Drive - A Memoir 14th Installment
climbed
up beside it to hold it to the hood. ‘He shot it; he holds it’ is
the rule, and I got to drive the tractor back to the house.
“Let's
hang it in the pump house.” Russ said as we drove up to the farm.
We cut slits through the hide on the hind legs between the hock
tendons and the leg bones. Then we poked a stick through the holes
behind the hock tendons by the leg joints and securely fastened a
rope to the stick. I tossed the rope over a rafter rail and we
hoisted the antelope's body high off the ground. “We’ll have to
skin it later, then let it age a couple of weeks.” Russ said.
“About
time you got back,” the Old Man said as we helped him put the last
cow in the stanchion and then he left. I watched him go before I
offered, “Let’s hurry and milk this cow, slop the hogs, feed the
bum lambs and give the calves their milk. I'm starving while all the
animals are ‘fat and happy.’ Well, I guess I’m as ‘fat and
happy’ as the farm animals, but be that as it may, I'm starving!”
I lamented.
Chapter
two
As
I was loping out to the mailbox which sat a couple of hundred yards
down the lane connecting us to the old county road, I spied a huge
package, actually a bundle, hanging on the mail box. This meant only
one thing – school was about to start. I manhandled the package
back to the house, and sure enough, it contained our school clothes.
Edith ordered pretty much everything the family needed from Sears,
Spiegel or ‘Monkey Wards’ catalogs because we were so far out
from any civilization, we were lucky to have mail service. Our
parents would only go to town maybe twice a year. Edith would
purchase husky size work pants for me and regular pants for Russ. I
was always a little peeved about this because I considered myself to
be muscular not husky. The colors were easy for her to choose: the
pants were denim, the boots were high lace tan and the shirts were
brown flannel for me and cool blue flannel shirts for Russell. I
hated brown right to my very soul, but that was what I wore most of
my young life. I remember when I was about eight or nine, a neighbor
kid asked me to go to Church. I wanted to go just because I had never
been to a church before. I went in my cleanest brown flannel shirt,
jeans and boots. (I washed off the manure.) The neighbor kid and I
sat in a pew in back, and this kid and his friends would whisper “How
Now Brown Cow” over and over snickering the whole time. Needless to
say, that was my first and last time in church, and also why I
despise brown flannel.
500 more words tomorrow
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