Drive - A Memoir 38th Installment
watch
the lambs play. Because we were underfoot, the workers would give us
several bum lambs from dead ewes, rejected lambs or lambs removed
from ewes that had triplets. They figured this would keep us busy and
out of their hair. We would bottle feed and care for them for a
month, then pasture them to breeding weight (about 8 months) and sell
them, keeping one for mutton in the freezer.
We
never really had a horse, but it was a horse that caused a lot of
excitement and dread in the family. Linda wanted a horse, and we kept
one for a neighbor for a while, but her desire to have a horse was
cut short. I recall what Edith told us about our sisters and horses.
Linda and Vicki were hired to baby sit for a neighbor, and Linda had
driven the Ford Fairlane several miles to their house. Vicki stayed
in the house while Linda went out to the neighbor’s horse corral.
She decided to try a bareback ride and straddled the horse from the
fence. All went well until the horse started to crow hop, and Linda
bellied off. She lit wrong on one foot and broke her ankle badly. The
bone broke through the skin and in fact she nearly broke her foot
completely off. Linda was screaming for help and Vicki heard and came
out. Between screaming and crying Linda got Vicki to run to the
neighbor’s house and call Edith for help. When Vicki got to the
strange house, she was so flustered she couldn’t find the phone.
Turns out it was a white phone on the white wall. She bailed out of
the house and into the car. She was just eight years old but had
driven a few tractors, how hard could a car be to drive? Luckily, she
started to figure it out. She raced home, down the long driveway,
into the yard and was out of the car without totally stopping. I saw
Vicki run to the house and out came Vernon and Edith. They shouted at
me, “Watch the place!” and they raced away. They didn’t come
back for a couple of days. Russ and I took care of the farm and
waited. For about a month after the accident Linda was on bed rest,
then on crutches. The bed rest was marvelous for Russ and me because
it was a break for us to have her out of our hair. The crutch time
was not so good with her constantly poking us with one of her
crutches until I felt like ripping off one of her arms and beating
her with it.
Farm
kids drive young; everyone knows that. Linda, Russ and I would drive
any vehicle on the farm and on the highway. I started steering the
spud truck down the sack rows when I was seven years old. The Old Man
would start the truck down the field in compound low with the manual
500 more words tomorrow
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