The Silo
Only a few times in my life have I actually been truly scared. I mean really afraid. So afraid that you think you’re about to die and you’re no so sure that it’s a bad thing. So afraid that you don’t care who knows or who sees. The only thing that matters is the fear. You have to have actually lived through a moment like that to understand. You literally have to have been there, and I have.
I was about thirteen or fourteen years old at the time. The farmer down the road had just built a brand-new silo and it was the talk of the neighborhood. It stood there beside his barn gleaming white, new poured concrete reflecting the rays of the late summer sun. Its red and white domed roof looked like a hot air balloon rising into the sky. It was a beacon of hope at a time when the farmers were holding tight to every penny they had. It shouted that somebody, at least, was making some money.
He was proud of it too. All of the farmers around had been given the grand tour and had been shown the new delivery system that automatically unloaded the silage into a cart to be pushed through the barn and fed to the pigs. Nobody had to go up there to throw the silage out of the silo and down the chute. It’s very low tech by current standards but in 1968 it was state of the art.
The silo was eighty feet high. That’s not high compared to the Space Needle or the CN Tower but to a fourteen-year-old kid who isn’t too sure about heights, that’s a long way up. Not only that, but it’s a long way down too. A very long way down.
Mr. Silo was right on the ball when it came time to fill silo. He was among the first farmers in the area to have his silo full. He then sealed it up to wait the appropriate length of time for the corn to ferment and all traces of silo gas to disappear. Silo gas is a gas produced inside recently filled silos by the fermenting vegetation. It has killed many careless farmers. One was an old school chum of mine.
Now at this point I should probably mention that since Mr. Silos son was my best friend and since Dad knew all about the dangers of silo gas, I had been admonished several times to stay out of said silo. Actually I think a better word is “ordered.” I think what Dad said was: “If the silo gas doesn’t kill you I will.”
Heck Dad, why not just ask me to climb the Silo? That would have done more to keep me on the ground.
The day the silo was opened my buddy looked me right in the eye and asked me if I was scared to climb up to the top. I looked him right in the eye and laughed. Me? Scared? Oh man, I was so scared that my knees were actually shaking and we were still on the ground. I said, “Let’s go!”.
Out to the silo we went and started to climb. Ten feet . . . Not so bad. Twenty feet . . . Still not too bad but this was gonna be a long climb. At forty feet my legs were getting a bit sore and I had stopped looking down. By the time we had reached sixty feet I was more than ready for a little rest but Buddy wouldn’t stop. I was puffing like a steam engine, my ears were burning and my face was drenched with sweat by the time we hit the top. We hoisted ourselves through the hatch and there we were. Eighty feet up, inside a silo, with absolutely nothing to see but concrete, a brand-new silo unloader, silage and the underside of a red and white dome. By the way, those domes are only red and white on the outside. This was sure worth the climb.
I was bushed so we sat there staring at the scenery for half an hour or so and resting up for the climb back down. Finally we were ready and as usual Buddy took the lead. He swung his feet out of the hatch and disappeared. I was next. I crawled over to the hatch and stuck one foot tentatively over the edge. Hmmm . . . no rung. I felt around a bit with my foot but still no rung. Buddy below me was coaching me to just slide out a bit further and the rung was right there below my foot. I couldn’t feel a rung and I sure as heck wasn’t going to slide any more of my pudgy little body out of that hatch until I could.
I crawled back in and sat against the wall. To say that I was terrified would be an understatement. I could hardly breathe. We weren’t supposed to up here at all and now I was stuck. I was not about to stick my feet over that edge again. I told Buddy to go for help. He said no, but being a good friend he tried to offer me a little encouragement.
“I think I can smell silo gas!” he said.
Too bad. That could only be a blessing to me at this point. If they dragged my cold dead body out of that silo then at least, I wouldn’t have to stick my feet over that edge again. I stayed put. After what seemed like hours and several more lies about things like spiders, rats, bats and assorted fictional creatures buddy finally gave in and went for help.
I don’t remember much about the rest of the wait, or about the trip down with Mr. Silo's arms wrapped around me, guiding my progress. I do, however, remember sitting at their kitchen table with Buddy and being chewed out for what seemed like hours by Mr. Silo. I also remember his parting words to me that day.
“I don’t see any need for your father to hear about this unless you do.”
Musikman & SassyBrat
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Chillin'
Monday, July 26, 2004
Not a Clue Dad
Not a Clue Dad
Tractors are a great invention. They make a farmer’s life more bearable and make it possible to do many, many times as much work as with horses. It should be noted however that tractors, in the twenty first century, bear little resemblance to the tractors I grew up driving in the 1950s and 60s. Steel seats with little or no padding mounted directly on the read differential have given way to climate controlled cabs with stereo systems, cell phones and many other conveniences. The price of these 200 plus horse power monsters also far outweighs the price Dad would pay for a tractor.
By the same token, farms are much larger than those of the mid twentieth century. When I was a teenager, it was unusual to see a farmer, in our area, who was farming more than two or three hundred acres. Today the sky’s the limit. With huge farms come huge tractors and equipment, and also huge prices.
Those of us fortunate enough to have grown up on a farm in those days were allowed to drive tractors from, in many cases, a very young age. In my case it was five years of age because that’s when I could push the clutch all the way in without taking my bum off the front edge of the seat. The tractor was a Ford 8N. If memory serves me, it had about 24 horsepower and could pull a two-furrow plow with twelve inch bottoms. That meant that with each pass down the field you could turn over a whopping two feet of soil. It was our only tractor at that time and we farmed fifty acres with it. I know that’s a hobby farm today but we made a decent living from it back then.
I said decent, not great. Dad also owned and drove a school bus and a few years later he drove a feed truck part time as well. Nobody thought anything of that, because it wasn’t unusual at all for the farmers in the area, or their wives to have jobs off the farm to generate that little extra cash they always needed. One neighbor drove the road grader, another ran the mill at the feed store in town and yet another drove big-rigs and would be gone for days at a time while his wife and kids held down the fort at home. My uncle had a full time job off his farm operating heavy equipment.
If you were lucky, enough or the bank trusted you enough, to be able to acquire a new piece of equipment it was a big deal. When I was about seven years old, Dad decided to buy a hay bailer. Up until then he had either hired the bailing done or used a hay rack and hays forks the way it was done in the really old days. This was actually equipment that had been converted from horse drawn to power drawn. It was my job to drive the tractor on the bailer and it had to be done right. It was a brand-new bailer and Dad insisted that it was going to last us a long time. Dad still had it when he retired. He sold it to a neighbor who used it for many years after that.
We managed with that small tractor for a few years, until Dad found a slightly larger one for a good price. It was a used Fords on Delta. It had a front end loader and we thought we had the world by the tail. It still only pulled a small plow but I soon discovered that it would do it a lot faster. I was about twelve by now and to me fast was good. On the road with nothing behind it and a good tail wind down hill I could get that tractor up to nearly thirty miles an hour. I was warned that this tractor had to last a long time, “So don’t abuse it!”
Now, you have to realize that I was becoming a teenager, and teenage boys like to drive fast. They also love to compete with each other and show off a bit. Put this all together with what I have already said about the fathers in the area having jobs off their farms, and what you get is a bunch of young teenagers with access to tractors and little or no supervision around. Thus evolved, The Tractor Races. You may not believe this but we never got caught either. At least if we did, our fathers chose to say nothing to us about it and that wasn’t at all like our fathers, so I believe the former.
