City Girl moves to the Farm

1. City Girl Moves to the Farm

   When I was fourteen years old my parents sold our home in a small town in OH and decided to move. Somewhere. We had lived beside my aunt and uncle on one side of us and my uncle’s brother on the other side of us. Being an only child, it was great having my cousins and their cousins around.

   I swear my mother was part gypsy. Once our house sold, we moved in with her sister and family. My cousin, who was my age, was not my favorite. She had, shall we say, sticky fingers. Money out of my bank went missing. And it wasn’t a ghost who swiped it.

   So after six weeks of living with them in the city, school number two for the year, my parents bought a 72-acre farm. Neither of my parents were farmers. My dad grew up in the city and worked at Sterling Bakery. My mom had various jobs. By then she took in foster kids.

   School number three for the year was Minerva High. Three schools with different teaching of algebra, is it no wonder I didn’t do well? That I never learned to like math? Ok, once I got to college I actually got an A in math, but not my freshman year of high school.

   So back to the farm. The house was large with a small kitchen, a large dining room with a bookshelf that used to be a dumb waiter, a living room and one bedroom downstairs. The upstairs had three bedrooms, two on each side of the hall and the one bathroom. To get to the bathroom you had to go through one of the bedrooms. Imagine a slew of kids and two adults and only one bathroom!

   At least I had a large bedroom that wasn’t attached to the others. When Grandma came to visit she shared it with me. Boy did she ever snore!

   Then there was a large barn, and a garage with an upstairs. That’s where the turkeys stayed. Which made me happy. I am not a bird fan. We had chickens, too. Can’t recall where they stayed, but I do recall the day we came home and found dead chickens all over the yard. I guess my dog killed them. Not its fault. They made dogs stay outside in those days. The cats stayed in the barn. And my dog was murdered. That’s what they did in those days.

   We had one cow. I was told I needed to learn to milk it. Remember, I was a city girl. So I sat on the milking stool, no machines, and I tried to milk it. Just pull in the udders they said. I did. The cow laid down. “Bessie, get up.” But she refused. After trying to get her up for what seemed like forever, my one foster brother, who stood there laughing, took over. Bessie stood and he milked her. She was ignored by me thereafter.

   I did get a pet calf when I was a junior in high school. But then I came home one day and Candy was missing. My mother explained that they gave my calf to her friends who owned a farm, and in return we’d get meat from their cow. A few years later I learned she lied. We ate Candy.

   Speaking of Candy, my Aunt Mildred was pregnant and said she had planned to name her baby Candy, but couldn’t since that’s what I named my cow. Years later, when I had a daughter, she couldn’t pronounce Mary Alice and called her Mary Ass. As I told my cousin, good thing she hadn’t been named Candy.