I do not remember the layout of the house, but I do recall the yard. In the summer time we were brown as little berries and spent very little time in the house. Why would we stay in the house? There was nothing there except our beds. Television had not been invented to our knowledge. When it rained the yard turned to a lake. Well a giant mud hole might be a better description! And just like a heat seeking missle we gravitated to the mud hole. Since bath night was only on Saturday when we got muddy we could be sure that we were going to be crammed under the pump out in the yard and "rinsed off." Life was dangerous for little kids. Donna poked her finger at a turtle and the turtle latched on and did not let go. The only solution for that was to cut the turtles head off and this caused his vice like grip to loosen in time. Poor Donna.
I fell victim to the old gander which proceeded to give me a flogging that was one for the record books. Mother did save me, to her credit. The goose business and the fact that my brother Jake had whacked me over the head with a turnip when I was very small seemed to be my sole claim to fame in the Bartholomew household. Dad farmed with a man named John Britain. Mother drove the truck and hauled the grain to market, except for the year she gave birth to Dorothy. Back in those days it was an unwritten law that when a woman had a baby she was to stay in bed for 10 days. I remember mother in bed and we were allowed to stand by her bed for 5 minutes every day and gaze at her and the baby. We hated that baby that had made our mother have to go to bed for 10 days and maybe she would die. But she didn't.
Life was good there, though. We had the milk cow and every morning she was "staked out" beside the road so she could eat grass all day. Then when it came time to milk her, we unstaked her and herded her along the road to home. Some times she liked to just mosey along and we found that if we grabbed her tail, she would run home. If we ran her all the way home, she would not give us her milk. That got us more than one "licking". A licking did not entail the use of the tongue, it entailed the use of a leather strap. I laugh when I remember mother saying on more than one occasion, "Do you want a licking!" Oh, yes, mother, you know I do! I do not recall ever really wanting one, but I do recall getting them. Today they would call it child abuse, but back then, it was called "keeping them in line and teaching them to be good." I think we turned out pretty good and I never hated my mother for spanking me. She never did it for fun, just to enforce what she said. And I must confess, several times I heard my mothers voice issuing from my mouth, "Do you want a licking? Do you want me to come in there?"
I recall one of the cows dying and we had to drag it to the pasture, soak it in coal oil, and burn it. That must have been when the anthrax epidemic happened. I remember dad plowing with the horse and plow. I remember taking him water. I remember baby bunnies in the field. I remember wolves howling at night. I remember being afraid of a dog because he was stumbling around. He had Rabies. I remember my childhood and it makes me sad that it all ended, things changed and that era will never be again. We walked wherever we went. And when we left the Stroh place we put all our belongings on a hayrack that was hitched to 2 horses and it took the better part of the day to move across town. We moved to the Ailmore place, which I think was a step up in the world. It was a two bedroom shack on the other side of Bull Creek. It was owned by a doctor. There were trees in the yard and we would have a telephone!
I fell victim to the old gander which proceeded to give me a flogging that was one for the record books. Mother did save me, to her credit. The goose business and the fact that my brother Jake had whacked me over the head with a turnip when I was very small seemed to be my sole claim to fame in the Bartholomew household. Dad farmed with a man named John Britain. Mother drove the truck and hauled the grain to market, except for the year she gave birth to Dorothy. Back in those days it was an unwritten law that when a woman had a baby she was to stay in bed for 10 days. I remember mother in bed and we were allowed to stand by her bed for 5 minutes every day and gaze at her and the baby. We hated that baby that had made our mother have to go to bed for 10 days and maybe she would die. But she didn't.
Life was good there, though. We had the milk cow and every morning she was "staked out" beside the road so she could eat grass all day. Then when it came time to milk her, we unstaked her and herded her along the road to home. Some times she liked to just mosey along and we found that if we grabbed her tail, she would run home. If we ran her all the way home, she would not give us her milk. That got us more than one "licking". A licking did not entail the use of the tongue, it entailed the use of a leather strap. I laugh when I remember mother saying on more than one occasion, "Do you want a licking!" Oh, yes, mother, you know I do! I do not recall ever really wanting one, but I do recall getting them. Today they would call it child abuse, but back then, it was called "keeping them in line and teaching them to be good." I think we turned out pretty good and I never hated my mother for spanking me. She never did it for fun, just to enforce what she said. And I must confess, several times I heard my mothers voice issuing from my mouth, "Do you want a licking? Do you want me to come in there?"
I recall one of the cows dying and we had to drag it to the pasture, soak it in coal oil, and burn it. That must have been when the anthrax epidemic happened. I remember dad plowing with the horse and plow. I remember taking him water. I remember baby bunnies in the field. I remember wolves howling at night. I remember being afraid of a dog because he was stumbling around. He had Rabies. I remember my childhood and it makes me sad that it all ended, things changed and that era will never be again. We walked wherever we went. And when we left the Stroh place we put all our belongings on a hayrack that was hitched to 2 horses and it took the better part of the day to move across town. We moved to the Ailmore place, which I think was a step up in the world. It was a two bedroom shack on the other side of Bull Creek. It was owned by a doctor. There were trees in the yard and we would have a telephone!
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