People often ask me what it was like to grow up on a farm. I would like to dedicate this post to five favorite or memorable things of my childhood in the country.
Here goes.
1) you can see the stars, and much to my mother’s chagrin i would often go for walks down our gravel road at night. maybe not the safest option, but definitely fun. i always felt so small and surrounded by God. also i used to imagine that the night was just a cloak and the stars were just the light of heaven peeking through rips punched into the cloak. So it didn’t feel dark at all.
2) countless hours of imagination. as you can tell from 1) i spent a lot of time dreaming. i used to mow the lawn on a riding lawn mower (we had a lot of lawn). While mowing i often wondered how far i would get on a riding lawn mower…..if i just drove off one day. how far could i get on a tank of gas? could i travel across canada? how could i winterize it? these are the questions that ran through my ten year old mind.
3) although i loved going for walks at night and would claim to be unafraid of that kind of dark, there were other kinds of dark that scared me. one being the barn that i had to feed the cats in every night. have you ever seen multiple cat eyes on various levels of equipment in the pitch black? so it just looks like floating eyes? yeah, you tell me you wouldn’t drop the food bucket and run for your life.
4) driving to the city was a big to do. every saturday morning we would go to piano lessons at yamaha on dakota street and pizza hut for lunch. i even got to order soda. i loved it. i loved it because it was always something to look forward to….we didn’t take it for granted. treats were treats.
5) family vacation. we took a few weeks off every summer to go camping. but our camping was not just a tent and a fire pit. nor was it a fifth wheel. it was like a combo. my dad is a master craftsman so he built, yes built, a trailer out of wood to pull behind the car with all of our camping gear. our camping gear was a full size sleeping tent, a screen tent, propane elements, thermarests (the cadillac of air mattresses) a portable toilet with a curtain around it, and a mini fridge. i also think this was the time in my life when i learned how to sleep through anything. everyone would wake up in the morning all bleary eyed and frustrated with the cows, trains, party-ers next door and i hadn’t heard a thing.
i’m straying now….this isn’t so much about childhood in the country as it is just about my childhood.
either way it was a magnificent time in life that fostered imagination, anticipation, and multiplication. well maybe not so much multiplication. it was just the third word with ‘ation’ that came to mind.
have a wonderful day!!
Mandy,
I have many of the same memories…… I loved walking the roads “in the dark” but did not like going into the dark barn to feed the animals (my own fault because I had procrastinated until it was dark)
thanks for your memories and dreamings….