Hardscrabble farm life
of freedom…..I promised not to get a motorcycle until the kiddos are grown:(
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333 days ago
Jerry Riter Grace’ll be all grown up in 18 more yrs. We’ll get a couple of Harleys and terrorize a town. If we get caught, you can blame it on hormones and I’ll claim senility.
Feb 7, 2010
Current mood: talkative
BOYZ‘L BE BOYZ
For the first 15 years of my life, my brother Lloye and I lived, pretty much, in each others pockets. He being slightly the older was able to shoulder the blame for our many misadventures, while I was able to escape most, but not all, of the responsibility. After all, our parents weren’t stupid. If that wasn’t enough, they both were cursed with an incurable work ethic, and thought we should have it also. Sometimes we both believed they couldn’t possibly be our real parents.
Fun and excitement on two hundred acres of farm, isolated in the middle of the mountains, was all home-made and untested by the Product Safety Commission. We experienced our share of dangerous adventures while Mother worried herself sick that we were inadvertently suicidal. Dad was equally concerned, but it seemed to me in his case, that he just didn’t want us to escape these mortal coils while there was still work to do.
It began in earnest when I was about seven years old. Our motives were separate, but the goals were similar. Lloye wanted to learn some skill or trick that would be useful in impressing whomever his dream girl happened to be at the time. He was my fearless leader in all things until he discovered that a guitar was more effective and less risky than my company for the purpose. I dreamt of building a Tom Sawyer sort of raft and escaping the farm during spring floods. The Miller Run Crick (that’s what I said, “Crick”) went all the way to Endicott. From there it traveled to Rockport, The Forks, and people said, eventually, the Ohio River. Even I knew that the Ohio went to the Mississippi and then met the Gulf of Mexico in New Orleans. That was MY goal. In New Orleans I could lie about my age, get a job, and maybe even an older woman. Someone matronly and mature, about ten or even twelve years of age, who could teach me all about life and not beat me up like the big girls in school did.
While waiting for our dreams to materialize, we busied ourselves with a variety of experiments. One evening, while milking the cows, Lloye wondered what would happen if he clipped a suspender snap on one of his cow’s teats. She was a large Ayrshire-Durham cross named Patsy, which we kept for her milk, not her disposition. He would have suffered less had he taken off his suspenders before trying it. I saw “paddle ball” invented that day by a cow named Patsy, and my brother was its’ first ball.
Dad’s home grown poultry of choice were Rhode Island Red and Dominiker, plus whatever feral fowl wandered in from the woods. They were not far removed from their ancestral gamecock heritage and the roosters of the flock bullied me without mercy. In desperation one day, I discovered that with a strong stick and a bad attitude I could best one in a fight to the finish. It was the day I learned that striking any chicken on the side of its neck, with force, would make it fall to the ground in spasms for a minute or two, after which it would stand up none the wiser. If he went down fighting, he would come up the same way. My vengeance was sweet, swift and terrible.
There was always a generous supply of corn cobs in the barnyard; wet, dirty and heavy, they were the country equivalent to today’s paintball, almost as painful and twice as dirty. Ask my cousins, Ron and Jerome Morris about some of the wars we had with them. As our throwing arms developed, we found that we could take out a rooster from some distance by means of the cob. It did no permanent harm and was jolly good sport when Dad and Mom weren’t looking.
One summer day, just as Lloye scored a direct hit on one of the mean old barnyard roosters, Dad walked out of the tool shed in time to see the whole sordid affair. Pa exploded at him. “You’ve killed that dumb animal. Now we’ll have to cook him for dinner.” It was a dilemma for Lloye, who wanted to say, “No! No! Dad, just give him a minute and he’ll get back up.” He wanted to say that, but couldn’t without confessing to experience in the matter. He babbled a string of silly excuses for no good reason other than to stall for time. He and I both knew the Dominecker would soon stand up and walk away thereby mitigating, although not alleviating his offence. It seemed like forever and we both silently reasoned the wily old thing was just playing dead just for spite. All our hopes were dashed when Dad picked up the bird along with an axe, decapitating it in a single stroke. He then told Mom what had happened and ask her to cook it for dinner that night. She opined that this rooster was so old and tough; we would have trouble sticking a fork in the gravy, but cooked him anyway. I don’t remember the punishment nor how the rooster tasted, just the look on poor Lloyes’ face when that old birds’ head hit the ground.
Among the list of animals we didn’t keep on the farm were bulls. Dad didn’t want to feed and care for something we needed so sparingly, besides, Mother considered them somewhat dangerous. When a cow needed to be serviced he would decide which neighbor had the desired blood line sending us boys along with the cow in heat to go have her bred. This time, it was 1 ½ miles up the road to Sant and Ona Crane’s (1st comment) at the junction of Fairview and Postle Ridge. Sant looked more fragile than he probably was. Nearly died of tick fever some years before and was known for thrift. Folks said that on their wedding day, he took Ona to a restaurant in town ordering them a dish of ice cream with two spoons for her wedding treat.
The procedure was simple enough. A rope halter for the cow, one of us would walk ahead and lead, the other would follow with a small stick to prod her as necessary. When approaching the subject bull, pheromones in the air would notify the intended of our presence and purpose, all we had to do was open the gate allowing the cow access to the pasture. The rest was nature. After the calf was born, Dad would pay the bull’s owner for service, usually about $2. Once out of sight of our own farm, we took turns riding the cow. If you pull hard enough on her tail while sitting on her back, she would run full gallop and it became a contest which of us could hold on the longest while twisting the “throttle”. By the time we arrived at Sant and Ona’s, my brother and I were both worse for wear. The cow fared better that we did, and was still in mating mode. So far, it was a normal breeding day.
The bull du jour was a Hereford with the shortest legs I have ever seen. I cannot imagine, for the life of me, how an animal with those stubby pins could have ever mated without serious help. Each time he tried to mount the cow, he fell with a loud bellow squarely on his ¾ ton ass. The second time it happened, this writer lost all sense of composure and usefulness to galloping hilarity. Lloye was on his own to try maneuvering the cow downhill enough that “Shorty” could reach her. The only thing he could accomplish with these efforts was to diminish the distance from the bulls’ posterior to the hard packed clay soil. Hearing the commotion, Sant came from the barn with a mattock. He dug a hole and told Lloye to get the cow’s back feet in it. (Try doing that, I dare you). Although the theme to Looney Tunes was still unwritten, whenever I hear it, to this day, I think about Sant, Lloye and Shorty. At one point Sant screamed at the bull, “I could do better than that myself and I’m out of practice”. After several tries, the job was finally done, no thanks to me.
Upon returning home with the bit roughed up, but newly pregnant cow, Dad wondered what took so long. I still couldn’t talk about it without laughing, so Lloye told him the whole story. When he came to the part about Sant telling the bull he could have done better himself, Dad also lost it.
I learned more about people by being around animals than from books and school. Don’t be too hard on us for what you perceive as mistreatment of animals. Sheep were innocent, except those big Marino Rams. Pigs were evilly intelligent. Horses were good, but dangerously awkward. Roosters had it coming—I still hate them. Besides, think how brave a little boy has to be, climbing up on a cow, reaching back to grab her tail for the express purpose of twisting it, never doubting for a minute this can only end one way.