Dirt, new potatoes, irrigatin', manure, and other treasures

Early Saturday morning, I snuggled down into the couch with AJ while we both rubbed sleep out of our eyes and watched Baby MacDonald.

It's all about the farm, and the animals, and the fields. There are lots of pictures of farm equipment, and of course, "mooooooooooooooos!" When I started trying to explain the difference between a tractor and a combine TO MY 1-YEAR OLD, I realized something way, way down deep where it gets me misty:

One of my heart's greatest treasures is my childhood in the panhandle of Texas, my family's history, and the proud tradition of farming and cattle-raising that is part of my life.

I live very far away from that life now, in the suburbs in a major city, where I commute nearly every day and eat at chain restaurants. The farms here are obviously owned by the last vestiges of a time gone by -- and there are fewer and fewer of them, as the developers buy up every inch of real estate and build subdivision after subdivision. With names like "Robin's Ridge" and "Poplar Trace." Sporadically, you'll drive by a leftover little old home that you can tell houses Grandma and Grampa Farmer. Their property is large -- sometimes 5 acres, like my own Granny's -- and there's a barn and a shed, and the field has grown over in their old age, but you can tell it used to be a working farm. I get so nostalgic and sad when I see those homes, thinking about where those people have been and all the hard work they've put into that land, and knowing that in 6 years, a townhouse complex ("Starting in the $300s") will probably sit there.

Anyway, watching with AJ made me remember lots of little details of the childhood I loved. I wish that these tangible, real things could be part of his life, too, but that is probably not his destiny. (As much as I think it'd be a romantic adventure to find a little farm in middle America, sell everything and move there, and let AJ run around barefoot all summer, as long as he gets his chores done... it's not gonna happen that way.) So, for my wistful heart, and for the sake of his heritage, I want him to know my memories. I hope we can at least visit the places I loved when he gets older. I hope AJ will be able to dig in my father's dirt.

* * * * * *

One of my earliest memories is driving out to one of Dad's farms, and going to the very middle of the pasture to wait for the cattle. We sat down together on the ground, and a few minutes later, a quiet steer snuck up behind us and sniffed our heads. I know Dad had to tell me not to be scared, and I wasn't, really. But I knew I needed to keep still or I'd scare all the cows. And one might kick me.

My sister and I sometimes played cows, and licked the 2 salt-licks that Dad kept in our garage. I made her lick the yellow one, which had sulpher in it, while I took "plain." I feel pretty bad about that now. Hee.

At age four, riding along a dirt road with Dad, we had to stop to chop the head off a rattlesnake in our path. Using a shovel. (I know, by today's Steve Irwin standards it sounds rather heartless, but this is the way things are on the farm, so we all have to get over it.) Dad, of course, had a shovel in the back of the car.

At Granny's, we could go out beyond her pine trees and dig up new potatoes before they were harvested. We didn't do it often, and I'm not sure that was even our crop of potatoes, but when we did, it was special. I can still smell the way that dirt smelled: Clean.

You'd think I'd have run through, hidden in, and played among tall stalks of corn every summer. Not so -- too itchy for me. I only went into a cornfield once. However, I recall several summer evenings when we'd sit in the alley behind our house, shucking fresh corn that we were given annually by a friend. The silk strands underneath those husks were a real mess. But us kids wanted to be out there helping, sitting on a couple of bricks, being with the grown-ups.

Part of living in a farming town is having kids absent from school during the harvest. I can only remember one kid in my class who got this "free pass" every year, but I know there were more than that in my school.

When I was 10 or 11, Sis and I went out to the ranch with Dad on a snowy Saturday morning, and HE LET ME DRIVE THE PICKUP so that he could unload hay for the cattle to eat. We only drove along the fence, so I could keep it lined up, and no more than 4 or 5 mph (so Dad wouldn't fall off!), but I remember being excited and feeling so grown-up.

I also "drove" a combine at age 6 (with the help of the nice farmer who actually manned the thing). I got to put my hands on the wheel AND pull the lever, extending the arm that poured the wheat into a truck next to us. That was a kid-sized thrill!

My uncle lived at the ranch for a time, with his three horses: Yeller, Rick, and a black horse whose name was NOT "Midnight," and won't be repeated here. It never bothered us when we were little, that was just his name.

Granny's house had an antique, horse-drawn plow sitting in the side yard, rusting. We loved to play on that thing. We also played on a VERY old, VERY rickety wooden wagon, which was big enough to have had the "Laura Ingalls" canopy over it, like the pioneers had. I'm not sure it ever had one of those, but it was that kind of wagon. We climbed all over it, too, pretending it was a sailing ship. Granny's long driveway had cattle-guards -- hollow poles dug into the ground that, if a cow tried to walk over, his hooves would get caught in between. Now that I think of it, that's kind-of an odd (cruel?) way to guard against a cow getting into your yard, isn't it?

My grandfather had 3 brothers, and they moved from Oklahoma into Texas after managing a car dealership in Oklahoma City. I wonder what prompted them to move there? My grandfather and my Dad's branch of the family farmed wheat and corn and alfalfa (is that the same as wheat?), and raised cattle for the beef industry, while Uncle Eddie and his sons had onions and potatoes and processed them in their commercial "shed."

When we went with Dad to "help irrigate," he'd have to hoist us up and over the drainage ditch at the end of the rows of wheat. Mostly we splashed in whatever puddles we could find and threw dirt-balls at our feet; Dad switched hoses and moved pipes here and there to make sure the arid west Texas land got enough water.

I remember in the summers, sprayplanes would go over our house on their way out to the farms. I guess they were spraying for insects, which isn't exclusively a farm-thing, anymore, what with West Nile and all, but at the time those planes seemed special to our way of life alone.

When you drive into my childhood hometown, there's a crazy pungent (some say foul) scent in the air: Manure from the feedyards and, I think, the scent of sugarbeets being processed. It's a shocker, but once I get used to it again, I think it smells somewhat sweet every time I visit.