Tender Childhood Memories of an Olde Farte

This series is a collection of memories from my childhood growing up on a farm in Iowa. I hope they bring a smile as we reminisce together those days gone but not forgotten. Except for those with Amnesia.

Why did I come in here?

Episode 4. Abbey, Charlie and The Hay Mow, and The BB Gun

When last we met, Christmas was special, I learned Mom’s name, and I was headed for therapy from the traumatic bathroom incident. But this episode should be safe as we don’t go anywhere.

The farm was 100 acres of flat, rich land, divided into five fields. From when I was born and until I was seven, we lived in the century-old house that my mom grew up in with her aunt and uncle and their two children. My mom’s mother had died in childbirth, and her father, with six other children, couldn’t take on a baby too. So, she was raised by her Aunt Mary & Uncle Thomas alongside their two children in the old farmhouse. The house was one-story with an attic and a fruit cellar. Mom told me that she heard that when the farm was homesteaded and the house was built, they had to run the Indians off the land. When I was about seven, I found an Indian Head nickel at the corner of the house, buried in the dirt. I ran into the house yelling, “Mom! Look! You were right! Indians DID live here!”

It was several years later that I realized that Indians did not, in fact, mint the Indian head nickel.

And it was some years after that when I realized that the previous couple of sentences were not politically correct.

The gravel road from town ran past the house, and there were large front, side and back yards, in which I played for many hours. There was an ancient barn, with an equally ancient garage near it, and a windmill that had, before the electric pump was installed in the well pit, provided the power to pump water from the well. As long as I can remember, the windmill served only as a weathervane, the spinning fins of the windmill giving us an idea of how windy it was and the vane indicating if the wind was from the north, south, east or west.

And if it was spinning around and around, we were in a tornado.

Although I don’t really remember, my parents gave me a puppy on my first birthday. She was a Rough Collie (think Lassie, but on a really bad hair day), and her name was Abbey. She was an outside dog (as many farm dogs are), and when I would come out of the house in the morning, she was there to greet me with a smile and a wagging tail.

As long as I could remember, she was always there. She was my constant companion, friend, playmate and confidante. Everywhere I went, she went. One time, I fell into the well pit and, unlike Lassie on TV, she laid down and absolutely did not run to warn anyone. We ran & played in the yard and the fields, we worked with the pigs and cows in the barn and in the lots around it, and I spent hours lying in the grass with her at my side.

She smelled really bad. But I still loved her very much.

I didn’t have any siblings at the time, and there were no kids around, so I created ways to entertain myself. Mom & Dad had their ideas of keeping me busy, mostly involving working in some capacity around the farm. But I had my own ideas on what I considered fun, and they did not include chores.

We had a large chicken house that faced south, and on the front, it had about 100 windows. There were windows at ground level and windows across the upper wall above the lower roof. I imagine that they originally helped control the heat and airflow, but all I remember is a lot of windows that were always closed.

I got a BB gun for my birthday one year. I went through dozens of those little tubes of BBs, shooting at paper targets thumbtacked to pieces of wood, cans and tree branches; and the stupid sparrows that kept crapping on our car; and more paper targets thumbtacked to pieces of wood. I found the paper targets to be very unsatisfying, so I looked around to see what else I could shoot at that would give more satisfaction when I shot. Hmmm. What around the farm could I possibly find?

By the time Dad discovered my new pastime, I had “opened” about 38 of the windows. Such a satisfying sound when the BB, traveling at approximately 200 feet per second, contacted the very old glass, leaving a lovely starburst pattern around the perfectly round hole. And although I was quite proud of my marksmanship, Dad was not impressed. He grabbed my weapon of mass destruction and created the first gun that could shoot around corners. He called it “Wrapping it around the Apple Tree.” I was not impressed.

Although I did not have close friends, there were a couple of kids at school that I became friends with. One was Charlie. He lived only about 3 miles away on another farm with his parents and siblings. And a lot of cows. One summer day his mom asked my mom if I could come over to play with Charlie. I think the moms felt sorry for me. At any rate, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Charlie’s idea. But I was dumped off at the end of their driveway and at a slow trot I headed toward the house to spend a fun day with my friend.

They had a huge barn, and it had a haymow that was probably 13½ times bigger than ours. And Charlie and his brother (and occasionally one or more of his sisters) liked to go up into the haymow to play. The primary activity was restacking the 50-pound bales of hay in order to form tunnels. And these were not simple tunnels. They would build multiple levels, with lookouts and rooms and secret entrances. A megaplex, really, of hay bales. It was amazing. So, we started playing and building new tunnels and crawling through them. In 100-degree Iowa-in-August heat. Which, in the haymow, under the tin roof, quickly became about 3,000 degrees. The tunnels were about 18” by 30” (slightly smaller than the size of a bale of hay due to the stacking construction technique used) and they could run for many feet before opening up into a larger space.

Now, I’m not sure if I already had claustrophobia, or if my fear of tight spaces was born that day in Charlie’s haymow, lying on my belly, stuck in a tunnel that had collapsed from poor engineering or, more likely, faulty construction techniques, screaming, “I’m gonna die!” In either case, after an emergency excavation by the other kids, the rest of my day was spent on their back porch sipping lemonade by myself and imaging how much fun they were having in the haymow.

Charlie and I remained friends despite the trauma. And though counselling has helped, I have always avoided any movie with Trapped or Buried Alive in the description.

Next time on Tender Childhood Memories of an Olde Farte.

Episode 5. Tenderloin Sandwiches, The Flintstones, and Where the Hell is my Car Door!?