These tractor races were never prearranged. It was always something spontaneous. I would, for instance, see my friend across the road on the tractor and, having seen his father leave for work earlier, I would wave him over. It only takes two tractors for a race and we were off. Some times we’d have a third or a fourth show up but never more than that. You see our farm was on a corner so the other guys could see the tractor going down the road with nothing in tow and would have a very good idea what was up. Too many tractors would attract attention and we knew it.
At the very back of our farm there was a lane that ran along the front edge of a bush lot. It was quite straight, at the bottom of a hill and it couldn’t be seen from the road because of hills and trees. The other good thing about it was that Dad didn’t go back there much, so he wasn’t likely to notice if it got trampled down or torn up a bit. We would use that lane as our race track. The races never lasted long. After one or two runs each, we would declare a winner and be back to work before anyone was the wiser.
The scariest part of the tractor races certainly wasn’t the speed we went. It was the track. It was, as I called it earlier, just a lane. It wasn’t graded or graveled. It was just a grass lane that grew weeds instead of crops. There were pot holes, rocks, tree branches and any manner of other stuff laying around, not to mention the wildlife that a noisy tractor would scare up out of the underbrush. It was usually littered with tree limbs, leaves, stones and other assorted items that could seriously impede the forward progress of a tractor.
Our Dads were just as scary. If we got caught racing we would be in trouble with both our parents, but if we broke a tractor in a pothole or on a rock we would be in trouble with our fathers and nobody wanted to be in trouble with their Dad. When you were in trouble with your parents, Dad would always be a little bit on your side because after all “Boys will be Boys” but when you were in trouble with your dad only, the almighty himself could help, or wasn’t about to.
Dad set out the work schedule. It was only because the Dads trusted us that we were allowed access to the tractors when they were away. If any of us broke a tractor we would all be relegated to shoveling manure away from behind the animal of each father’s choice, until we once again proved ourselves worthy to handle the keys to power. Shoveling manure is not fun. Thank good luck but we never broke a tractor, or got caught. I came really close once though.
I was racing with my best friend one fall day when a cock pheasant flew out of the brush along the lane. I wish I could say that he startled me but he didn’t. A male pheasant is a beautiful bird. If you haven’t seen one, they are about the size of a chicken, but with bright plumage reminiscent of all the fall colors rolled into one bird. They have long tail feathers that trail out behind them when they take flight. They are truly magnificent. I was so far ahead in the race that I watched him flying across the freshly picked corn field instead of paying attention to where I was going. At full throttle, I dropped the front wheel of the tractor into a large hole. Now this wouldn’t have even been a huge problem, had I been paying attention. I would have bumped through and kept on going, but oh no. I was looking over my right shoulder, at the magnificent creature I had just sent flying into the air, and only had one hand on the steering wheel. The wheel was unceremoniously torn from my hand and the tractor made a sharp left turn. I have been told that it was actually up on two wheels for several seconds, before hitting a large rock with the right rear tire and being thrown
back on all four wheels.
The tractor had stalled at some point during its unguided journey and on impact I had been thrown off into a scrub tree that grew along the lane. A small tree, but it bit. It had thorns about an inch long that showed no mercy. All I was thinking about at that point was my funeral. I might have survived the accident but I would surely, I believed, not survive the wrath of DAD.
Once I managed to scramble out of the tree with more than a little help from my best friend, I looked the tractor over and to my amazement there was no visible damage. The world began to brighten, as I climbed back aboard. Still, no visible damage. I turned the key and pressed the starter button. The engine roared to life like it was born to race and wanted nothing more than to get back at it.
There was no more racing that day. As a matter of fact that was the last time I ever remember a tractor race taking place on our farm. I drove the tractor, carefully, back to the shed and put it away, just as Dad had left it the night before.
If he ever knew anything about those races, he never said a word to me about it. He did, however, mention many times that the tractor had somehow developed a strange wobble in the right rear wheel and wondered if I knew anything about it. Of course I told him the truth.
“I haven’t got a clue Dad!”
Tractors are a great invention. They make a farmer’s life more bearable and make it possible to do many, many times as much work as with horses. It should be noted however that tractors, in the twenty first century, bear little resemblance to the tractors I grew up driving in the 1950s and 60s. Steel seats with little or no padding mounted directly on the read differential have given way to climate controlled cabs with stereo systems, cell phones and many other conveniences. The price of these 200 plus horse power monsters also far outweighs the price Dad would pay for a tractor.
By the same token, farms are much larger than those of the mid twentieth century. When I was a teenager, it was unusual to see a farmer, in our area, who was farming more than two or three hundred acres. Today the sky’s the limit. With huge farms come huge tractors and equipment, and also huge prices.
Those of us fortunate enough to have grown up on a farm in those days were allowed to drive tractors from, in many cases, a very young age. In my case it was five years of age because that’s when I could push the clutch all the way in without taking my bum off the front edge of the seat. The tractor was a Ford 8N. If memory serves me, it had about 24 horsepower and could pull a two-furrow plow with twelve inch bottoms. That meant that with each pass down the field you could turn over a whopping two feet of soil. It was our only tractor at that time and we farmed fifty acres with it. I know that’s a hobby farm today but we made a decent living from it back then.
I said decent, not great. Dad also owned and drove a school bus and a few years later he drove a feed truck part time as well. Nobody thought anything of that, because it wasn’t unusual at all for the farmers in the area, or their wives to have jobs off the farm to generate that little extra cash they always needed. One neighbor drove the road grader, another ran the mill at the feed store in town and yet another drove big-rigs and would be gone for days at a time while his wife and kids held down the fort at home. My uncle had a full time job off his farm operating heavy equipment.
If you were lucky, enough or the bank trusted you enough, to be able to acquire a new piece of equipment it was a big deal. When I was about seven years old, Dad decided to buy a hay bailer. Up until then he had either hired the bailing done or used a hay rack and hays forks the way it was done in the really old days. This was actually equipment that had been converted from horse drawn to power drawn. It was my job to drive the tractor on the bailer and it had to be done right. It was a brand-new bailer and Dad insisted that it was going to last us a long time. Dad still had it when he retired. He sold it to a neighbor who used it for many years after that.
We managed with that small tractor for a few years, until Dad found a slightly larger one for a good price. It was a used Fords on Delta. It had a front end loader and we thought we had the world by the tail. It still only pulled a small plow but I soon discovered that it would do it a lot faster. I was about twelve by now and to me fast was good. On the road with nothing behind it and a good tail wind down hill I could get that tractor up to nearly thirty miles an hour. I was warned that this tractor had to last a long time, “So don’t abuse it!”
Now, you have to realize that I was becoming a teenager, and teenage boys like to drive fast. They also love to compete with each other and show off a bit. Put this all together with what I have already said about the fathers in the area having jobs off their farms, and what you get is a bunch of young teenagers with access to tractors and little or no supervision around. Thus evolved, The Tractor Races. You may not believe this but we never got caught either. At least if we did, our fathers chose to say nothing to us about it and that wasn’t at all like our fathers, so I believe the former.
These tractor races were never prearranged. It was always something spontaneous. I would, for instance, see my friend across the road on the tractor and, having seen his father leave for work earlier, I would wave him over. It only takes two tractors for a race and we were off. Some times we’d have a third or a fourth show up but never more than that. You see our farm was on a corner so the other guys could see the tractor going down the road with nothing in tow and would have a very good idea what was up. Too many tractors would attract attention and we knew it.
