Thinking back to Nickerson is impossible without remembering the stinking ducks. Let me lay the scene out for you. We had a sink in the kitchen and a hand pump to pump water for indoor use. The drain consisted of a pipe that ran through the wall and extended about 10 feet into the back yard. Beyond that was the rabbit hutches and further out the chicken house and yard. The chicken yard was fenced and they had a very nice house. Horse pen and barn were over to the left. Ah, but the only thing not restrained were the Muscovy ducks.
As I recall, there were 4 of them. Black and white. Now a Muscovy duck is different than other ducks. The Muscovy is a "warbler" which means it sounds like an old man mumbling to himself. As a general rule ducks are pretty quite and when they do talk it is a definite "quack". I am pretty sure that the male ducks I had never uttered a sound and the females were quite vocal.
Another interesting point here is that domesticated ducks and geese do not fly. The exception to that rule is the Muscovy, which can fly and I know this for a fact because at one point I had 38 ducks, 4 of which were Muscovy. All the ducks liked to float around in the pond, but the Muscovy ducks liked to fly up to the house and set on my central air unit which was located (and still is) near my back door. It became a regular chore to hose down the unit when they went back to the pond.
But back to Nickerson and the sink draining in the back yard. It was the habit of the Muscovy ducks to root around in the mudhole that was created by the water draining onto the dirt in the back yard. I am pretty sure that mosquitoes laid eggs in that water. I do know when the ducks got through digging in the wet dirt that it was a very stinky mess. Hindsight tells me that if the health department had ever seen that mess that they would have bulldozed the house, but that was then and this is now and there is not much anyone can do about that, is there?
Looking back down the years of growing up on Tobacco Road, it is a miracle that any of us survived, and yet here I am! We all have scars that we got when we were wee tykes and I can now empathize with my mother. My hat is off to that woman if only for the fact that she raised us all to adulthood without any loss of life. There were 6 of us back then. Now we are down to only two. Donna lives in Hutchinson and I live in Pueblo.
We gathered only for funerals, but now there are just the two of us, so that does not happen very often. She actually thinks she is my big sister, so I just let her think that. I do know that we remember our childhoods differently. I see abject poverty and she recalls a very happy childhood. She remembers a very kind father and I never met that man!
The one thing mother did teach me was that we all have our own concept of reality. Some of us see the glass half empty and some of us see it half full.
I do not even remember having a glass!
