Shed Full of Memories

One Saturday morning a few years ago, Pete Layfield and his wife visited Ralph and Mary Davis at their farm in Macfarlan, West Virginia.

It was early. The women were inside talking. Pete told Ralph, who worked 30 years for Pennzoil as a well repairman, to go ahead and do his farm work. “I know Saturday is your only day to work here. I'll just mosey through your shed for awhile.” Two or three hours later, Ralph returned to the house for a cup of coffee.

Ralph headed for the shed, convinced that something must have happened to Pete - that he must be hurt. But as he approached the shed, Pete was there, sitting on the stone step, staring off into space.

Ralph spoke to him, Pete didn't answer. Ralph spoke again; again no answer. Finally, concerned, Ralph waved his hand before Pete's eyes. Pete suddenly snapped into focus.

“Yes, I'm okay,” Pete answered. “I was just reliving my boyhood days.”

Pete Layfield had made the mistake I made last week - the mistake of entering the past through Ralph Davis’ shed.

Pete went on to tell Ralph how he could see his own mother and father working with the many kinds of tools and house hold items that Ralph had stored in that twilight zone between today and yesterday.

As I approached the Davis farm on a beautiful early fall day last week, the trip into the past began as I climbed the steep driveway to their home. By the time I parked in front of the house, I realized I was on a West Virginia farmstead that, in many ways, looked as I might have 50 years ago.

Well, actually, 48 years ago - that was when Ralph moved to the farm to live with his new bride, Mary Living, who had been born and reared on that farm. Mary's father, Henry, was a blacksmith in Macfarlan. At one time he sharpened bits for the prison labor crews who “napped stone” on what became Rt. 47.

The farm today has antiques everywhere. Scattered around the yard is antique farm equipment and oil field equipment. Dominating the parking area is a 12-foot tall wooden barrel. Made of pine, the barrel was an oil storage tank from a well site near Brohard.

The tank tapers gently from top to bottom. “If it started to leak, you'd just drive these metal bands down,” Ralph explained. “It would tighten up the wood staves.”

Next to it was a smaller wooden tank. “This collected rain water at the Pennzoil shop,” Ralph said. “We had a tradition. On your birthday, you had to bring everyone candy. If you didn't - the crew threw you into the water tank.” When asked if he ever got thrown into the barrel, Ralph said, “No, I never.”

As we entered the shed, the first room was taken up almost entirely with blacksmithing tools, anvils, products and stock, all arranged around a forge. Unlike many o the things in this private museum, the blacksmithing room was used for many years. When Ralph first worked his Macfarlan farm, he did it all with horses.

From there we entered the main part of the rambling shed. “Most of this stuff,” Davis told me, “is Ritchie County stuff.”

The old gasoline pumps, motors, and garden equipment - most of which is working or will be soon. Ralph doesn't just store the stuff - he fixes it.

Further inside the building is a 1930 Model “A” Ford pickup, covered with a fine film of dust. “This,” said Davis proudly, “is what I learned to drive on.” The Model “A” still runs.

On a table nearby is a collection of antique well meters - with a twist. Each of the meters has been made into a clock - another of Ralph's hobbies.

Throughout the shed are shelves, 10 or 12 feet high, all loaded down with items from Ritchie County's past, that Ralph Davis has collected over the years.

He showed me a metal box he was given by a man from Altoona, PA. A small brass label on the top reads “Trainsman’s Box, B&) R.R., Grafton, 1941.”

On one shelf is a crude wrought iron strap with small railroad spikes rusted to the holes in it. The strap once held the wooden rails that were the Calico Railroad from Cairo to Ritchie Mines, where the worlds first asphalt was mined - asphalt that was used to pave roads in England.

Davis showed me tax receipts for the T. J. Parks property in Murphy District from 1915. The receipts are signed by Sheriff C. C. McKinley. The 167 1/2 acre tract, with its oil and gas rights, was valued at $1,005. Dollars. The tax was $8.62.

On one shelf is a collection of Jennings Randolph campaign buttons. Next to the buttons is a “Yellow Dog” - a yellow painted cast iron pot that looks like a teak kettle with two spouts. The pot was once filled with oil. Wicks in the two “spouts” provided light to early oil and gas well drillers.

On a nearby shelf is an aluminum grave marker. It reads “Patrick McGuire; Feb. 17, 1873; Marc. 15, 1931; Cokely Funeral Directors, Harrisville, W.Va.” Davis said the Cokely Funeral Home was once in the house where Prosecuting Attorney David Hanlon and his family now live.

On one shelf is a pile of manila folders. Opening one, Davis handed me a catalog from a Buick dealership in Pennsboro that he believes was owned by a man named Hess. The catalog offers “Marquette Automobiles by Buick.” The 1929 five-passenger convertible could be yours for only $1,105. The “Body by Fisher” boasts of having 254 board feet of hardwood lumber in each body.

Moving on through the sprawling building, Ralph pointed to a wooden, twin-tub washing machine operated by a small steam engine. He started it up and the belt began to drive the early agitators at the top of each tub. “This washing machine was removed from the Moundsville Penitentiary in 1928,” Ralph told me.

Over there is a homemade wood machine used for wrapping broom corn into brooms. Over here is a machine for making clock springs. And that, up there, is a machine that bent steel bands for wagon wheels. And this, of course, is a hand-cranked cider press.

On our way out of the building, Ralph Davis handed me a chunk of a smooth by coarse, gray substance. “My wife made this years ago,” he said. It was a large piece of lye soap that was once made on the Davis farm.

The Davis’ have three children. John lives in Cairo and works for Consolidated Gas. Lowell, who lives in Kanawha, drives for Rutherford Trucking. Their daughter, Pam Copeland, is know to Ritchie Gazette readers as our Dutchman correspondent.

In the hour and a half we spent wandering through that farm shed, we touched on only a tiny fraction of the memorabilia Ralph Davis has collected over his 48 years on his farm in Macfarlan. It would take many more trips to see it all. “One fellow has been back here six times,” Ralph said. “Each time he finds a lot of things he never saw before.”

the beautifully-maintained Davis farms “takes a lot of work to keep up,” he told me. Ralph has had three eye surgeries this summer and, he admits “it slows me down some.” But his collection is a glimpse into a way of life that many of us never knew, but all of us should treasure.