Goodwin's Hillside Farm Tourist Home - 1947

Goodwin's Hillside Farm Tourist Home - 1947
Kathy

In the 1940’s tourist’s homes were popular in the rural areas and there were several in our area.  One was The Fuller Rest which was Davy Fuller's aunt and uncle, Otis and Beulah. It was a beautiful home with four little cottages behind the main house.   Visitors loved to walk down the Catlin Hollow Road and enjoy the rural neighborhood.  In fact, one of the couples, Mr. and Mrs. Brink, fell so in love with the area that Mr. Brink coaxed my father into selling him an acre of land.  He built a lovely home just beyond the bridge.  They proved to be a wonderful addition to our neighborhood.

In 1947, Mother and Daddy decided that they would open up their home to summer visitors.  Mother had always kept a very clean home with everything in its place, the yard was always kept up and she and Daddy enjoyed flowers and took great pleasure in their flower beds with many blooming flowers and plant boxes.

I have lovely memories of windows being open with a gentle breeze blowing the white sheer curtains, the aroma of freshly baked bread, the smell of furniture polish, sunshine through the windows on shiny floors.  No wonder people liked to come from the city and stay on the farm.

Daddy and Mother
Buddy, the dog

Mother advertised in the Rural New Yorker Newspaper and the reservations came in.  When I think back on it now, it was an undertaking, as summer was a busy time.  Daddy was busy doing the haying, a huge job in itself.  He was doing it by himself with only the horses and old Fordson tractor.  Jerry and I were three and four years of age and too young to be of any help.  Guests would stay for a week at a time.  Sometimes, Daddy would allow them to go with him to get a load of hay and they always enjoyed experiencing the farm life first hand.  Now days we would think of the legal aspects of that, but then they were just eager to please their guests.

I remember several of our guests that came back year after year.  Mr. and Mrs. Wolf from Hackensack, NJ, the McCarrin Family from Ohio, they had a son named Billy and he got poor Jerry in trouble more times than one.  He was older than Jerry and set up my poor brother time after time.  It took Jerry a while to realize what was happening.  I think finally Daddy said something to Mr. McCarrin and it eased up a bit. We had a dog named Buddy that knew “sic ‘em”; Billy found that out and told Buddy to “sic ‘em” to the cows.  Daddy thought it was Jerry, if I remember correctly I think Jerry got a spanking for it, one of the very few he ever received and it wasn’t even his fault.

Then there was Mr. and Mrs. Bair from New York City.  I remember the story Daddy told about having the pleasure of introducing Mr. and Mrs. Wolf to Mr. and Mrs. Bair and Mr. Wolf stated he didn’t know if he should bark or growl, everyone thought that was pretty funny…a real ice breaker!

Daddy and guests

Mother and Daddy always had a large garden and the guests always enjoyed fresh vegetables.  Often times, it would be time to put up one vegetable or another for the coming winter when the guests were with us. They would enjoy snipping green beans or whatever needed to be done with Mother.  She would fix them a dish to work from and they would sit on the glider on the front porch and snip the green beans, shell peas, or whatever needed to be done. They felt like they were helping her and they were.  Mrs. Wolf liked to can and she would help Mother fill the the jars.  Mother always had a pressure cooker and that took up two burners on her stove, so we always had an oven dinner on the evening she canned.  Sometimes we would have salads, and cold cuts, if it was an extremely hot day.  The food was always good and lots of it.  The guests loved it all.  Sometimes, they wanted to be just with us, as a family and others wanted to be by themselves.  Mother and Daddy just went with the flow.

Jerry, Daddy, and Kathy

This was before automatic washing machines. Mother had a wringer washer; we washed in the bathroom and drained the washer into the bathtub. I remember helping her do the sheets after some of the guests left and turned to get something, when I did, my braid got caught in the wringer! I screamed and she shut the machine off just in time to save me.  It sure did pull!!  I had never had my hair cut and I always wore my hair in long braids at that time.

Mother had percale sheets. I never thought anything about that until I was in high school, when a girl friend told our class that she always liked to come to our house to sleep, because we had percale sheets!  Our sheets were hung on the line, as were the rest of our clothes and they smelled so good.  Daddy had the clothes lines so the north and south wind blew them, everything was always soft…no fabric softener back then.

If I remember correctly, a couple of neighborhood ladies helped Mother with the extra cleaning, Jeannie Gilland and Alice Edwards.  Jeannie, told me in later life that Mother was not easy to work for.  That didn’t come as any surprise to me, Mother expected everything to be clean and spotless!

I don’t know how many years they continued with the Tourist Home, but I do have pictures that go up to 1954.  Perhaps that is when motels started becoming more popular.