The house I grew up in

What of the house I grew up in? It lay on a distant part of a hilltop field that overlooked the Ohio River.

The field had been part of my grandfather’s farm. My grandfather, I should tell you, was not a farmer, nor did he even have the basics of the farmer’s art, having grown up in a tiny, city-bound house. Rather, owning and presiding over an estate was what a powerful man was supposed to do in his mature years.

He build for himself and my grandmother a house in the style of the ranch houses on the Argentinian pampas. At the center of it was an octagonal turret, from which the proud owner of the ranch could oversee all his cattle, wherever they may be. My grandfather died before I was born, so I have no idea if he ever went up into the turret, or how often, My grandmother, I suppose could have also climbed the stairs for her own viewing, but she was not the stair-climbing sort of woman.