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The Farm

During the summer I would spend anywhere from a couple of weeks to most all summer on the farm with Aunt Etta, Uncle Jack, and Cousin Dorothy. The farm was just a great place for a city kid to spend some of his growing up time. I have many fond memories of the farm. I can remember being out in the cornfield after dark on a hot and sticky July evening. I would lie down on the ground on my back, stare up at the stars, smell the earth, and listen to the corn grow. It's a fact. Sometimes when conditions are right, field corn will grow three to four inches overnight. And it makes some peculiar noises in doing so. You can hear all manner of squeaks and squawks, and sometimes a noise that sounds much like a suppressed fart. It wouldn't do much for some people I suppose, but as a boy, I thought it to be a fascinating experience, just listening to the corn grow.

Another thing I remember was being there in the early spring. Uncle Jack had just plowed his fields and it had rained the night before. I would go into the fields barefoot and walk through the furrow row after row looking for Indian arrowheads. I found quite a few that way. Most of them I traded off for other things, but I still have a half dozen or so. Indian arrowheads had a higher premium than marbles when it came to trading. Another thing about going barefoot on the farm that I remember. There's no experience like not watching where you are going and stepping your bare foot into a freshly made cow paddy. Icky poo!!

The only time I ever got into trouble with my Uncle Jack was the time I went fishing----for chickens. That's right, chickens. Now, to this day I don't know what possessed me. What I did was to take the bamboo fishing pole, took the fish hook off, tied a slip knot at the end of the line and laid it on the ground with the loop open. Then I shucked some corn and put the kernels in the center of the loop. Then I went around the corner of the barn, took hold of the pole and called "Here chick, chick, chick". Sure enough, here they come scrambling for a handout. I waited. When they seemed to be on top of one another in the loop area, I took the pole and gave a mighty yank. Oh, what chaos. I had caught at least five of them. There was clucking and screeching with wings flapping and feathers flying all over the place, and there was Uncle Jack.

He had come up behind me and was standing right beside me while I was holding the "proof". I dropped the pole. He picked me up by the scruff of the neck and into the barn we went. Down came the buggy whip and I found myself positioned prone across his knee. He laid couple of strokes on me (he never actually hit me very hard, it was the thought that hurt, and it hurt like hell). I was sent to bed with no supper (after supper dishes were done, Aunt Etta brought a place of food that would have fed three kids). I avoided my Uncle Jack for a few days. He was angry and upset with me for what I had done to his chickens. What I couldn't understand at the time was that if Uncle Jack was so angry with me, why did he break out into hysterics when he told my Dad, the neighbors, and the mailman about what I had done?

The Kishwaukee River ran through the eastern corner of the farm and that is where I spent much of my time, along with cousin Dorothy and several kids from a couple of adjacent farms. I look at the Kishwaukee today and it is not very big. It appears to be more like a creek than a river. In some places it is little more than a ditch. But when I was a boy, that river to me was the Amazon, the Nile, and the mighty Mississippi all rolled into one. We had our own island right at the bend in the river. Sometimes we would all go swimming in the buff, girls upstream and boys down stream. We had built a tree house on the island, made a bridge and had a small raft made from railroad ties. The river produced frogs, turtles, fish, crawdads, and an endless variety of bugs. We had fox, muskrat, squirrels, rabbits, owls, and all manner of bird life. I was truly in my glory. I can tell you true, Huckleberry Finn never had it so good.

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