At the very back of our farm there was a lane that ran along the front edge of a bush lot. It was quite straight, at the bottom of a hill and it couldn’t be seen from the road because of hills and trees. The other good thing about it was that Dad didn’t go back there much, so he wasn’t likely to notice if it got trampled down or torn up a bit. We would use that lane as our race track. The races never lasted long. After one or two runs each, we would declare a winner and be back to work before anyone was the wiser.
The scariest part of the tractor races certainly wasn’t the speed we went. It was the track. It was, as I called it earlier, just a lane. It wasn’t graded or graveled. It was just a grass lane that grew weeds instead of crops. There were pot holes, rocks, tree branches and any manner of other stuff laying around, not to mention the wildlife that a noisy tractor would scare up out of the underbrush. It was usually littered with tree limbs, leaves, stones and other assorted items that could seriously impede the forward progress of a tractor.
Our Dads were just as scary. If we got caught racing we would be in trouble with both our parents, but if we broke a tractor in a pothole or on a rock we would be in trouble with our fathers and nobody wanted to be in trouble with their Dad. When you were in trouble with your parents, Dad would always be a little bit on your side because after all “Boys will be Boys” but when you were in trouble with your dad only, the almighty himself could help, or wasn’t about to.
Dad set out the work schedule. It was only because the Dads trusted us that we were allowed access to the tractors when they were away. If any of us broke a tractor we would all be relegated to shoveling manure away from behind the animal of each father’s choice, until we once again proved ourselves worthy to handle the keys to power. Shoveling manure is not fun. Thank good luck but we never broke a tractor, or got caught. I came really close once though.
I was racing with my best friend one fall day when a cock pheasant flew out of the brush along the lane. I wish I could say that he startled me but he didn’t. A male pheasant is a beautiful bird. If you haven’t seen one, they are about the size of a chicken, but with bright plumage reminiscent of all the fall colors rolled into one bird. They have long tail feathers that trail out behind them when they take flight. They are truly magnificent. I was so far ahead in the race that I watched him flying across the freshly picked corn field instead of paying attention to where I was going. At full throttle, I dropped the front wheel of the tractor into a large hole. Now this wouldn’t have even been a huge problem, had I been paying attention. I would have bumped through and kept on going, but oh no. I was looking over my right shoulder, at the magnificent creature I had just sent flying into the air, and only had one hand on the steering wheel. The wheel was unceremoniously torn from my hand and the tractor made a sharp left turn. I have been told that it was actually up on two wheels for several seconds, before hitting a large rock with the right rear tire and being thrown
back on all four wheels.
The tractor had stalled at some point during its unguided journey and on impact I had been thrown off into a scrub tree that grew along the lane. A small tree, but it bit. It had thorns about an inch long that showed no mercy. All I was thinking about at that point was my funeral. I might have survived the accident but I would surely, I believed, not survive the wrath of DAD.
Once I managed to scramble out of the tree with more than a little help from my best friend, I looked the tractor over and to my amazement there was no visible damage. The world began to brighten, as I climbed back aboard. Still, no visible damage. I turned the key and pressed the starter button. The engine roared to life like it was born to race and wanted nothing more than to get back at it.
There was no more racing that day. As a matter of fact that was the last time I ever remember a tractor race taking place on our farm. I drove the tractor, carefully, back to the shed and put it away, just as Dad had left it the night before.
If he ever knew anything about those races, he never said a word to me about it. He did, however, mention many times that the tractor had somehow developed a strange wobble in the right rear wheel and wondered if I knew anything about it. Of course I told him the truth.
“I haven’t got a clue Dad!”
Sunday, July 25, 2004
The Rock
The Rock
Mom and Dad were probably the most loving couple I ever knew. I can truly say that I never in all my life saw them fight. They sometimes would disagree but they never fought. Each told the other every day that they loved them, not just once but many times. Love in our house was a tangible thing and it was always there. No
matter what happened. No matter how angry we got. No matter what you did wrong, the love remained. We never went to bed angry. Whatever had happened that day had to be resolved or we would sit at the kitchen table all night talking it out.
It may have come to light, throughout this narration, that I was not always a perfect angel as a child. My parents understood that and loved me perhaps even more because of it. You see, sometimes, kids are more fun when they aren’t behaving perfectly. I was very good at that.
One fine summer evening I was outside in the barnyard doing some small chores, watching the pigeons flying in and out of the hay mow. They were gathering sticks and pieces of rock and other stuff as pigeons do. Mom and Dad were both in the barn milking the cows. Now, you have to understand that Dad hated pigeons. He called them disease carrying vermin that served no better purpose than to poop (he didn’t say poop) all over everything in a hay mow. The only hunters allowed on our farm were some men with a thick accent. I remember them coming around to shoot pigeons in the barn a couple of times a year. Dad always let them in with an admonition not to shoot any holes in his steel roof. Dad really loved that roof.
Suddenly I had an epiphany. There were tons of small rocks laying around and I had a fairly good arm, so it would naturally follow, that I should pick up a rock and, with all the might and accuracy I could muster, hurl it toward a flying pigeon.
Hey . . . I missed . . . oh there’s another one. Pick up a stone . . . take aim . . . wait for it . . . follow through . . . swoosh . . . dang. Missed again. Ok this time for
sure. Here he comes. Nice big rock. Wait for it . . . Wait for it . . . Swoosh . . . Crash!
Seconds later Dad emerged from the barn holding the rock that just crashed through a window and hit him squarely in the back of the head, as he was bent over milking a cow. He simply held up the rock, rubbed his head and watched me standing there, trying to look as innocent as possible. I was good at it too.
When he asked me why I had thrown a rock through the window I said, ”Huh? Rock? What rock?” (It just doesn’t get more convincing than that, does it?)
“The one that just hit me in the head!” said Dad.
“Hit you in the head? A Rock? Really? How the heck could that happen Dad?”
“You tell me!” he insisted. (I think you get the idea.)
I was good, but the dust on my hands and the fact that I was the only one out there sort of gave me away. I did what any red blooded boy would do. I lied some more, but Dad was having none of it. I could see that he was starting to get angry. His ears were getting red. That was a sure sign that it was time to come clean, except on hot days when his ears tended to get red all the time. (Another story there too)
I wasn’t a dumb kid. I knew the right thing to do, so I made a snap decision. I stood up straight, looked Dad right in the eye and I lied some more.
I started with something about the neighbor kid, who was probably at home lying to his own father, then went off on a tangent ending with something like “I didn’t do it . . . on purpose . . . sorry.” Followed by a flood of tears. Tears always helped. Dad hated to see me cry, and I could do it on command.
By the time all was said and done, Dad was laughing too hard to be mad anymore. After all, as he said, I did have good intentions, if not good sense, and no one was really hurt. The window which had already been badly cracked got fixed and I put some fear of God into those pigeons.
Oh . . . and I really pulled the wool over Dad’s eyes that time.
Mom and Dad were probably the most loving couple I ever knew. I can truly say that I never in all my life saw them fight. They sometimes would disagree but they never fought. Each told the other every day that they loved them, not just once but many times. Love in our house was a tangible thing and it was always there. No
matter what happened. No matter how angry we got. No matter what you did wrong, the love remained. We never went to bed angry. Whatever had happened that day had to be resolved or we would sit at the kitchen table all night talking it out.
