Down memory "farm" lane

On Friday I read a response I had gotten on my post about the Mason Farm.  It was from my former neighbor and close childhood friend who was telling about a memory she had about going to the farm.  It got me thinking of more of my childhood memories, and I thought, "Wouldn't that give me material to blog about make a nice weekly entry?  So along the lines of my farm photos, here are some farm memories of my childhood:

1.  Starting with the one my friend remembers - We took her two brothers to the farm first and then it was her turn to come along on the farm adventure.  The only thing I really remember about her time there was the three of us, her, my brother, and myself, were wandering around.  I remember it being at my Aunt's house down the road from the farm, but that memory could be from something else.  I remember standing at the window well that led into her basement.  There was electric wire around the well, and we dared her to touch it.  Apparently, my brother and I were experts in electrical wires, and we told her it was just a small shock and that she needed to experience it.  We meant for her to put out her pointer finger and touch it quickly, but instead she reached out her entire hand and grabbed the wire with it.  Of course it shocked the hell out of her, and my brother and I started yelling for her to let go.  When she didn't, my brother grabbed her and he too started getting shocked.  We kept screaming for her to let go, and sure enough I grabbed my brother to help, and all of us got shocked.  She eventually let go and we collapsed on the ground yelling at her.  Then, of course, we started laughing and laughing.  It made for a great story when we got home, and I think we added some more electricity and burn marks on our bodies to the story....

2.  We use to play in the hayloft in the barn all the time back when we were kids.  You had to climb this rickety, old ladder to get to the loft and the last rung was higher then the top of the loft so that to you had to be agile and lift your leg high to the right to climb into the loft.  I use to be afraid to do it, especially with all my cousins watching.  I was afraid of heights so climbing the ladder itself was quite a feat for me.  Once I made it into the loft I never wanted to go down again, sure that I would fall to my death.  The loft always was full of hay bales that we would play with.  We played hide n'seek among them or we moved them around and built forts or houses.  There was a basketball hoop up there too, hello, it is Indiana, and we spent many hours playing hoops and having tournaments.  I also spent a lot of time worrying that the floor would give out and send us falling to our deaths or into one of the animal stalls where the animal would tramp us to death or eat us, cows being huge carnivores. There was a hole in the middle of the hayloft for dropping bales of hay down to the animals, so I worried about falling down the hole too.  I never wanted to go up there, but also couldn't stay away because once you were up there it was the best playhouse ever.

Entry to the loft 

3.  When I took my husband, at the time my boyfriend, to the farm for the weekend we climbed into the hayloft so that I could show him it and to kick his ass in basketball.  After I did that he started wandering around exploring while I stood still and lamented how we might just fall to our deaths if the floor gave out while he was wandering into territory that hadn't been explored in years.  He came to the sliding door that was used to haul the bales of hay up into the barn by a pulley.  It faces the front of the house, and being curious, he slid the door open and it came right off its track and one side of the door hung loosely on its hinges.  He was horrified.  I was laughing.  It took us some time to fix the door, but we did.

4.  That same visit with my then boyfriend we spent Sunday morning relaxing and "cough" exercising in the bedroom.  While we lay talking and spent after exercising we heard a car pull up into the gravel drive.  I hopped out of bed and went to the door to see who in the world was paying us a visit.  Turns out it was my parents on their way to some golf course.  My dad was eager to see how Tom liked the farm.  I shouted, "Oh My God, it's my Dad!" and Tom jumped out of bed and was dressed in three seconds flat.  He was sure my Dad would find us au naturel, and that he would shoot him on the spot for taking advantage of his thirty something spinster daughter. To this day he still sweats just thinking about it, and we laugh and laugh.

5.  When I was a kid and my grandparents still lived and worked on the farm there was a chicken house right outside their bedroom door.  We use to collect the eggs and hide behind the house when playing hide n'seek.  There wasn't any air in the farmhouse so the door leading out to the chickens was always opened and the smell of chickens and all their squawking came through the screen door into the bedroom.

6.  We took lots of friends to the farm.  When I took my friend Robin she just wanted to ride horses, but by that time the only horse that lived there was my cousin's horse, Big Red.  I was not a horse person, but she spent most of her time on his back riding him all around the barnyard despite the cold weather.  She also fished for the first time and caught her first fish there at the pond.  My father was quite proud of that.

7.  I also took my friend Kelly and my friend Sharon, who was visiting from Florida, there.  We arrived at night, after having gotten lost on the way there, and we had told ourselves so many spooky stories by the time we reached the farm, that we were all good and scared.  We entered the dark farmhouse and decided we should check each room for safety in case someone might be hiding there.  We armed ourselves with a broom and then in a single file, sort of like the sleuths on Scooby Doo, we moved from room to room.  When we came into the room that had once been the sitting room,then the dining room, and now the living room, Kelly insisted we open the closet door.  We crept up on the door and decided that opening it quickly would be better if someone were hiding in there instead of opening it slowly.  I don't remember who opened the door, but when that person did, all of my Dad's ties that were hanging from a hook inside the door rose in the air and hit us in the face.  We dropped our broom and ran screaming out into the front yard, arms flaying in the air sure we had just been attacked.

8.  I also have vague memories of having to use the outhouse in the winter.  I'm not sure if the bathroom wasn't working, which happened often, but I can remember not wanting to go outside in the smelly outhouse, especially in the dark.  My Dad, who loved scaring people, would stand behind the outhouse door or the outhouse itself and either knock on the side while you were in there doing your business or jump out at you when you exited.

9.  There were always a lot of pigs in the barnyard when my grandparents were living there, along with cows and goats.  My brother and I and whatever cousin happen to be with us would spend one whole day sitting in the wagon with the field corn throwing it into the barnyard for the pigs.  My grandfather just let us do it.  I don't remember him ever telling us not to feed them so much.  My Dad would come out and tell us, but not my grandfather.

10.  At one of the reunions all I wanted to do was take my kids blackberry picking, so my cousin Marc and I took the girls into the woods down toward the second pond, which I never remembered from my childhood,  We found great bushes and picked and picked until our arms were scratched.  Then, mindful of all the chiggers, I made all of us strip down to our suits and go into the pond to clean them off.  I forgot all about the overalls that I had been wearing over my suit, and when I returned to the farm I just threw them into my suitcase.  The next day I put them on and by that night I was covered in the chiggers that were living in my overalls.  I was one miserable woman on that trip.