I grew up in Miami, Oklahoma, classic small-town America. I had lots of freedom to go play all over town all day. But a special treat was getting to go play in the country.
My father owned a truck garage. One of his mechanics lived out of town a few miles on a farm. The mechanic was a good guy and his wife was sweet, too. Once in a while I would get to play all day long on their farm, loaded with woods, open pastures, hills, a little creek, cows, horses, and a big barn with a hayloft.
For a "city" kid to get to spend all day in such nirvana was a highlight of the summer.
I would be dropped off early in the morning. I would head out and spend the entire day doing cool country things that I couldn't do in town.
The first thing I would do was head down to the creek with a big glass jar. Then, the hunt would begin. I would capture whatever little critters my hands could outwit. "Crawdads" (more properly known as crayfish) could be apprehended by sweeping the jar through the area formerly occupied by a rock. Lifting the rock would reveal one of the clawed crustaceans hiding, staying out of the sun. We had brown "mud craws" in town that would dig vertical tunnels in damp dirt marked by chimney-like towers of mud around them, but these beautiful creek craws with their red-tipped claws were more highly prized by juvenile hunters.
After a few hours of crawdad catching, I would empty my jar and head out to the pasture . The jar would now sport a lid with holes punched through it to allow ventilation for its next captives.
If there were clover flowers, it was bee catching time. All you had to do was drop the jar over a flower with a bee attached and wait for it to fly. Then you slapped the lid on and gazed with wonder at the insect's detail, the pollen that covered it, and the swelled sacs on its legs that held nectar.
Now, off to the hayloft.
A hayloft was a truly magical place filled with aroma, ambiance, and dander. It had a smell that was heavenly, but which would instantly stuff me up if I inhaled it with my allergies that appeared many years later. This getting old crap has its drawbacks.
Just getting into the hayloft was cool. You climbed up a ladder that was permanently attached to the wall through a trap door. Once in the open confines of the loft, lighting was brilliant sun shining through small cracks between oak boards. It was dim, yet blinding. And there was hay EVERYWHERE! you could climb over it, jump in piles of it, make forts out of it, or whatever else the shining imagination of a child could come up with.
You would sweat gallons, inhale vast amounts of pollen and dust, have every area of your skin that persistently touched the hay get covered with little red scratches, and have the very time of your life.
At the end of the day, mom or dad would pick me up and would take my exhausted, stinking self home. I would be asleep in the car before we had traveled a mile.
The bath I got when I got home would likely reveal bloodsucking little creatures patrolling my skin looking for a place to drill. An itching sensation meant a tick had hit paydirt.
But any inconveniences were massively outweighed by the sheer exhilaration that a city kid would feel when he got to spend a day in the country.
Comments (3)
Funny, when we were kids growing up in the midwest, we always thought country kids weren't
cool, till we actually had a chance to hang with them. My chance came with a few relatives on different sides of the family, in Mokena and Monee, Illinois, on the outskirts of Chicago.
Now considered outer suburbs, they were very
rural in the early 70's. My cousin Danny had
a motorized go-cart with cojones(balls, for the uninitiated or non-italian amongst us). The damn thing had to have gone at least 45 MPH or more.
His old man was a recreational dragster racer at the local track, and kept a dragster in the garage. Now, just seeing a picture of a dragster
was cool when you were 10, so imagine eyeing a full-sized one every visit. The old man was too
cool to say anything much, which lent him a very cool street cred on top of the dragster. Cousin
Katie had her own horse, which she was very show-offish about. Her and the horse had a bond she really wasn't into sharing with anyone, so I wasn't allowed to get near the nag. She had trophies from the county fairs all over the room,
and I got the impression that I wasn't cool enough to share in the equestrian ethos that
emanated from her person, so I pretty much just avoided Katie. I haven't seen her in 25 years, so, for all I know, she may have married a horse.
My other cousins, on the Italian side, were much more friendly, and rich besides, with a 5-acre spread in Monee. They had their own lake right
past the entrance to the driveway, and even stocked the damn thing for family parties. I still remember my stepfather pulling out a
Ronco pocket fisherman and looking internally silly trying to catch assorted flounder. They also had the classic rope tied to a tree with a
intertube attached that they would swing over the lake to jump in with. The backyard was essentially a forest, with trails the cousins
blazed themselves. Lets just say that they certainly weren't penned in on that property.
