My husband and I have been Ralph’s friends for fifty-seven years and have watched him live the extraordinary life of the ordinary man that he has written about in this book. Ralph lived and worked internationally as an engineer and has friends all over the world who took part in some of these stories and are proud to be his friend. Ralph has influenced a large number of young people from Thailand for whom he was a mentor as he facilitated their educations in the United States. He is a proud family man who continues to travel, but is always home in the fall to harvest the fruits of his Kentucky apple orchard. This book is a good read! Settle down and enjoy the story of a remarkable man. Helen D. Hume Artist, art educator, and author Helen Hume is an artist, art educator, and author of nine books for art educators.
Early Years on Greasy Ridge Road I should start with my first memory and that was lying across my mother’s lap while Dr. Laswell (Country Doctor) injected something into my hip which apparently saved my life. I do not know what illness I had but a serum was required which had to be ordered and was received just in the “nick of time.” I was the last of 11 children. All have passed away except my brother Norman who is about 2 years older than me. I grew up in a poor home but loving and caring parents in the Highland area of Lincoln County, Kentucky on a 20-acre farm that was given to my mother by her Uncle David R. Adams. She received the land from my Uncle Dave because my grandfather, George Young who owned several hundred acres in the Highland area, split his farm between Dad’s brothers Bill and Jim. He left Dad out because he did not like my mother. He never accepted the fact that her father had been killed in the Civil War and therefore considered her illegitimate. Furthermore, he considered this all my mother’s fault. He also considered it my mother’s fault that his son Jake was having so many children. I have only a vague memory of events and people of his time, for which, I am glad. I do remember the 1929 Depression and how hard it was for my father to provide for our family. It is hard for the current generation to understand what really poor means. Family Picture (1964) From left: Preston, Georgie, Clarence, Ella, Dad, Vernon, Raywood, Norman and me Missing: Mayme and Bill There were many poor families in our area during the early 1930's. But, the beauty of that period of time is, we did not consider ourselves poor. I can still remember our first grade teacher, Millie Peck, teaching those of us who did not have tooth brushes and tooth paste about how to use a Sassafras branch limb to shred making a brush. We then used baking soda as a cleaner for our teeth. Not tasty, but it worked. Also, I remember my Mom and Dad talking about not accepting food from the Government Relief Agency, the result of something called pride that was preached into all of us children. We survived by growing our own vegetables /corn for cornmeal/wheat for flour/chickens for eggs/hogs for pork/cattle for beef/ just living off the land. Dad was able to do enough logging of timber to buy the basic staples, sugar, coffee, etc. In 1965, when my father died, I asked all my brothers and sisters if I could have the farm appraised and then pay each of them their share. All agreed so I now own the farm. Charlotte and I have lived many places around the world, but we never lost sight of the fact that we would end our lives on Greasy Ridge Road in Lincoln County, Kentucky. She accomplished that mission in October, 2006 and I will be next. I only hope that one of my children, grandchildren, or great grand children will fall in love with the farm as I have and keep it in the family. Only time will tell. Retirement Home built in 1984 1 On the original Bettie Young Homestead at 150 Greasy Ridge Road, Stanford, Kentucky with Charlotte supervising. One of the early things in my life I remember so well was a whipping Norman and I got because our brother Bill told Dad what we were doing. Below our house was a spring called Cash Spring. Farmers from all over the area hauled water for their daily needs. The spring was on our property and a large concrete trough was built to retain water for all our neighbors. Norman and I thought we should stop people from stealing our water so we plugged the pipe feeding the trough. Bill caught us doing that and squealed to Dad. Dad gave us both a sound whipping, which was not liked, but deserved. Norman and I grew up with two nephews, Earl and Carl Hutchison. We spent a lot of time together. But each occasion usually ended in a fight. Norman could handle Earl and Carl would handle me. I was small and under weight and Carl was just the opposite. It is impossible to remember the number of times that Mom and my sister Georgia decided to keep us apart for a few weeks to teach us a lesson about fighting. But, it never worked because within minutes of getting back together we were fighting again. My father was a farmer, logger, and horse trainer (not riding horses but rather, working ones) and the janitor for the local Highland High School. He always seemed to have a blind or half-blind horse in residence at the farm. I remember being on Greasy Ridge Road near our home. One of his half- blind horses was grazing on the roadside which they often did. Earl said, “Let’s ride the horse home.” I said, “OK.” Earl said, “I will help you on if you will pull me on after you’re on the horse.” I tried my best to pull Earl up on the horse, but was not able to do so. So, he became angry and picked up a stick and started hitting the horse, causing it to start galloping toward our barn. Just as I entered our yard I saw my dad standing in the barn yard. I knew what was coming so I came off the horse at full gallop and headed to mom standing in the doorway of the house. You see, I was a mom’s boy and Norman was dad’s boy. That might very well explain the fact that Norman never remembered the whipping we got for stopping up the pipes. We grew up playing marbles (for keeps), kick the can, and handy-over among other things. Earl was the King of Marbles and won all the marbles in sight. When we built our retirement home on the site where I was born, the contractor did a lot of excavating. The result was that I found many marbles. Earl was still alive at that time and I enjoyed showing the bag full of marbles and saying, “See Earl, you did not win all of them.” It’s against the rules to fudge in a marble contest. Earl said he never ever fudged. But he always had sore knuckles. Another early memory was of my brother Raywood. He was red headed and full of adventure. He was two years older than Norman and had the strength to beat up on Norman or me. He did so regularly. One day mom said, “Why don’t you and Norman team up on him and maybe he will stop picking on you individually?” We took her suggestion and the next time he started a fight Norman and I worked him over. Later in life he said he did not mind too much that we beat him up, but to see his mother standing in the doorway smiling was just too much. We spent a lot of time playing in the woods building forts out of branches and pretending to be cowboys. One early Christmas in my life I remember getting a toy gun and holster set. I went next door to my Uncle Mart and Aunt Ell’s house where Leonard Young, their adopted son, and Herbert Hatfield were shooting firecrackers. They were much older than me. They said that if I wanted my new gun to sound real I should put a firecracker in the barrel. This I did and I must have spent days crying about losing my six shooter, because it blasted into what looked like a million pieces. Puppy love was the favorite pastime. There was Mary Ann and Babe Ferguson, Irene and Ruth McGuffey in the early stages, among others. That was the real reason for our forts in the woods just behind their houses. The truth is with all our efforts it never worked. We just did not know how to lure them into our forts. Another memory is going to the movies. The only one close was in Stanford, 10 miles away. Bill Reed had a truck and we would all get onto the flat bed truck and go to Stanford for the movie. It cost about 25 cents for the ride and another 25 cents for the movie. Snacks were out of the question because we were lucky to afford the ride and the movie. During my early years I remember several of my brothers and sisters coming home during summer vacation time. They came from Detroit, Michigan where they had migrated for employment. It was always a fun time with getting all our family together. Being in a large famil
D. Ralph Young was born in Kentucky in the mid-1920s and grew up on a farm in central Kentucky. He spent his years there before entering World War II and serving in the Pacific Theater as a Gunner’s Mate on the USS J. Franklin Bell. After marriage and a college degree from University of Kentucky, he and his family spent forty or so years in St Louis in between their stints in Thailand, Malaysia, Oman, Iran, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia where he practiced his career as a power engineer. He retired (several times) to Greasy Ridge Road in Central Kentucky, his birthplace, to establish an orchard. Currently, he spends his time traveling back and forth between his homes in SW Ohio and Kentucky as well as cruising on ships. This is his first book about his life story.