In the Fall that I entered 1st grade, we moved to our farm, 7 miles west, to be closer to Dad’s work. Having spent a great deal of time on our grandmother's farm, we were certainly not alien to farm life, however Jack, Liz and I still had our own set of unrealistic expectations. Jack had grand plans to raise cows and hunt wild animals.
Liz was looking forward to living the life of Velvet from the film National Velvet. She knew a lot about horses from the fiction she had taken out of the school library.
The horses in those books were incredibly well mannered, had nerves of steel and were every girl’s best friend. Liz assumed the ponies and horses our parents would acquire would have no less character or pedigree. She had plans to ride her horse to school everyday on the seven miles of busy roads to the campus. Mom and Dad had a different set of plans that entailed catching a ride with a chain smoking math teacher in a homely little Corvair where seat belts were an option not selected. The Chevy Corvair had made Time's list of "The 50 Biggest Automotive Mistakes Ever Made". The latter plan was understandably, far less desirable when it came to making friends and influencing people. Liz was also ill prepared for the many vices inherent with an affordable pony, like spooking at butterflies, and the tendency to bolt after they reared and parted ways with the rider. She soon found that horses were not much more predictable than cats although they did weigh about 1500 pounds more. After breaking her arm and cracking her head open during 2 separate mishaps, she let go of her National Velvet dream and focused on lobbying (unsuccessfully) for a move to the city where her friends lived. For me, I was looking forward to my tomboy / little kid pursuits, enjoying being outside, raising lots of calves and foals and doing cattle drives to our cousin’s farm next door.
….a lot like living in a western and like many things, one should be careful what they wish for.
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| Cattle Drive |
….a lot like living in a western and like many things, one should be careful what they wish for.
Overall, life on the farm was fantastic. It was 100 years old, there were lots of places to explore, I could go wherever I wanted and there wasn’t a single street to cross. The first week there, Liz and I found a cat and five little kittens in a stall in the barn. It was a bit of an adjustment not having neighbors right next door and the noises were different. Instead of horns and car engines we heard cows and birds during the day and screech owls, locusts, and bull frogs at night.
The sound of a siren was so rare, we would jump in the car whenever we heard one, and go off to find the excitement. Within a month of moving to the farm there was a barn fire about a half a mile away. The whole sky turned red that night and you could see the flames from our attic window. Mom and Dad meant well but every explanation of a life event like the fire, had a Disney spin complete with a moral at the end. They told us that the fire had been caused by a boy our age playing with matches in the barn. Jack was kind and trusted me with the truth that Mom and Dad didn’t think I was old enough to hear. In what was probably 3 parts testing his persuasion skills and 1 part believing it himself, Jack swore me to secrecy and then let me know that Indians did it.
While I appreciated his candor, this new information was very troublesome. Unfortunately I had paid attention when I had watched westerns, and Indians for the most part were not portrayed well. Savage Indians were not a part of "living my life in a western" that I had planned.
The Lone Ranger’s friend Tonto was a nice Indian but he was very serious and never laughed, and he only spoke in 1-3 word phrases. Indians were a big problem in another Saturday morning TV show I watched, RinTinTin. I had seen enough to know what could happen when angry Indians lived nearby.
After becoming privy to our Indian problem I began carrying a feather and a miniature yoyo in my pocket in case I was ever captured. I also took our red setter Pat with me when I went outside. I had heard that Indians liked to trade stuff and I thought I might be able to trade the feather or the yoyo for my freedom.
RinTinTin was Rusty’s dog and he didn’t seem to mind taking an arrow to save Rusty, and he had always recovered by the next week’s episode. I was pretty sure my dad had studied removing Indian arrows from dogs and cats when in veterinary school – it was really important to push the arrow all the way through and break it before you pulled it back. After going a couple of weeks without an attack or even an Indian sighting, I began to get a small level of comfort that maybe the Indians had moved on to set barns on fire somewhere else.
Early that Winter in the midst of a snow storm, I found myself home sick from school. Due to the weather, my Mother needed to leave me home alone so she could collect Jack and Liz from school. It wouldn’t be a big deal because my Dad was expected home soon. Even though it kept snowing harder and harder, they were both gone much longer than what seemed to be a reasonable amount of time. While a well adjusted child might have chosen to use this time wisely reading a school assignment, I stared at the school assignment and morosely pondered my new life as an orphan. When they finally got home I was upset and asked what took so long. My mom replied that she had gotten “tied up” in traffic.
I was stunned. The Indians were still here and they had captured my mom but she escaped and she was so calm and brave. I wanted to know how she got away but I was sworn to secrecy about the whole Indian problem. When my dad walked in I ran and shouted “Mom got tied up in traffic, but she escaped and she’s here now.” Dad replied that he had gotten “tied up” at the office too. I gasped. The Indians - they were everywhere….. but Jack was the best brother ever for trusting me with the truth.
