Meanwhile, back at the ranch!

To say my life here on my little acre is boring would be an understatement.  It seems like there is always something going on...well, not during Jeopardy!  Everyone knows what happens to me when I set back in my recliner with the cat on my lap and pull an afghan up over me so I do not get cold.  I watch Jeopardy! at 3:00 and again at 6:30.  Sadly, I have yet to see a full half hour.  If I manage to stay awake it is imperative that someone call  to ask just one quick question.

Now yesterday, I stopped at Big R to buy goose food since there is a storm coming and I do not want the geese to miss out on a meal and I hate unloading 150 pounds of feed in a blizzard.  So, I pulled into the back acre and started in with the first bag.  You should know, the neighbors have a Billy Goat Gruff with big long, curled horns.  He does not know where he actually lives so he spends a lot of time ripping things out of the ground on my side of the driveway.  As I started into the shed, I had to bump him with the feed bag to get inside.  I emptied that one, chased him off and grabbed another only to repeat the same scenario.  I do not even like goats and that is why I do not have one.  Third bag was tossed on top of the barrel and the goat chased off again.  I drove out and closed the gate behind me with him glaring at me from his yard.

To make a long story short, I got busy doing something and it was almost dark when I went to put the geese up for the night.  I let them in the outside wire enclosure and they were acting funny.  Since they usually do, I did not give it a second thought.  Then I remembered I needed to open that third bag and dump it so I opened the big door and took 2 steps inside and stopped.  Holy mother of God!  Inside the shed was dark and I caught a glimpse so something out of the corner of my eye.  It was big!  It was not a goose!  It was that damned goat curled up in the corner of the shed.  He was settling in for the night.  In order to get inside the shed he had to squeeze himself through the little door I have in the side of the shed designed for a much smaller animal.  Even the geese have to duck their heads to get inside.  Dammit!

Luckily I have a very good flashlight, so I went over to Mr. Goat and nudged him while shining the light on his path to freedom.  He could have cared less.  So I got him by one of his horns.  It became increasingly clear that he did not want to go home.  I finally got him out the door and that was as far as he wanted to go.  So I went next door to the house he actually lived at.  Cory came with me and between the 2 of us with a hand on each horn, we got him into their yard.  It was clear also that in the leap over the fence into my yard, he had hurt his back leg.  So I missed Jeopardy! at 6:30.  Dammit!

So, Michael brought up the subject of gardening a few days ago and I explained that I would not be doing that this year.  Why?  It seems that the last few years I have had a snake infestation.  I do not know how many times  there was a snake in the goose house.  I reached my limit when I was harvesting my zucchini and as I reached to move a leaf, I saw a snake curled up under it.  Centipedes love my basement.  Wasps build their little nests in the corners of my deck.  Spiders watch me from the shadows.  Farm living is just no longer conducive to my lifestyle!  I want to be where the lights are shining in my window and the jukebox is blaring from down below.  Well, not really.

I do love my solitude out here, but there is a lot to be said for the wild life that makes itself at home here on my acre.  I realize goats, spiders, snakes and centipedes are not exactly wildlife, but you do remember how the foxes devastated my duck farm.  But yesterday at the Big R, I saw my first signs of Spring.  They have three tanks full of baby chickens and they are so damn cute.  Maybe if I had chickens they would keep the snakes away.  I know they eat grasshoppers.

Something to think about.

The church on the corner.