It may have come to light, throughout this narration, that I was not always a perfect angel as a child. My parents understood that and loved me perhaps even more because of it. You see, sometimes, kids are more fun when they aren’t behaving perfectly. I was very good at that.
One fine summer evening I was outside in the barnyard doing some small chores, watching the pigeons flying in and out of the hay mow. They were gathering sticks and pieces of rock and other stuff as pigeons do. Mom and Dad were both in the barn milking the cows. Now, you have to understand that Dad hated pigeons. He called them disease carrying vermin that served no better purpose than to poop (he didn’t say poop) all over everything in a hay mow. The only hunters allowed on our farm were some men with a thick accent. I remember them coming around to shoot pigeons in the barn a couple of times a year. Dad always let them in with an admonition not to shoot any holes in his steel roof. Dad really loved that roof.
Suddenly I had an epiphany. There were tons of small rocks laying around and I had a fairly good arm, so it would naturally follow, that I should pick up a rock and, with all the might and accuracy I could muster, hurl it toward a flying pigeon.
Hey . . . I missed . . . oh there’s another one. Pick up a stone . . . take aim . . . wait for it . . . follow through . . . swoosh . . . dang. Missed again. Ok this time for
sure. Here he comes. Nice big rock. Wait for it . . . Wait for it . . . Swoosh . . . Crash!
Seconds later Dad emerged from the barn holding the rock that just crashed through a window and hit him squarely in the back of the head, as he was bent over milking a cow. He simply held up the rock, rubbed his head and watched me standing there, trying to look as innocent as possible. I was good at it too.
When he asked me why I had thrown a rock through the window I said, ”Huh? Rock? What rock?” (It just doesn’t get more convincing than that, does it?)
“The one that just hit me in the head!” said Dad.
“Hit you in the head? A Rock? Really? How the heck could that happen Dad?”
“You tell me!” he insisted. (I think you get the idea.)
I was good, but the dust on my hands and the fact that I was the only one out there sort of gave me away. I did what any red blooded boy would do. I lied some more, but Dad was having none of it. I could see that he was starting to get angry. His ears were getting red. That was a sure sign that it was time to come clean, except on hot days when his ears tended to get red all the time. (Another story there too)
I wasn’t a dumb kid. I knew the right thing to do, so I made a snap decision. I stood up straight, looked Dad right in the eye and I lied some more.
I started with something about the neighbor kid, who was probably at home lying to his own father, then went off on a tangent ending with something like “I didn’t do it . . . on purpose . . . sorry.” Followed by a flood of tears. Tears always helped. Dad hated to see me cry, and I could do it on command.
By the time all was said and done, Dad was laughing too hard to be mad anymore. After all, as he said, I did have good intentions, if not good sense, and no one was really hurt. The window which had already been badly cracked got fixed and I put some fear of God into those pigeons.
Oh . . . and I really pulled the wool over Dad’s eyes that time.
Reputation by Association
Reputation by Association
When I was in High school, I was rewarded for my exceptional mental acuity as well as my great manual dexterity by receiving the highest honor our society can bestow upon a teenage boy. I got my drivers license, and it only took me three tries . . . again because of that great dexterity and acuity thing . . . right. Well, it wasn’t my fault if two inspectors didn’t recognize the greatest driver of all time sitting right there beside them. The third one sure did.
I had actually been handling many items of farm equipment since I was old enough to reach the pedals and Dad had been letting me drive the cars and trucks around the farm and even down some gravel roads since I was thirteen so I really could handle a vehicle. The main problem was that I thought I could do it at any speed and I tried to. I had two speeds “stop” and “How fast will this go.” By the way, a farm tractor on the right hill with just the right amount of tail wind can achieve speeds of nearly thirty miles per hour . . . but that’s another story.
As soon as I got my license I started hanging around with some guys whom I wouldn’t want my kids hanging out with. They smoked and drank and did some drugs but didn’t really get into any big trouble. That is to say they weren’t in trouble with the cops or the school administration or even their own parents, but the other kids all knew them and they didn’t have a good reputation. I didn’t do drugs and I didn’t drink alcohol even though I was hanging around with these kids who did, but Dad had a saying I’ll never forget. “Reputation by association.” It was proving to be true in my case and that bothered me. I didn’t like the idea of folks thinking I was someone I wasn’t.
I was no angel and I got into minor trouble from time to time, but my parents never had to face a police officer standing on the door step with me in handcuffs, or come into the local constabulary to bail my ass out of jail after a night of carousing. In fact my worst encounter ever, with the police, was being pulled over by a local cop who decided it would teach me a lesson if he tore Dads car apart on the main street of town looking for drugs.
With my help, removed the spare tire, the back seat, the hub caps, the floor mats and the lining form the trunk. He found nothing because there was nothing to find. He then told me that I had five minutes to get the car off the street or he would be back to charge me with obstructing traffic. It took me about two minutes to pile all of the stuff into the trunk and the back seat and get out of there. I don’t know to this day whether he came back to check on me or not, but if he did I was long gone.
I never told Dad about that little incident but years later noticed that any time Dad and I drove past that spot, he seemed to have a funny little smile cross his face for just a second. It never happened if he knew I was looking at him though. Hmm, I wonder . . . I never bothered with drugs much or with drinking either. I was afraid of getting caught. Hmm, I wonder . . . Come to think of it, I stopped hanging around with those kids right about then too. HEY!
When I was in High school, I was rewarded for my exceptional mental acuity as well as my great manual dexterity by receiving the highest honor our society can bestow upon a teenage boy. I got my drivers license, and it only took me three tries . . . again because of that great dexterity and acuity thing . . . right. Well, it wasn’t my fault if two inspectors didn’t recognize the greatest driver of all time sitting right there beside them. The third one sure did.
I had actually been handling many items of farm equipment since I was old enough to reach the pedals and Dad had been letting me drive the cars and trucks around the farm and even down some gravel roads since I was thirteen so I really could handle a vehicle. The main problem was that I thought I could do it at any speed and I tried to. I had two speeds “stop” and “How fast will this go.” By the way, a farm tractor on the right hill with just the right amount of tail wind can achieve speeds of nearly thirty miles per hour . . . but that’s another story.
As soon as I got my license I started hanging around with some guys whom I wouldn’t want my kids hanging out with. They smoked and drank and did some drugs but didn’t really get into any big trouble. That is to say they weren’t in trouble with the cops or the school administration or even their own parents, but the other kids all knew them and they didn’t have a good reputation. I didn’t do drugs and I didn’t drink alcohol even though I was hanging around with these kids who did, but Dad had a saying I’ll never forget. “Reputation by association.” It was proving to be true in my case and that bothered me. I didn’t like the idea of folks thinking I was someone I wasn’t.
I was no angel and I got into minor trouble from time to time, but my parents never had to face a police officer standing on the door step with me in handcuffs, or come into the local constabulary to bail my ass out of jail after a night of carousing. In fact my worst encounter ever, with the police, was being pulled over by a local cop who decided it would teach me a lesson if he tore Dads car apart on the main street of town looking for drugs.
With my help, removed the spare tire, the back seat, the hub caps, the floor mats and the lining form the trunk. He found nothing because there was nothing to find. He then told me that I had five minutes to get the car off the street or he would be back to charge me with obstructing traffic. It took me about two minutes to pile all of the stuff into the trunk and the back seat and get out of there. I don’t know to this day whether he came back to check on me or not, but if he did I was long gone.
