Growing up country

I still believe growing up on a farm in the 50's was about the best way to grow up. Maybe a Ranch out West might have been better....naw, just bigger. We were also lucky enough to have other kids about our own age on the nearest farms. With neighbor kids, school friends and 4-H friends, our farm was a gathering place. My girl friends lived in those rural homes that dot the highways. Only two others actually lived on farms. But it was our farm that everyone visited. There were other kids around most of the time and all summer. Our games included the barn, haymow, cribs and other buildings and the trees and land. We played cowboy and indians, hide and seek, touch football, baseball and many games with no names. We had BB and pellet guns, bows and arrows and my horse, Gypsy. Treasure was part of most of those games too. And, even better we had neighbors farms to explore and our Uncle's farms were available also. Granddad D's farm has a creek. One neighbor had a small frog pond and there was Uncle W's big pond. What more could a kid want? We got pretty good with the guns. As they got older, the brothers hunted rabbit and pheasant. I never hunted, but I could shoot a pistol. We practiced on apples hanging in the tree and we used egg cartons. We could shoot the center out of each individual egg cup. One friend, C.A.S. and I were shooting at apples one day. The neighbor who owned Rex (remember the dog) and someone else was sitting up in a haymow door. I can't remember if the other boy was a brother or another neighbor. But, I remember G teasing me that I wasn't actually hitting anything. Apples don't always fall, expecially from a distance. The BB'. just go through. We could see the splat, but I don't suppose G could see it from the haymow. If I told you how far away G was from my gun, I'd have to guess. It was far enough he had to yell to be heard. He was starting to get annoying, so I yelled at him. "OK, Where do you want me to hit you smart allick." He laughed at me and pointed at his shoulder. I pumped up that pistol as hard as I could. I didn't know if it would even go that far. Then C helped and we pumped it another couple of times. Meanwhile G was laughing and teasing and tormenting me. He didn't even flinch when I aimed at him, he sat in the haymow door and laughed at me. I put that BB right where he told me to. It went through his jacket and shirt, but didn't break the skin. It did leave a nice welt and a bruise. He went home and told on me. There was a complaint raised, but there had been several witnesses and G had to suck it up. I was scolded, what if I'd hit his face or eye. But we knew if I could hit an egg cup, it would be ok. Gosh, it scares me now, what if the BB had drifted in that distance. Sometimes, it seems a wonder we lived to grow up.

Another favorite past time was using our Tarzan rope to swing across the open space in the center of the barn from one haymow to another. There would have surely been broken bones, at the least, if we'd not made it across. The rope hung from the peak of the roof and the distance probably spanned about 20 feet. There was a seperate platform near the roof that we could climb up to on one of those ladders that are built flush against a support in the barn. It would have been three stories high. There was a new family in the rental that G had lived in. The boy was three years older than me. I already knew him because he'd been in our school. His parents were just going to live in the rental till a new house they were building was ready to move into. It wouldn't be long because their current home had sold and they had to move before the new one was ready. Since K was older than any of us, he wasn't very anxious to play with us, but must have gotten bored and showed up one day. He'd been pretty stuck up, so we were going to make him pay before he could join us. He did fine with our Tarzan rope. So we had to push him harder. Dad had left a wagon of shelled corn in the open space between haymows. If you fell off the Tarzan rope you would just land in the nice soft shelled corn. Someone got the bright idea to climb to the top platform and jump into the corn It worked. There were several jumps. My brothers and whoever else was there made it. But, each time someone hit the corn, they sent it flying out of the wagon. I was the last to jump before K had to do it. No way was I going to let the boys scare me. I was the only girl there that day and when it was my turn, the three story jump looked like a death leap. But, hey the others had landed ok. So, I jumped. What I didn't realize was that most of the corn had disappeared by my turn. My feet hit and there wasn't enough corn left to cushion me. My knees came up and hit my chin and I bit off the tip of my tongue. It hurt like a bitten off tongue and bled like you couldn't believe. But, with tremendous bravado, I just turned my bloody face up to K and said, "It's your turn." Without a single word, he climbed back down the side ladder and went home. He never did come back to play with us. This story didn't quite end here. When Dad came in and found his shelled corn scattered all over the barn floor, he went ballistic. He made all of us crawl around an pick up every single last curnel of corn he could see. Even if I hadn't gotten hurt so bad, we would never try that again. Sometimes it seems a wonder we lived to grow up.

There was another fun thing we had to give up because Dad finally caught us. I really suspect most of these things were thought up by brother S. He was the biggest tease and orneriest kid I knew. He took Dad's grain scoop shovel from the barn, tied on a rope and then we pulled each other around the circular drive and road from the back of Gypsy. The kid on the scoop shovel had to sit indian style, (legs crossed in front of you) and hold on the the handle near the shovel. The shovel does not follow smoothly behind a running horse. Especially on gravel. It wasn't bad on the grass, but it bucked and fliped over on gravel. Not only did it tear up a kid, but it was hard on the shovel. That's how Dad caught us. We wore the bottom out of several shovels before he learned we weren't wearing them out with work. End of game. After that we we started pulling sleds around behind Gypsy, winter and summer. We even used the tractor a few times to pull the sled. Like the time I was pulling S behind the tractor. We had had a mountain of snow and even the fences were covered, so you could go a long way. This happened several times back when I was a kid. That day, I was watching S so I'd know if he fell off and I could stop and wait till he got back on. I lost track of where we were. Next thing I knew, I was driving across the frog pond. If I got Dad's tractor buried in the frog pond, I knew my life would end. The tractor was breaking the ice and I gunned it and kept going. Which meant that I was dragging S through the frozen water behind me. He knew better than to let go, and I kept going till he was across too. Then I had to get him home quick before he froze. Sometimes it seems a wonder we lived to grow up.