Granny's Pantry # 3: The house at High Rock

Granny’s house never had a formal, fancy name. My sister, brother and I called it High Rock (for the settlement nearby named for a large rock outcrop above it on the side of the Flat Swamp Mountain range)...or just Granny’s. It sits on a Century Farm about a mile from High Rock Dam in piedmont North Carolina.

The house at High Rock

The house is the latest home place of our branch of the Cole’s back through Granddaddy Albert Milton. His bride, Freda Mae Morgan, came from a farm across the river in Rowan County. This Cole farm house was built about 1890 by Grandsir Jim (James Milton Cole--Albert’s daddy). Jim’s daddy, Grandsir Tom Cole, built an earlier house on a rise closer to the Yadkin River. This house site is now only remembered by a scattering of bricks and the old kitchen, which was moved to become the wheat house behind the newer High Rock house. The current farm is part of land acquired through land grants in 1779 and 1984 to the 3 times great grandfather of Albert Milton Cole—the land grant hangs on the wall in the living room.

                                The High Rock house sits at the end of a long dirt lane, lined by cedar trees, between two fields.

An avenue of ancient boxwoods leads to the front door.

Looking from front porch

There once was a plainer façade on the two story front, but Granny Cole wanted...and got...the architectural changes of four square columns, shuttered windows and a slate front porch. The back of the house has one story and has tolerated an enclosed side porch, bathroom addition (an upgrade from the outhouse) and kitchen expansion (that for years housed both Granny’s wood and electric stoves) making life more convenient over the last 75 years or so.

 

Granddaddy’s been gone since 1967 and Granny since 1994. Aunt Ruthie lives there now, but much of the time…she doesn’t know it and is trying to get home. My heart pulls me back every few weeks, and I make the hundred mile trip to where I also used to live. I’ve conditioned myself to the changes, and we’re still adding to the memories.      

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is  temporary, but what is unseen is eternal 
(II Corinthians 4:18)