The Trellis

When I was born we lived on the south side of town. After I was born, my parents purchased a lot to build a house in the north side of town. after my first birthday, we moved into the new house.

All that was on this lot was the new house and the yard was a blank canvas that we worked together on to make this new house become a home.

Just out the back door we had a large porch that in the plans it was supposed to be a carport but my parents had never had a carport but they had always had a large porch on their previous houses so this is what this area became. In the summer in Georgia, a porch without a roof is unbearable without a roof covering it. The latest thin out in the mid fifties was aluminum. People were buying aluminum awnings to cover their windows from the sun that made the interiors a little more cooler and they were adding aluminum roofs to porches to make them cooler. I remember the color of ours covering our back porch. It was red with white stripe panels on the edge. This sure made it cooler when sitting outside during the summer.



One day mom said we are going to build a trellis on both sides of the drive way to separate the view from the front yard to the backyard. I didn't know what a trellis was, but I knew that I would soon find out. We all got into the car and made a trip to Homer to the Garrison's lumber yard that was just off of the town square. My mother went into the office and told Mr. Garrison what she wanted to build and he said sure let me get the material that you will need to build it. It wasn't long before a large bundle of wood was tied to the top of our station wagon and we were headed back home. When we got home the wood was unloaded from the top of the car and put in a pole close to where the trellis was going to be built. My mother had purchased the day before a post hole digger for digging holes to put the six post into the ground to support the trellis that was going to be built there. Mother showed my older siblings how to use the post hole digger by digging two of the holes herself. She must have found the softer area to dig because it took my brother a whole lot longer to dig the other four holes. (If you have never used a post hole digger before you are in for a treat. You have to apply a lot of downward pressure to dig into the ground and then you pull the handles apart to lift out the dirt. Don't get in to big of a hurry and pull the handles apart to fast because you will pinch your fingers every time.)

That afternoon the local Hardware Store(Christian Brothers Hardware) brought a load of sand and some bags of concrete and a wheel barrow. We learned how to mix sand and concrete mix to make concrete to hold our post steady in the ground. It was fun at first but after a while it got tiring but we had a job to finish setting our post.

The next morning after breakfast we went outside and played for most of the morning. Mom came out and we started to build our trellis. We laid the boards out on the ground in squares and then nailed them together and then we nailed between the post boards top and bottom that we were going to nail our trellis to. Once this was finished we all agreed that it sure made a difference in separating the front and back yards. We thought that we were finally finished, but we had forgotten that it hadn't been painted yet. As my sister (Susan) and I were younger and we just got to watch as the others built the trellis we got the job of painting the trellis. I don't know who got more paint, us or the trellis but we finally finished it before supper.

The next day mom told us that we were going out to our place in the country and we were going to dig up several small trees to plant in the yard in front of both trellis's. We got several small dogwoods and several maple trees and brought them back home and planted  one dogwood on the narrow side of the drive-way and two on the other side by the house. We already had a flower bed where we had put the trellis but this made it look more complete.