Growing Up With Cows
I grew up on a dairy farm. My father first tried to raise hogs, but the first year they got some contagious disease so the Virginia state agriculture people came and killed them all to keep the disease from spreading. It worked out since I liked cows better.
My whole childhood was working on the farm. Winter was getting the machinery ready and spring was planting. Summer was mostly getting up hay. These were the small hay bales and not the huge round things of today. It was a lot of work. Fall was harvesting the corn and other crops. Along with this, the cows had to be milked twice a day no matter what happened.
We had Holsteins (black and white cows). Being in a rural area, distance kept everyone on the farms and my best friend was cow Number 26. When she spied me in the barnyard or the field, she ambled over and stuck her long snout under my arm to be scratched. She followed me around as I did my chores, always wanting attention, which apparently we both needed.
I tried riding her once, which she didn’t seem to mind. Except, a cow’s skin is loose and I quickly fell off. She bent over and stuck her snout in my face for another scratch.
We had Number 26 for many years. When I was in high school, she became McDonald’s hamburgers. I never wrote about her until now. I missed her. At the same time that she was sent to hamburger heaven, I got my driver’s license, bought my first car (1972 Ford Maverick), and used my new wheels to get a job off the farm. I left as fast as I could. Number 26 was no longer there for me to scratch her snout.
15 March 2024
Growing Up With Ghosts
In 1959 before I started school, my parents moved my brothers and I to a 100 acre farm in Spotsylvania, Virginia. The house was built in the mid 1930s and, when we moved in, at least five people had died inside. This is about one of the ghosts haunting the house that I grew up in.
The upstairs had slanted ceilings and two bedrooms. One large bedroom that could fit three separate single beds and three bureaus. The second bedroom could fit one single bed, a bureau, and a small desk. The small bedroom had several ghosts who I assumed were not happy haunting a small room. The larger bedroom had at least two stronger ghosts, maybe more, which is another story.
My mother got a history of the deaths in the house. In the 1940s, one was a six year old boy who died from a childhood disease in the small bedroom. I eventually stopped sleeping in the small bedroom and moved into the larger bedroom with my two brothers. My youngest brother moved into the small bedroom and, like me, one night ran screaming from the room vowing never to go back. He slept on the couch downstairs. Not even my father would go in the room, despite claiming there were no such things as ghosts.
Our house had a dirt driveway separating it from a set of barns and behind them the fields. When I was eleven years old, my father wanted to run water from the house to a small shed on the other side of the road. He hired a contractor and they dug a ditch from the house to the shed. In the middle of the dirt road, they dug up a coffin.
It was shattered and eventually someone came to carry the remains of a small boy away. Waiting for this to happen, I, my family, and neighbors stood over the formerly hidden grave as my father and two other men pulled artifacts from the boy’s grave.
My father pulled a set of gold rimmed glasses out of the dirt and laughingly said they would fit me. I wanted nothing to do with them, but he shoved them on my face. I froze in fear. I felt the boy nearby. I did not know what to do and my father took them away, probably worried I would mangled them and harm the value of the glasses.
At that moment, I knew the boy was one of the ghosts haunting the small bedroom. Later that day, I walked into the small bedroom and knew he was not there anymore.
15 April 2024
The Cars I Owned Who Owned Me
I got my first car after raising two steers and selling them to market for the down payment. It was a 1972 Ford Maverick, the red, white, and blue version. Instead of air conditioning or a glove box, I splurged and got the AM radio. The V-8 engine weighed more than the rest of the car. Two months later, an oak tree jumped out in front of me and put me in the hospital for a week with a concussion. I was a junior in high school.
For those two months, the Maverick gave me a taste of freedom off the farm. So, the next year I raised another steer (I could only afford one), which gave me enough of a down payment for a 1973 Ford Pinto. This came with an AM radio and a glove box. Still no air conditioning.
I had that car for three years and the many accidents I had were more than a Willy Jeep could take. At least none of the accidents put me in the hospital. So, that was a plus.
For some people, the car they own during a critical period in their life can be memorable. My Pinto was more like a best friend. I had it through high school graduation, my first marriage, and the birth of my children. The last event was why we needed a bigger car. The Pinto was not a hatchback 😉.
My first wife and I bought a 1976 Plymouth Volare Station Wagon. In the following years with the Volare, I also owned a lot of used cars since my wife went north and I went south for our jobs. The cars I drove were cheap because I had to use a lot of creative repairs to keep them running. They were adventurous, but not memorable.
We owned the Volare until 1980. During those years, the Volare slowly dissolved into a series of unrepairable rust issues as the marriage also became unrepairable. Both faded into nothing. I was glad to get rid of the Volare.
My ex bought something new and I bought a yellow four door 1979 Chevrolet Impala. It sat in a used car dealership in a dirt parking lot that was there one week and gone the next. It was as if the Impala and I were meant for each other.
I kept the Impala for fifteen years. It was my best best best friend helping me through a divorce, a career change, and into middle age with a new and better marriage. I could always rely on it to get me to places.
Except when it broke down, which I figured the Impala was telling me I didn’t need to go to where I was going. The car was easy to work on and we bonded many times on the side of the road or in a parking lot. I never resented working on it. The Impala needed me and I needed the Impala.
My kids learned to drive in the Impala. They were safe since the car was bigger and heavier than most everything else on the road (somehow computer chips shrunk cars and made them weaker).
By the mid 1990s and with over 250K miles, the Impala’s personality had developed too many quirks to manage. I donated it to a charity.
Of all the vehicles I’ve owned, I miss the Impala the most. As my family has heard me say often, I should have kept the Impala.
15 May 2024