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Log cabin where I was born. My brother sitting on porch.

Ole Abe might have a few things over on me but not the fact of being born in a log cabin.

Not sure about his but mine was built by my parents.

This was in the sandy soil at Waldorf, Maryland in the early 1940s. They rented a place in D.C. and every chance they got they would drive out there to work on it.  Of course no modern equipment. There were already three small hungry mouths plus their own to feed so therefore no extra money for such luxuries.

My dad would take a ladder with rope hooked to it and put it against a tree, hook other end of rope onto back of car and climb up the ladder and hook the rope onto one tree and then take it around another tree. The reason for taking it around another tree was so tree would not drop onto car. As stated before this was sandy soil. They pulled the trees down with the car and then cut the roots off of them, hence, no stumps left to worry about. 

They had this down to almost  an art. Take the trees down, take then out of the woods on their shoulders. No money for a horse. They did get one after all the trees were taken out. "Nothing like putting the horse behind the work"!  Mom peeled the bark off all but one of the trees. And of course this was done at the wrong time of the year. Think it was in the winter and the sap was up which made the bark stick to the tree more.

Not sure just how they would get the logs where they wanted them but after they got them there Daddy would notch them and put them into place.

Daddy was not a man of a lot of patience. Mother was not all that proficient with the gears in the car.

One day they were out there and got to the point where Daddy would tell Mom to pull the car forward. Well, she had a little trouble with shifting and Daddy started shouting and swearing which of course got Mom all the more excited. She popped that clutch and hit the gas and looked in the rear view mirror and all she could see were two long legs and feet dangling from that tree. Needless to say she was laughing so hard she could hardly move (have no idea where I get my sense of humor) and all the while he is getting more agitated by the second. In his haste he had forgotten to take the hook off the ladder and put it on the tree. Therefore instead of pulling tree down, the ladder went and left him dangling from the tree. Finally Mom did get the ladder back up to where he could get on it and climb down.

I'm assuming he did get over this as I came along about a year later.

They were told by realtor when they were looking at the property (16 acres) that there was talk of a big highway going through and it would be worth lots more money. Yea, do you really believe a salesman? Should have this time. Daddy decided after a couple years that he wanted to raise tobacco. So they sold log cabin and 16 acres and got a farm.

Guess where route 301 went.....yep, right through my birthplace! And to top that off later the slots were legal in that area and just a corner lot sold for $100,000.00. And of course at that time that was a lot of money. Just one more example of hind sight being 20/20!