A Random Collection of Memories from the Grandparents' Farm

A farm is a fantastic place for a kid to be. Farms have big old barns to play in and wide open spaces to roam. Farms teach a kid the importance of contributing and being self-reliant. Farm communities are full of hard-working, loving people who watch out for each other.

I consider myself lucky to have grown up in a small farming community in rural Kansas. We didn't live on a farm ourselves, but most of the kids I went to school with did. My Grandparents lived and worked on a farm their entire lives, and they were the epitome of the small time mid-western farmer. When I was a kid I loved going to visit. Here are a few of my favorite memories from those visits:

~ The Mobile SeeSaw
Grandpa had built a seesaw for us grandkids. It consisted of a long wooden 2 x 8 plank mounted across an old axle with two big metal wheels. Somehow my sister and I figured out that if one of us sat at the end and pushed off the ground, while the other sat in the middle and pulled the wheels, we could move that seesaw all over god's creation. And by golly that's just what we did. We wheeled that thing all over the farm, all day long. We ended up with blisters on our hands, after which we put some gloves on and kept on going. Grandpa probably never imagined that thing would be so successful at keeping us out of his hair entertained.

~ Laundry Day
Grandma and Grandpa didn't have a washer and dryer, so once a week Grandma would load up the van with the week's dirty clothes and head to town to the laundromat. She'd stop at Gerold's house, an old bachelor and friend of Grandpa, and pick up his laundry too. As we drove, at every intersection my sister and I would sing "change light change!" if the light was red, or "stay light stay!" if it was green. That had to drive Grandma bananas after awhile, but I don't remember her ever showing it. Grandma did approximately 3,000 loads of laundry, at least that's what it seemed like to me. My sister and I would pass the time looking for quarters, and when it was time to fold the clothes, we fought and whined helped. I remember mountains and mountains of whites - that was a lot of white t-shirts and underwear.

~ Fried Chicken
More specifically, fried chicken with mashed potatoes and chicken gravy, and green beans and sliced tomatoes straight from the garden. I remember eating this for lunch at the table in Grandma's kitchen, with the red and white picnic style table cover, drinking our ice water from the egg shaped retro light blue and off-white plastic cups. Grandpa would come in from working in the fields to join us. I remember how lean and muscular he was, all the way into old age. Though his skin was wrinkled, his arms were defined - his biceps popped under his white t-shirts. When you work as hard as he did, I guess you can afford to eat some fried chicken.

~The Hottest Day In the History of Mankind
The trips to the laundromat were welcome in the summer because, unlike Grandma's house, the laundromat was air-conditioned. Some folks may not be aware of this, but it is a well-documented fact that summer time in Kansas is where the folks in hell go when they want to warm up a bit. Hell has a much drier heat apparently. On one of our visits the temperature gauge on the old front porch registered 113 F. We sat in Grandma's living room with the front door and all the windows open, watching the heat radiate off the road in front of the house. Roughly 1 second of every 8 I was given the temporary relief of having a nice hot breeze blow in my face when the reciprocating fan passed my direction. It was too hot to play, too hot to lay down, too hot to bitch and complain, too hot to do anything but sit there and sweat.

~ Family Reunion
Every summer, always on the hottest day of the year, we all went with Grandma and Grandpa to the park in Ottawa KS, the town near their farm, for the Foushee Family Reunion. The reunion was under a picnic shelter in the park. The food was delicious, and the people were old. Usually there were a couple of my distant cousins there to play with, and everyone else, aside from our parents, was at least 100. When it was lunch time I'd load up my plate with more food than I could possibly eat, get scolded by my parents for taking more than I could possibly eat, then try to eat it all just to prove a point. I had a lot of belly aches at family reunion, but I knew better than to let on about it.

~ How to Eat Like a Child
Grandma had this book on her book shelf. This, and some of the Reader's Digest stories, provided hours of entertainment on every visit. Looking back it seems a bit odd - this doesn't seem like the kind of book my Grandma would have. I think after publishing this post I'm going to order a copy for my kids to make their own memories with.

Grandpa passed away when I was 18, and we lost my Grandma last spring. My Dad and Uncle arranged a big family reunion with all us cousins the following Memorial Day to honor her memory. Stay tuned for a post about that...