When I was in the 5th grade, Miss Swenson the teacher, decided I had a brillant future as a poet.  She asked mother's permission to submit some of my work to Jack and Jill magazine.  I could write reams back in those days, unless some one wanted me to, and then I was blank.  As I recall I did manage to give her something and she mailed it off to the magazine, but I never heard any more about it.  Childish dreams dashed in the forgotten world of adults.  Probably her fault I am screwed up today!
Seventh grade proved to be very traumatic for us kids.  Mother was diagnosed with cancer and was put in the hospital and operated on immediately.  By this time Josephine was already married and so we were sort of left in the lurch with no one to take care of us except dad.  Now what that man knew about taking care of kids was exactly nothing.  He assumed on some level that since Mother was not there, we  would not need to eat.  Neighbors took pity on us and we did not starve.  You can not tell by looking at me today that I ever missed a meal!
When Mother came home, she was "bedfast" which meant the little bed in the front room was where she spent her days.  That way she could look out.  As I recall there was not a whole lot to see out there, but she was in a prime place to see it if it were to be seen.  She had received lots of cards while in the hospital so she spent time reading those, over and over again.
The ladies at the First Christian Church on the corner of Main Street and across the street from the school came to call and decided that since school would be starting soon, they needed to sew us girls new dresses for school.  We were measured and measured again to make sure the first measurements were correct.  Then the day came that they met for the "sewing bee".  I was so excited I could hardly contain myself.  I was going to have a new dress!  This would be a fancy dress made just for me and it would not have the words "Gooch's Best" any where on it.  At least I hoped not.  Dad was beside himself because those old biddies were sticking thier noses in our business.  They thought he could not take care of his family.  The fact that they were right was entirely beside the point.  I was going to have a new dress.
The day came when they brought the dresses and we tried them on so they could see how they looked and if they fit properly.  To my amazement I recieved 2 dresses.  I could hardly contain myself.  I could hardly wait for the first day of school.  It did finally come.  To this day I can not remember what color my dresses were or what they looked like.  Seems like one of them had stripes and one had flowers, but you could not prove it by me.  Mother cautioned us not to be "putting on airs" because we had new clothes.  I don't think I did, but nonetheless, my day was shattered when a boy in my class said, "Oh, ain't you something in your new clothes?  My mama said the church ladies made them because your momma is dying and can't take care of you.  Says you are poor as church mice."  Well, that pretty much did it for the happiest day of my life.  Needless to say, Mama wasn't dying, but it made for a long day.
Got into a lot of trouble that year.  Got sent to the office for saying Loren McQueen had cooties.  What ever cooties were.  I only said it because some body else told me that.  Seems like that was also the year Mrs. Wells had her baby in the bathroom in the middle of the night.  I sure wished we had an indoor bathroom, but that would not come for many years.  Oh, and I am here to tell you, an outside privy certainly leaves a lot to be desired.  I am amazed to this day that my digestive tract ever worked, between worrying about falling through the hole and living in mortal terror that a black widow spider would bite me on my tender tush!  And then there was that trip out in the middle of the night and having to worry about mountain lions and gypsy's and God only knew what else.  How did I manage to survive in that world?
Seventh grade ended with a bang.  The last day of school was always a picnic.  The band played and the kids ran around and it was so much fun.  Well, sort of.  That was the year the band was playing and a bird flew over and did a number on Gay Withrow's hat as she played whatever insturment she played.  Sure sucked to be her!
But the best thing about the whole year was that since the ladies made us clothes, mother felt obligated to attend church.  Thus began my early religious training.  I wanted to know all about this man named Jesus.  I was crushed that this man had died on the cross.  If I had only known him my life would have been perfect, but now he was dead and I would never know him.  I did finally get it straight, he had died for me, so I could have life everlasting.  That is something I never forgot.
I joined youth group.  I always memorized more verses than anyone else.  I loved that church and I loved the minister, Rush Barnett and his lovely wife, Genevive.  I wanted to be a missionary and go to Africa.  He talked to me about it and the plans were made.  Many hours were spent in there home and it was there that I was happiest.  And then the inevitable happened.  Rush J Barnett was transferred to another church.  I don't remember who took his place, but it was a man who did not much like kids and I was a kid.  We still went to that church, but the youth group ceased to be.  When we quit going, no one really seemed to care.

Cellar, outhouse and black widow spiders!

