Tuff and Becky's Place

From S. Bonzo - "A story my father told me about Uncle Tuff."

        "When I was growing up, Dad [Lyle Edgar Bonzo] and I often walked over to the heavily wooded eighty acres where Tuff and Rebecca [Dever] had lived.  I loved to play in their abandoned log house.  There was a spring with good water that never went dry.  Dad would make an event out of cleaning leaves out of it after our long walk, and we's get a cold drink.  
        "Aunt Becky's flowers still bloomed wild.  (The owner, [name withheld], eventually burned the log house down--which Dad thought was a terrible waste.)  Anyway, Dad would tell me about the pond Tuff had dug out by hand below the spring and how He'd stocked it with a delicious fish that no one else in the community had.  (I think it was yellow perch, if there is such a thing.)  Dad was a boy and lusted to go after those fish, but Tuff must have been afraid that he'd fish them out, and only rarely let him fish there.
        "There came a day when Tuff and Becky decided to move out west somewhere [St. Louis, Missouri] where their two boys lived [Albert Marion and Robert Newton].  For whatever reason, they eventually moved back and wished they had not sold their farm.  They moved into a house in Minford [Ohio] with only a small back yard.
        "Becky told my Dad that one morning Tuff woke up at the crack of dawn.  She asked him what he was getting up so early for, and he said, 'Get up Becky, we've got a big day!  You know what we've got to do today!'  The only thing scheduled was making a lettuce bed in the back yard.
        "My dad found the story both humorous and sad.  Tuff had been used to hard farmwork his whole life and had complained to Dad that the farm was so hilly and uneven he couldn't even find a spot level enough to 'set a milk bucket.'  But in his age, Tuff was so excited about making a lettuce patch he couldn't sleep."

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The photo on this page was contributed by Serena Bonzo, who reserves all rights

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