The kids lived in essentially their own world there, and, because of the size of the house and
land, they took it upon themselves to be the
hosts of all the major family functions. We
just knew it as going to Aust Delores's house.
Just that phrase meant that we were going to have a very cool time coming up. Looking back,
how great of a time those rural passages of our childhoods were. And how damn lucky those rural kids were to live in that environment 24/7.
I've been doing a lot of rural festivals this past summer in rural Illinois outside Chicago, and, let me tell you, it hasn't changed.
And probably never will.....Thank God for That!
Posted by scott | September 8, 2007 2:11 AM
Posted on September 8, 2007 02:11
I was most fortunate to live right beside some nice sized woods at the corner of this development we lived in, which bordered the woods and fields of former farm land. The development had been built in WWII to accommodate Liberty Ship workers. Those workers built the Jeremiah O’Brien, one of the only 2 liberty ships still existing, I believe.
Living with woods and fields can not be praised enough. What a privilege I had as a baby boomer child. Most kids in this development, Redbank, South Portland, Maine had that very same privilege though I live closest to most parts of it. We could skate on small frozen streams and ponds in winter. A modest hill to slide on. Wild life galore.
But I also had the pleasure of a visiting 2 other farms. My uncle had a sizable one in Nova Scotia, in far SE Kings County. It had a stream/brook at one end, a good dog as a companion, Chickens that laid eggs, vegetables, especially strawberries, although my uncle was not an industrious business like farmer like some. A tractor we could at least play on. It was a good time.
But the one more like Ron’s was my father’s friend from the service who had a farm in Winthrop, Maine, with a big barn and loads of old hay. First time I encountered nostril problems, though not severe. It has a fascinating attic with old stuff. It had a spring on it with good clear water bubbling up from the ground. Twice I encountered a frog there. Many great memories of those farms, much like Ron’s.
My paternal grandfather had a 50 acre woodlot with a cabin up there. He was an excellent gardener with quite a reputation for his skill in growing large plants, flowers, and vegetables. That was all sorts of fun and even though my brother and I were very young, I have 3 years of memories of that before he had a stroke which ended his gardening days, sadly. My grandmother was a good cook who always had fresh vegetables to offer.
My father often took us to the shores of Portland and some of its Islands. Portland has a number of islands and is quite the area for exploration, fishing and leisure. But walking over rocks of the shores made me very nimble and I was very fast over them. Two Lights, Portland Headlight, and many other places around or near those. And we have beautiful lakes as well, the 4th most of any state, I think. Maine is quite the place. Ask anyone from Massachusetts. Need I rub it in with Acadia National Park and Mt. Desert/Cadillac Mt?
But my point is that I think a lot of injustice is done when kids do not have a close relationship with nature. Guys like Ron and I cherish those important memories. Our world and environment can be delightful places and satisfy something very deep inside us that should not be denied. What was common in the days of boomers was parents who took us places, at least on vacation, unless we were lucky enough and spoiled to live right on top of those things anyway.
Anyone reading this, I offer you an invitation. Come to Maine and I will personally show you around as much as I can, which is quite a bit right now. And if you would like a direct personal picture of America’s most famous lighthouse, give me a couple months to get my old collection from home and I’ll send you some cool photos. Just email me before hand in either case.
Currently, South Portland has built a number of trails and attempted to restore water quality by a Federal mandate. I am glad to see it. More nature. We need this vital exposure to help make us whole. For those who know little of it, you have been deprived.
Posted by Scott Irv | June 2, 2009 10:18 PM
Posted on June 2, 2009 22:18
I grew up in the Maryland suburbs and often visited friends in what was the country at the time. It was still a rural area that is now all gone. But we had some good times. It was actually a farming area. So you all who lived on farms know all about the fun other then the farm work. Exploring old abandoned houses and barns. Riding in the back of a haywagon. Playing army in th open fieelds and fields of large over our heade corn. I live in a suburb in Virginia today, but our County still has lots of rural area. Just about 3 miles away, I can still be in the country.
Posted by Riversend | July 29, 2009 8:15 PM
Posted on July 29, 2009 20:15