I never told Dad about that little incident but years later noticed that any time Dad and I drove past that spot, he seemed to have a funny little smile cross his face for just a second. It never happened if he knew I was looking at him though. Hmm, I wonder . . . I never bothered with drugs much or with drinking either. I was afraid of getting caught. Hmm, I wonder . . . Come to think of it, I stopped hanging around with those kids right about then too. HEY!
Milage
Milage
Although Mom and Dad were always reasonable people, they didn’t always listen to me and when it came to my usual list of excuses. They had heard them all so many times that I’m sure they knew which one I was going to use in any given situation even before I did.
I didn’t always tell the entire truth, so I guess they sometimes had reason to be a bit skeptical. I was not, however, a liar trough and through. I knew when the jig was up and when it was time to come clean. A story can only be stretched so far and then it’s going to snap like an elastic band. The trick to being a convincing liar is knowing when to stop. It’s knowing when that story is going to break and come flying back at your ass, like a giant elastic boot. I never knew that.
I think almost every lie I ever told my parents came back, at some point, and kicked me in the ass in one way or another. If I said my watch had stopped and that was why I was late, Mom would have wound it that morning or she would grab my arm and tell me that it was “right now.” That’s just one example.
When I was older and took Dads car into town one evening he asked, in passing, where we had gone last night. I told him that we had just met some friends at the local teen hangout , three miles from home, and had spent the evening there. He didn’t get angry. He didn’t even sound aggravated. His only comment was, “Wow! I didn’t know town was two hundred and forty-seven miles from here. What’cha doin’ tonight . . . without the car.”
I thought, at the time, that there should be some kind of law against parental entrapment. It should be illegal for parents not give full disclosure of everything they know about any given situation before beginning questioning of the offending minor(s).
Now, however, I am a parent of six. Six of the most deviant, underhanded, sneaky, irreverent, cute, smart, loving, perfect kids to ever walk the face of the earth. I love each and every one of the six as much as the others, but all for different reasons. When one of them does something that disappoints me, I wonder how my parents were able to handle those moments. I have five other kids, and at any given time it’s quite certain that at least one, of them is doing something that will make me proud.
Something that will make up for another’s complete lack of whatever it is he or she happens to be lacking today.
My parents only had me. All they could do was hope that tomorrow would be better, that tomorrow I would miraculously gain some insight into what makes a man a man. They didn’t have any other kids to fall back on. If I was a jerk then all of their kids were jerks that day. That must be hard for parents of just one child.
Thanks Mom and Dad. I think you did a great job, considering what you had to work with. I just hope that I can do as well with my kids.
Although Mom and Dad were always reasonable people, they didn’t always listen to me and when it came to my usual list of excuses. They had heard them all so many times that I’m sure they knew which one I was going to use in any given situation even before I did.
I didn’t always tell the entire truth, so I guess they sometimes had reason to be a bit skeptical. I was not, however, a liar trough and through. I knew when the jig was up and when it was time to come clean. A story can only be stretched so far and then it’s going to snap like an elastic band. The trick to being a convincing liar is knowing when to stop. It’s knowing when that story is going to break and come flying back at your ass, like a giant elastic boot. I never knew that.
I think almost every lie I ever told my parents came back, at some point, and kicked me in the ass in one way or another. If I said my watch had stopped and that was why I was late, Mom would have wound it that morning or she would grab my arm and tell me that it was “right now.” That’s just one example.
When I was older and took Dads car into town one evening he asked, in passing, where we had gone last night. I told him that we had just met some friends at the local teen hangout , three miles from home, and had spent the evening there. He didn’t get angry. He didn’t even sound aggravated. His only comment was, “Wow! I didn’t know town was two hundred and forty-seven miles from here. What’cha doin’ tonight . . . without the car.”
I thought, at the time, that there should be some kind of law against parental entrapment. It should be illegal for parents not give full disclosure of everything they know about any given situation before beginning questioning of the offending minor(s).
Now, however, I am a parent of six. Six of the most deviant, underhanded, sneaky, irreverent, cute, smart, loving, perfect kids to ever walk the face of the earth. I love each and every one of the six as much as the others, but all for different reasons. When one of them does something that disappoints me, I wonder how my parents were able to handle those moments. I have five other kids, and at any given time it’s quite certain that at least one, of them is doing something that will make me proud.
Something that will make up for another’s complete lack of whatever it is he or she happens to be lacking today.
My parents only had me. All they could do was hope that tomorrow would be better, that tomorrow I would miraculously gain some insight into what makes a man a man. They didn’t have any other kids to fall back on. If I was a jerk then all of their kids were jerks that day. That must be hard for parents of just one child.
Thanks Mom and Dad. I think you did a great job, considering what you had to work with. I just hope that I can do as well with my kids.
A Lot of Bull
A Lot of Bull
A bull is a very dangerous animal. They are mean and extremely unpredictable. Because Dad knew that, he usually used artificial insemination on our cattle, but sometimes he would keep a bull around to do the job naturally. Dad always kept a ring in the bull’s nose with a chain hanging from it. The chain would dangle, just shy of the ground, as the bull walked around. If the bull lowered his head to charge he would step on the chain and stumble. We all knew how this worked, so we weren’t nearly as afraid as we should have been to go out into the barnyard when the bull was out. We gave him a wide berth, but we knew the chain would keep him from charging. In the heat of the summer Dad and I would take wagon loads of hay out into the pasture and unload them by hand with a pitchfork, never giving the bull a second thought. After all, he had
a chain in his nose.
A stream ran through the pasture, where we used to fish and swim all summer. We never worried about the bull though. He had a chain in his nose.
Dad used to walk out into the pasture and lead that bull back to the barn by . . . you guessed it. . . . The chain in his nose
We had a bolt embedded in the concrete wall of the stable where, when we ran out of stalls, we would tie the bull up by . . . the chain in his nose. Chains are great but like everything else they can fail.
One day Mom was out in the barnyard, doing who knows what. She didn’t see the bull coming. He walked, quietly, up behind her, put his head under her rump and threw her over his back.
You see, he never ran, he never lowered his head while he was moving and he never charged, so the chain couldn’t do its job. Mom landed beside him but she was stunned and couldn’t get up. By the time dad saw what was going on, the bull had rolled her over and over across the barnyard and under a fence.
Dad grabbed a pitch fork and drove the bull off. Mom was covered in dirt and manure and lay unconscious, under the barbed wire fence. I’m sure that fence saved her life, because the bull couldn’t get through to finish what he had started. Sore and bruised she was soon back to her normal routine, with no injury worse than a sprained wrist, but one thing changed.
Bright and early the next morning Dad led that bull up a ramp into a truck headed for the meat packing plant. We never again had a bull on our farm. By the way, Dad led the bull up that ramp by . . . the chain in his nose.
A bull is a very dangerous animal. They are mean and extremely unpredictable. Because Dad knew that, he usually used artificial insemination on our cattle, but sometimes he would keep a bull around to do the job naturally. Dad always kept a ring in the bull’s nose with a chain hanging from it. The chain would dangle, just shy of the ground, as the bull walked around. If the bull lowered his head to charge he would step on the chain and stumble. We all knew how this worked, so we weren’t nearly as afraid as we should have been to go out into the barnyard when the bull was out. We gave him a wide berth, but we knew the chain would keep him from charging. In the heat of the summer Dad and I would take wagon loads of hay out into the pasture and unload them by hand with a pitchfork, never giving the bull a second thought. After all, he had
a chain in his nose.
