear it. Her bedroom was on the other end of the house so it didn't bother her or her girls. Ruby couldn't hear it either as it was too far away. No one could hear it but us. I finally walked around the yard one day and I heard something coming from inside the house. As I looked closer, their was a small hole in the side of the house just beneath a window sash. I noticed a few bees crawling around and then a couple disappeared. Now I am deathly afraid of bees of any kind. I didn't know if they were wasps or hornets or whatever. All I knew was that they had stingers. So I went back in the house and stayed away from that area. When Ruby came in from work, I told her about the bees in the side of the house. She called her brother, Claude, to come down and check it out. He told us that they were honey bees and he would come by on Saturday and salvage the honey. I had never seen this happen. I was raised in the city. I knew that people kept boxes for hives of bees, I just never expected any hives to be in a house.
On Saturday, Claude drove to our house and got out with some things that looked like some kind of costume. The hat had net hanging down to his shoulders and he wore gloves as well as an extra thick shirt. He had something similar to a lantern that he lit and all of a sudden, smoke came out the end if it. He sprayed smoke all up and down the side of the house. Then he took a crow bar and removed a board from under the window. I never saw so many bees flying around. I high tailed it away from that area and made a bee line for the house. I decided that looking through the window was close enough for me. By the time I got in the house, he had removed the comb with a shovel. It was covered with honey. He hurried and filled up about 3 five-gallon buckets with the comb and honey. He then brought it in the house to be put in jars. I don't remember how much honey we put in pint fruit jars, but we had honey for the next two winters. It had the taste of rose blossoms. Ruby told me later that it was because of the rose bushes in the yard. This city girl learned a valuable lesson that Spring. You don't always go to the store for food.
I still don't know how Claude removed those bees to his house but by the next summer, he was still harvesting honey for all the family. H built some boxes for the bees and I think he finally had 5 boxes as the swarm kept growing. I still try to get honey that comes from Gordon County. I just don't think I have found any that tastes as good as that honey from the old Tom B. David house.
