What I thought was ordinary

The things I did as a kid that I thought of as ordinary are increasingly becoming anything but. We played in barn rafters, scooting across the doubled-up 2x12's that stretched across the open maw of the hay loft fearlessly. Our bikes we rode hard up hills and through gullies; no matter the abuse they took us faithfully where we needed to go. The price we paid was the infrequent popped inner tube. In cut-off jeans my friends and I would walk the crick – creek for those uninitiated types – our sneakers sinking into the thick loamy mud as we searched out the deep, shaded pools where northerns and bullheads lurked and the swimming was the best.

It wasn’t just play. We worked, too. Hard. It wasn’t uncommon that when my friends and I first drove our fathers’ tractors, we had to jump off the seat and balance on the clutch and brakes to bring it to a stop. Rocks were picked (anything bigger than an orange, softball, bread loaf, depending on the field), wood was hauled, snow and corn and silage and oats and manure all needed to be shoveled. And if we didn’t do it right the first time...

We did it again.

On muggy summer nights, after the work was done, we played croquet, badminton, lawn darts, horse shoes, or softball as the ice cracked after being dropped into a picture of Kool-Aid or Schwann’s 6-n-1 or nectar, whatever the hell nectar was. I asked Gramma Spears who lived up the hill what it was once, and I think I decided I really didn’t need to know after all. We’d beg Mom to let us run barefoot in the creeping Charlie that overtook our yard before I was born, and were always told ‘no! There might be nails or glass!’ And there was.

The woods were there, inviting us to get lost for days in the span of hours. We became Daniel Boone or Billy the Kid or Zeb Pike, exploring every inch of that 12 acre wood. There was the big white pine up on the north line that had been topped by a passing twister, and it was flat enough to sit upon if you dared climb that high. I did. Often. I could see for days from the top of that tree, and no one ever saw me watching the world. Or singing songs of happiness that erupted from my heart when I sat there so contentedly. I had to quit when one day, I got up there, and found the beginning of a nest. The last time I drove by, the nest was still there, but, I bet it’s a new pair of eagles up there.

The corn would start to reach high about the first of June, stretching until it the tassels would paint the sky by the end of July. Sweet corn was always planted on the outside four rows where the planter turned around, and we’d sneak out and pluck it and eat it off the stalk raw. Soon, ever supper would include fresh picked corn, shucked as it was picked, our hands sticky with corn milk, arms and jeans covered with silk. Tossing out the cobs with borer worms.

We’d race the sun all day and sneak out into the night, welcoming the cool embrace after wicked humid heat, sitting on the roof watching approaching thunder storms as they marched over the hills and fields and forests. Feeling the teasing tendrils of the first feathery cold front fingers that brought the gourmet scents of the thunderous feast soon served. The first sky tears falling from the torn clouds, Madonna weeping on us. For us.

The world slid past slow as we flowed on the current in large black inner tubes, wearing ineffective suntan lotion and feeling the deep burn as it scorched us. Not caring that we’d be lobster red for a day or three. It was worth it.

When you got old enough, the neighbor’s started coming around looking to expand their labor pool. There was hay to bale, row crops to cultivate, machinery to service and move from place to place, calves to take to the sales barn. It made us strong. It made us lean. It taught us the value of an honest day’s labor for an honest day’s pay. And we worked hard – you didn’t want it to get back to Mom and Dad that one of the neighbors thought you didn’t do quite enough. Worse than that, you didn’t want them telling the other neighbor’s not to call you.

I always had work.

Sudden rain falling on cut hay, three days off to let the sun have her way. One day up, next day racked, don’t want to put wet hay away. Stand in the loft as the heavy bales drop with a muffled thud, pack them in tight, feel the heat build. Watch for smoke. So much pressure can cause the green, wet to spontaneously combust. Better wait a bit more, lets head to the lake and wet a line, I hear the walleyes are hitting out on the reef at mile nine.

Summer days and summer daze and summer laze in the summer haze. What I thought of as ordinary was so extraordinary.