A stream ran through the pasture, where we used to fish and swim all summer. We never worried about the bull though. He had a chain in his nose.
Dad used to walk out into the pasture and lead that bull back to the barn by . . . you guessed it. . . . The chain in his nose
We had a bolt embedded in the concrete wall of the stable where, when we ran out of stalls, we would tie the bull up by . . . the chain in his nose. Chains are great but like everything else they can fail.
One day Mom was out in the barnyard, doing who knows what. She didn’t see the bull coming. He walked, quietly, up behind her, put his head under her rump and threw her over his back.
You see, he never ran, he never lowered his head while he was moving and he never charged, so the chain couldn’t do its job. Mom landed beside him but she was stunned and couldn’t get up. By the time dad saw what was going on, the bull had rolled her over and over across the barnyard and under a fence.
Dad grabbed a pitch fork and drove the bull off. Mom was covered in dirt and manure and lay unconscious, under the barbed wire fence. I’m sure that fence saved her life, because the bull couldn’t get through to finish what he had started. Sore and bruised she was soon back to her normal routine, with no injury worse than a sprained wrist, but one thing changed.
Bright and early the next morning Dad led that bull up a ramp into a truck headed for the meat packing plant. We never again had a bull on our farm. By the way, Dad led the bull up that ramp by . . . the chain in his nose.
Saturday, July 24, 2004
Bike Toss
Bike Toss
Every few years my parents would reward me for all the hard work I did on the farm, with a new bike. Dad loved his cars and he understood that bike to me, was like his car to him . I know, I know, it’s a guy thing, but it’s still true. If you think those little girls didn’t take a second look at me on that shiny new two-wheeler, you can think again.
I ruined my first bike learning to ride, but that’s another story. A friend left the second bike behind a tractor. It fell victim to a set of dual wheels. After about the third or fourth bike, Dad passed a new law at our farm. “Want a new bike? You pay for it.” It’s that second bike that plays a part in this little story.
I came home from school one bright day early in the spring to find a present waiting for me. It was a brand new twenty-six inch Supercylce bike. It was state of the art, red and white with lots of chrome and whitewall tires. I was the envy of all the neighborhood kids.
I was biking home from a neighbor’s house and I came to the large hill leading up the road to our driveway. The hill was very steep so I got off of my bike and continued toward home pushing the bike along up the hill. The hill was probably about two hundred yards from bottom to top and about half way up I heard a car coming. I moved over to the edge of the road and turned to see that it was Mom coming home from town. I flagged her down. When she stopped, I asked if I could put my bike in the trunk and get a ride the rest of the way home. Needless to say, the answer was no. She told me that the house was just up at the top of the hill. “Don’t be so lazy,” she said.
I argued, but to no avail. Mom simply put the car in drive, and drove. I wasn’t happy. In a fit of temper I threw my bike down into the ditch then stood and watched in a huff as mom drove into our driveway and disappeared. Now by threw I mean more like pushed. I didn’t pick it up over my head and toss it. I shoved it away from me and it tumbled into the ditch. Not the way to treat a bike, but no real damage done or so I thought. After a short pout I gathered up my bike and walked it the rest of the way home. I had forgotten however that cars had rear-view mirrors, and Mom had been looking in hers. As I walked into the kitchen Mom turned around, looked at me, and in a very matter-of-fact voice said, “Go put your bike in the shed.”
Mom was born before the First Word War and lived through The Great Depression, so she understood the value of a dollar. She didn’t waste anything and she expected me to take care of what I was given.
I put my bike away and came back to the house just a little bit confused because I always kept my bike inside the door of the back porch. Mom simply looked at me again said, “Now, it can stay there for two weeks and then maybe you’ll know how to take care of
it.”
I was by no means a perfect kid. I was known to argue and even talk back at times, but something in Moms tone told me that I had better keep my mouth shut. I walked for the next two weeks.
Every few years my parents would reward me for all the hard work I did on the farm, with a new bike. Dad loved his cars and he understood that bike to me, was like his car to him . I know, I know, it’s a guy thing, but it’s still true. If you think those little girls didn’t take a second look at me on that shiny new two-wheeler, you can think again.
I ruined my first bike learning to ride, but that’s another story. A friend left the second bike behind a tractor. It fell victim to a set of dual wheels. After about the third or fourth bike, Dad passed a new law at our farm. “Want a new bike? You pay for it.” It’s that second bike that plays a part in this little story.
I came home from school one bright day early in the spring to find a present waiting for me. It was a brand new twenty-six inch Supercylce bike. It was state of the art, red and white with lots of chrome and whitewall tires. I was the envy of all the neighborhood kids.
I was biking home from a neighbor’s house and I came to the large hill leading up the road to our driveway. The hill was very steep so I got off of my bike and continued toward home pushing the bike along up the hill. The hill was probably about two hundred yards from bottom to top and about half way up I heard a car coming. I moved over to the edge of the road and turned to see that it was Mom coming home from town. I flagged her down. When she stopped, I asked if I could put my bike in the trunk and get a ride the rest of the way home. Needless to say, the answer was no. She told me that the house was just up at the top of the hill. “Don’t be so lazy,” she said.
I argued, but to no avail. Mom simply put the car in drive, and drove. I wasn’t happy. In a fit of temper I threw my bike down into the ditch then stood and watched in a huff as mom drove into our driveway and disappeared. Now by threw I mean more like pushed. I didn’t pick it up over my head and toss it. I shoved it away from me and it tumbled into the ditch. Not the way to treat a bike, but no real damage done or so I thought. After a short pout I gathered up my bike and walked it the rest of the way home. I had forgotten however that cars had rear-view mirrors, and Mom had been looking in hers. As I walked into the kitchen Mom turned around, looked at me, and in a very matter-of-fact voice said, “Go put your bike in the shed.”
Mom was born before the First Word War and lived through The Great Depression, so she understood the value of a dollar. She didn’t waste anything and she expected me to take care of what I was given.
I put my bike away and came back to the house just a little bit confused because I always kept my bike inside the door of the back porch. Mom simply looked at me again said, “Now, it can stay there for two weeks and then maybe you’ll know how to take care of
it.”
I was by no means a perfect kid. I was known to argue and even talk back at times, but something in Moms tone told me that I had better keep my mouth shut. I walked for the next two weeks.
The Ruler
The Ruler
I was an only child but it never really seemed so, because there were always lots of other kids at our home. Both friends and cousins spent lots and lots of time at our place, and Mom and Dad treated them all like their own kids. They both loved kids. I think that’s why Dad drove a school bus. I must admit, though, that sometimes I felt that they treated other kids better than me, but I could never deny that they loved me dearly. I was never abused but both my parents new how to give me a good spanking when it was deserved.
One of the saddest things we ever had to do was telling Dad that he had to give up his driver’s license, because he was getting too dangerous on the road. All we had to do was ask him how he would feel if he were to kill someone on the road, and he gave in. Dad was a school bus driver for many years and was extremely proud of his perfect driving record. He never had a ticket or any kind of driving accident while behind the wheel of a school bus. He was often heard quoting that fact as proof that he was a very good driver. He was too, until his eyes began to fail him. Nothing seemed to bother him on the road. He was in a sort of zone when he drove.
There were times when the kids on the bus would make lots of noise. Now, that’s just being kids, so Dad would toddle on down the road seemingly oblivious to the cacophony echoing from his bus. He always noted, when talking about the noise on the bus, that it only happened on the night run when the kids were on their way home. They weren’t nearly as exited in the morning to be going to school.
