I Never Get Sick; Isn't That Nice?
Well, it was nice, up until now. I just don't have whatever it takes to do my favorite thing: write. But I'm getting better and I will catch up as quickly as possible.
Then, watch out. These pages will come at you with devastating speed.
Then, watch out. These pages will come at you with devastating speed.
posted by Tom Carten at 1:30 PM
1 Comments:
Hey Tom.........Let's keep 'em reading........Exit 318
Cow Flops and Outhouses
It is a shame that I am not a writer for had I been endowed with this talent I could tell you about the Vermont I knew in my youth in such a manner that you would actually re-live with me the best years of my life and so much so that you might even smell the fresh cut hay, see your barn boots on the porch and make your city cousins jump when they touched the electric fences.
Ay-yup the best years are those on the south side of thirteen. At fourteen, you enter the ‘’ages of fourteen’’ and you childhood becomes a series of turned pages. Now my younger years spent in southeastern Vermont off of Route 9 included those times from between eight and fifteen.
As far back as I can remember, we all had specific chores and for the most part they seemed to evolve around the cows, pigs and chickens, but you know the story of this era is not just about me, although it is how I grew up, but it is also the story of every kid who was raised on a farm all along this dirt road and every other road in Vermont. We all did it. As for the chores, I was the first one up in the morning, and the second one next to the stove in the kitchen putting on my socks that had spent the night on the register in the hallway upstairs. Of course I would go from the kitchen to the outhouse and to the barn where I would stand there in awe as to how much the cows could have fabricated overnight! Naturally the cats came out of nowhere when the milking began. It was a time that I enjoyed so much because as a youngster I felt to be part of the farm and doing my best to help. Actually it was not a chore per se it was a pleasure, really.
Haying, Vermont’s National Summer Sport, started before school was out and continued until after school was opened in September, we only made one cut and that was done with a scythe. Luckily I was too young to wield one of those things, but I was ripe to tap down the hay in the barn. We only had spring water then and therefore we bathed once a week or sometimes we got into a creek back on the property, where we had built a kids’ type dam. You know about springs, frozen in the winter, muddy in the spring and dried up in the summer, but that was the way it was and we had no problem with it, until Saturday nights in January, melting snow for a bath.
More later
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