There was much to be done in our new home.  School would be starting soon and I had not yet explored every inch of the new home.  The house was simple.  Enter at the front door and you were in the "front room".  Later I learned the rich people called it the entry way, but to us it was the front room due to the very location.  It was also the "living room" because we lived there. To to the left of that was the front bedroom.  Made sense. Dad had a big bed in that room nearest the window so nothing could get us 4 kids that were piled on the bed.  Josephine, Donna, Mary and I slept in the other bed.  The center of the house consisted of the dining room and the "other bedroom" in which Mother slept with Dorothy because she was still a baby.  Sometimes Mary also slept in there.  I do not know where Jake slept.  He may have been hung from a hook.  The dining room held the big oak clawfoot table with mismatched chairs, the ironing board, a built in cupboard for our dishes, and a "icebox."    It also held a hanging bird cage in which lived a yellow canary.  That canary was my mother's reason for living, I think.  More about that later.
The room across the back of the house was designated as the kitchen.  It held two cook stoves, a set of shelves which would later become a bookself because we did have 3 or 4 books and they were on that shelf. The galvanized tubs were kept hanging from nails in this room, so it was also the laundry room.  One was a "wash boiler" because it was oblong and about a foot across and two feet long and 2 feet high.  If it happened to be raining on "wash" day, the water would be heated inside because we could not build a fire under the 3 legged kettle and wash day was wash day come hell or high water.  Days meant something back then!  I sell tea towels on ebay and they have the days with the little Sunbonnet Sue or the doggie doing things they do on the designated days.  Monday was "Wash Day", Tuesday "Iron", Wednesday "Sew", Thursday "Shop", Friday "Bake", Saturday "Clean" and Sunday was always "Church".  So if it rained and it was Monday, we would be heating wash water in the house.
There were also 2 more galvanized tubs that hung there.  They were the "rinse tubs".  When bath night came, which was always on a Saturday night without fail, the cleanest of the two tubs would be filled with warm water and we each got a turn in the tub.  First came the little kids and then the last was Dad.  Some times if the water got to thick, more water was added.  That was nice!  When we were all clean (and I use that word with the untmost sarcasm!) the tub was carried out the back door and dumped unceremoniously in the garden area.  Great fertilizer!
Along with the bathing ritual for our hygiene, there was also the need for rest room "facilities" and trust me, those were very primitive!  Out the back door and down the path stood the "outhouse".  And that, friends, is exactly what it was and what all the neighbors called it and everyone in town had one.  Course there were people in the city proper who had the inside things, but out on the outskirts where we lived it was a way of life.  It was a wooden building with a wooden bench built in and secured to the walls.  A hole was cut and that was it.  A Sears catalog was the paper used to "clean yourself "  when you were done "doing your business".  I hope you are getting a clear picture of where the black widow spiders came into this tale, because I have no intention of going into more detail than this.  Suffice it to say, I was terrified every time I went in there and I always carried a stick which I used to hit the hole with to scare the spiders away.  Apparently it worked because my vulnerable back side was never attacked.  I also lived in mortal terror that I would step inside and the floor would collapse and I would fall to a very nasty death.  I think this is the one aspect of pioneer life that I least enjoyed.  Never, ever did I even once wish I could go back to that nasty place!
Right out the back door was the area known as the "back porch" which I never understood why it was called that, but I guess it had a roof and screens to keep out flies.  Step out the door of the kitchen and on the left is where wood was piled.  On the right was the cellar.  The cellar was by definition the one place I did not ever want to go.  Never, ever, in my entire life did I actually enter the underground room.  I did make it part way down the dirt steps and looked at the room.  This cellar was dug down about 6 feet below ground level.  A roof of some sort was over the top and several feet of dirt mounded up over that.  I am sure that this would have stood an atomic bomb attack, but I was just not fond enough of living to go clear down the steps and enter that spider infested room.  Mother insisted on storing her pickles, canned goods, potatoes, yams, onions and such down there.  She would on occasion tell me to go down and bring up such and such.  If I could not get one of the other kids to do it, I went and hid until I was sure it was done.  I am scared shitless of spiders to this day and never have I ever thought a spider was my friend.  I am terrified of little spiders and the level of fear increased with the size of the spider.  Terror is the word we are looking for here.  Petrified comes to mind.  You get the picture?
Out of time again, but I will be back soon to share more with you of our new home.  Until then....

Well, we are starting this week off right!

This is Jimmy at my house doing the same thing he was over here doing 4 days ago, only this time the snake was much smaller.  Now I have no idea what I have done to attract all these snakes, but I am here to tell you that I may be moving into town and into a high rise.
I seriously think that the first snake was the father snake.  I think he came out from under my patio.  I think this one was the mother and she just woke up.  I fully expect to walk out there in the morning and find the babies headed for the goose house.  How many babies does a snake have for crying out loud.
The only thing that would make my life perfect at this point is for a great big tarantula to crawl in through the doggie door.  I may be getting too old for this farm life.