I remember one Friday evening in particular when the racket on the bus had reached an ear splitting volume. I can’t say for sure but I think it was the last day of school, before Christmas holidays. Dad was, as usual, puttering down the road with a bus full of noisy kids when finally the noise became too much to take. He didn’t start to scream at us all to shut-up, or threaten to kick somebody off the bus. He didn’t threaten to call parents, or get anyone in trouble at school. He simply pulled the bus over to the side of the road, set the parking brake and shut the engine off. There he sat staring out the windshield as the world went by.
One by one the kids noticed that something was different and fell silent. We waited, then we waited some more. We probably only sat on the side of that road for a couple of minutes, but to a rowdy bunch of kids just aching to get home it seemed like an eternity. When the crowd was sufficiently settled Dad simply said, “Now can we be a bit quieter, or shall we sit some more?” The rest of the ride was made in near silence.
As I said, Dad loved kids, but he did expect them to behave on his bus. No cursing, no fighting and no destruction of anyone else’s property was ever tolerated. At the time the boys all carried a comb in their back pockets, and we all carried six inch rulers in our geometry kits. Some of the older boys took to snatching combs and rulers from other kids and snapping them in half. Dad hated this. Whenever he swept out the bus and found the broken pieces of comb or ruler he would bless Mom and me with a, not so short, tirade on the values of respecting other people’s property.
One day we were sitting on the bus waiting for the last of the stragglers to get on and we all heard a resounding snap. Yup, someone had just broken a ruler and Dad knew who it was. The bus immediately became as silent as a tomb. Dad stood up addressed the offending boy with a pointed finger, and ordered him to sit in the seat just off the driver’s right shoulder by the door. The punishment seat. He was to remain seated there for the next week at the end of which time Dad hoped he would have learned his lesson and to respect other people’s property. That done, Dad sat back down in the driver’s seat and started the bus.
Suddenly there was another resounding snap. In one motion Dad shut down the engine and was on his feet surveying the entire bus. Just a couple of seats back sat a very silly boy, with a piece of ruler in each hand. It was me. I had picked up one of the previously broken halves from the floor and while fiddling with it broke it in half again. It had been an accident, but there was no point in trying to tell Dad that.
If you think Dad was angry with the other kid, you should have seen him with me. I was immediately kicked off the bus and had to walk home. I was banned from riding the bus for the remainder of that week. And for the rest of the school year I sat in “the punishment seat.”
I tried to explain, but Dad would have none of it. He told me over and over again that he didn’t play favorites and that nobody got special treatment on his bus. Still, today, it seems to me that I did get special treatment. I got punished much worse for breaking what was now a piece of garbage than the other boy did for breaking the original ruler. I survived, and was none the worse for it but that incident still bothers me a bit to this day, but I never broke another ruler, or a piece of one again.
I was an only child but it never really seemed so, because there were always lots of other kids at our home. Both friends and cousins spent lots and lots of time at our place, and Mom and Dad treated them all like their own kids. They both loved kids. I think that’s why Dad drove a school bus. I must admit, though, that sometimes I felt that they treated other kids better than me, but I could never deny that they loved me dearly. I was never abused but both my parents new how to give me a good spanking when it was deserved.
One of the saddest things we ever had to do was telling Dad that he had to give up his driver’s license, because he was getting too dangerous on the road. All we had to do was ask him how he would feel if he were to kill someone on the road, and he gave in. Dad was a school bus driver for many years and was extremely proud of his perfect driving record. He never had a ticket or any kind of driving accident while behind the wheel of a school bus. He was often heard quoting that fact as proof that he was a very good driver. He was too, until his eyes began to fail him. Nothing seemed to bother him on the road. He was in a sort of zone when he drove.
There were times when the kids on the bus would make lots of noise. Now, that’s just being kids, so Dad would toddle on down the road seemingly oblivious to the cacophony echoing from his bus. He always noted, when talking about the noise on the bus, that it only happened on the night run when the kids were on their way home. They weren’t nearly as exited in the morning to be going to school.
I remember one Friday evening in particular when the racket on the bus had reached an ear splitting volume. I can’t say for sure but I think it was the last day of school, before Christmas holidays. Dad was, as usual, puttering down the road with a bus full of noisy kids when finally the noise became too much to take. He didn’t start to scream at us all to shut-up, or threaten to kick somebody off the bus. He didn’t threaten to call parents, or get anyone in trouble at school. He simply pulled the bus over to the side of the road, set the parking brake and shut the engine off. There he sat staring out the windshield as the world went by.
One by one the kids noticed that something was different and fell silent. We waited, then we waited some more. We probably only sat on the side of that road for a couple of minutes, but to a rowdy bunch of kids just aching to get home it seemed like an eternity. When the crowd was sufficiently settled Dad simply said, “Now can we be a bit quieter, or shall we sit some more?” The rest of the ride was made in near silence.
As I said, Dad loved kids, but he did expect them to behave on his bus. No cursing, no fighting and no destruction of anyone else’s property was ever tolerated. At the time the boys all carried a comb in their back pockets, and we all carried six inch rulers in our geometry kits. Some of the older boys took to snatching combs and rulers from other kids and snapping them in half. Dad hated this. Whenever he swept out the bus and found the broken pieces of comb or ruler he would bless Mom and me with a, not so short, tirade on the values of respecting other people’s property.
One day we were sitting on the bus waiting for the last of the stragglers to get on and we all heard a resounding snap. Yup, someone had just broken a ruler and Dad knew who it was. The bus immediately became as silent as a tomb. Dad stood up addressed the offending boy with a pointed finger, and ordered him to sit in the seat just off the driver’s right shoulder by the door. The punishment seat. He was to remain seated there for the next week at the end of which time Dad hoped he would have learned his lesson and to respect other people’s property. That done, Dad sat back down in the driver’s seat and started the bus.
Suddenly there was another resounding snap. In one motion Dad shut down the engine and was on his feet surveying the entire bus. Just a couple of seats back sat a very silly boy, with a piece of ruler in each hand. It was me. I had picked up one of the previously broken halves from the floor and while fiddling with it broke it in half again. It had been an accident, but there was no point in trying to tell Dad that.
If you think Dad was angry with the other kid, you should have seen him with me. I was immediately kicked off the bus and had to walk home. I was banned from riding the bus for the remainder of that week. And for the rest of the school year I sat in “the punishment seat.”
I tried to explain, but Dad would have none of it. He told me over and over again that he didn’t play favorites and that nobody got special treatment on his bus. Still, today, it seems to me that I did get special treatment. I got punished much worse for breaking what was now a piece of garbage than the other boy did for breaking the original ruler. I survived, and was none the worse for it but that incident still bothers me a bit to this day, but I never broke another ruler, or a piece of one again.
The Promise
The Promise
Mother was a dynamic, caring and hard-working woman all of her life. She spent every day working, either on the farm or in the house looking after Dad and me. She never complained about her lot in life or about the things she didn’t have. She just did what she had to do and carried on from day to day, always living in the shadow of my father who was the provider, the decision maker and always unquestionably the head of the house. She was born in small town Ontario in 1913, and always lived within ten miles of her place of birth. She had two older brothers who were sixteen and eighteen years older than Mom, both of whom predeceased her by many years. At the time of her death Mom, as far as anyone could determine, had lived longer than anyone in her family.
It was sad to watch her mind failing her and to watch the slow downhill slide. By the age of ninety she no longer remembered where she lived, or what day it was. Things like the seasons seemed to have lost all meaning to her. One day I was sitting on the front porch with her enjoying just about the nicest day we’d had all summer when she asked me if I had all my Christmas shopping done. I hoped she was making a little joke, but really knew better. I just laughed and said, “No.”
“Well,” she said, “You’d better get at it because those kids will need presents under the tree tomorrow morning.”
We had to laugh at those little things, because if we didn’t life would soon have become an unbearable string of tragedies for us. We also needed to find the humor in those situations that threatened to make us angry. It would have been so easy to get angry sometimes and I must admit that I lost my patience more than once, but Brenda was always there with a smile and a loving touch to calm me down and help me see things clearly.
Bren is the real hero in our house. Once all the kids were off to school, Brenda started her own business. She was good at it and worked hard every day. Before long it started to show good results and soon she was on her way. She gave up that fast growing and extremely profitable business, to fulfill a promise that she made to Dad. He had asked her to make sure that neither he nor Mom were ever put into a nursing home. Being the perfect daughter-in-law, she agreed and her future was set in stone. You see my wife would never knowingly break a promise. I never knew about her promise to Dad until after he died in 2000 of a sudden heart attack.
At that time Mom was already failing and was, in fact, in the hospital with a broken hip. She was certainly in no condition to look after herself when she was released so we moved her in with us. Brenda immediately shut down her business and became a full time care-giver to Mom.
Even before Dad passed away we had been working on selling their house, and moving into a house with a “granny flat” so they wouldn’t be alone. We had put in, and had accepted, an offer on a nice house in the country that already had a “granny flat” but needed a bit of attention outside. Brenda and I had already arranged for a mortgage in our name to pay the difference between the cost of the new house and the value of Dad and Mom’s house. The problem was that during this whole process the house we were renting was sold and we were told that we would have to vacate as the new owners were going to demolish it and turn the lot back into farm land. Then Dad died. To us, the logical thing to do was to move into Mom and Dad’s house until it sold rather than keep Mom in strange surroundings and throw rent away month after month, until we were finally told to move. We moved for the first time in thirteen years.
We had, for the last few years, spent quite bit of time with Mom and Dad and I had often told Dad to shush for saying, right in front of Mom, how badly she was failing. When we moved into their house, we quickly began to realize what he had meant. We had thought that he was referring to her physical condition, but he hasn’t. He had been concerned about her mind. We hadn’t noticed before, but she couldn’t remember the things that we all take for granted. Things like her address, her date of birth, what day
it was, or even what time of day it was. She could sit and carry on a great conversation with you and chances where you wouldn’t notice anything wrong, but when you were around her constantly you started to notice certain inconsistences. I’ve been told that many older people learn to cover up this condition and Mom was very good at it.
We began to notice lots of little things that you wouldn’t pick up on unless you were with her twenty-four hours a day. Things like the fact that every time Bren asked her if she would like some help to take a shower or to wash her hair, she would always say she had just done that yesterday, when we knew for a fact that she hadn’t. She would when no one was looking, and at a totally inappropriate time, half peel some potatoes and put them on the stove to cook with no water. Bren would smell smoke and come to the rescue.
It was more of a full time job keeping an eye on Mom than it had been looking after six kids. We didn’t have a choice though. We stayed together until Mom died in her ninety-second year. Bren had made a promise and that was the end of that. Mom was with us until the day she died, and she will remain in our hearts forever.
Mother was a dynamic, caring and hard-working woman all of her life. She spent every day working, either on the farm or in the house looking after Dad and me. She never complained about her lot in life or about the things she didn’t have. She just did what she had to do and carried on from day to day, always living in the shadow of my father who was the provider, the decision maker and always unquestionably the head of the house. She was born in small town Ontario in 1913, and always lived within ten miles of her place of birth. She had two older brothers who were sixteen and eighteen years older than Mom, both of whom predeceased her by many years. At the time of her death Mom, as far as anyone could determine, had lived longer than anyone in her family.
It was sad to watch her mind failing her and to watch the slow downhill slide. By the age of ninety she no longer remembered where she lived, or what day it was. Things like the seasons seemed to have lost all meaning to her. One day I was sitting on the front porch with her enjoying just about the nicest day we’d had all summer when she asked me if I had all my Christmas shopping done. I hoped she was making a little joke, but really knew better. I just laughed and said, “No.”
“Well,” she said, “You’d better get at it because those kids will need presents under the tree tomorrow morning.”
We had to laugh at those little things, because if we didn’t life would soon have become an unbearable string of tragedies for us. We also needed to find the humor in those situations that threatened to make us angry. It would have been so easy to get angry sometimes and I must admit that I lost my patience more than once, but Brenda was always there with a smile and a loving touch to calm me down and help me see things clearly.
Bren is the real hero in our house. Once all the kids were off to school, Brenda started her own business. She was good at it and worked hard every day. Before long it started to show good results and soon she was on her way. She gave up that fast growing and extremely profitable business, to fulfill a promise that she made to Dad. He had asked her to make sure that neither he nor Mom were ever put into a nursing home. Being the perfect daughter-in-law, she agreed and her future was set in stone. You see my wife would never knowingly break a promise. I never knew about her promise to Dad until after he died in 2000 of a sudden heart attack.
At that time Mom was already failing and was, in fact, in the hospital with a broken hip. She was certainly in no condition to look after herself when she was released so we moved her in with us. Brenda immediately shut down her business and became a full time care-giver to Mom.
Even before Dad passed away we had been working on selling their house, and moving into a house with a “granny flat” so they wouldn’t be alone. We had put in, and had accepted, an offer on a nice house in the country that already had a “granny flat” but needed a bit of attention outside. Brenda and I had already arranged for a mortgage in our name to pay the difference between the cost of the new house and the value of Dad and Mom’s house. The problem was that during this whole process the house we were renting was sold and we were told that we would have to vacate as the new owners were going to demolish it and turn the lot back into farm land. Then Dad died. To us, the logical thing to do was to move into Mom and Dad’s house until it sold rather than keep Mom in strange surroundings and throw rent away month after month, until we were finally told to move. We moved for the first time in thirteen years.
We had, for the last few years, spent quite bit of time with Mom and Dad and I had often told Dad to shush for saying, right in front of Mom, how badly she was failing. When we moved into their house, we quickly began to realize what he had meant. We had thought that he was referring to her physical condition, but he hasn’t. He had been concerned about her mind. We hadn’t noticed before, but she couldn’t remember the things that we all take for granted. Things like her address, her date of birth, what day
it was, or even what time of day it was. She could sit and carry on a great conversation with you and chances where you wouldn’t notice anything wrong, but when you were around her constantly you started to notice certain inconsistences. I’ve been told that many older people learn to cover up this condition and Mom was very good at it.
We began to notice lots of little things that you wouldn’t pick up on unless you were with her twenty-four hours a day. Things like the fact that every time Bren asked her if she would like some help to take a shower or to wash her hair, she would always say she had just done that yesterday, when we knew for a fact that she hadn’t. She would when no one was looking, and at a totally inappropriate time, half peel some potatoes and put them on the stove to cook with no water. Bren would smell smoke and come to the rescue.
It was more of a full time job keeping an eye on Mom than it had been looking after six kids. We didn’t have a choice though. We stayed together until Mom died in her ninety-second year. Bren had made a promise and that was the end of that. Mom was with us until the day she died, and she will remain in our hearts forever.
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