Posted on 02/16/2008 3:59:30 PM PST by SJackson
Grandma and Grandpa lived on a small farm in Maine near a town called Freedom. Visiting them in the summer was an extraordinary experience for me. We were city people, so small town, rural life was a completely different world. To me it was a great adventure!
My grandparents' house was very old. It had two kitchens. One was a winter kitchen they used until the heat of summer. The other was used in the summer to keep the heat of cooking out of the house. There was a reach-through box for wood for the stove in the wall between both kitchens so the woodbox had a lid on both sides. When we were little, we liked to surprise Grandma by popping out of the box whenever we visited.
The barn was attached to the summer kitchen. In the far back corner of the barn was the outhouse. Grandma always said that was a luxury because we didn't have to go outside to use it. One time when I was about to use this luxury, I saw the biggest snake I had ever seen in my life. It was looking at me! I knew his name; it was George. We were told never to bother George. He was doing his job. Up to this time I had been lucky enough to miss making his acquaintance, and I wanted to keep it that way.
George was my grandparents' idea of a barn cat. No one could fault his skill at his job. There were no mice, rats, or any other uninvited life forms in the barn. Even birds outside seemed watchful. When he had eaten everything around, what else was there for him to eat next? He looked like he thought I would be tasty, so I made a hasty retreat.
From the very moment we arrived we had to watch out for the bullies of the farm. They were gray geese, who were absolute terrors! While the idea of running from birds may seem funny to you, that is only because you have probably never met a goose on his turf. The geese came charging after us anytime my grandparents weren't around. We had to run for our lives. They would bite our bottoms and beat us with their wings. We were chased through the barn and out the other side. Even my grandparents' dog avoided them.
There was a one-room school near my grandparents' house. My grandparents donated the land, and my grandpa helped build the school. We got to atttend school there once and it was like stepping back in time. When the teacher worked with one grade (which might be as few as two or four children), everyone else worked on their own. There was a pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room, and wood was piled nearby to feed it. If you misbehaved, you would end up using your extra energy chopping wood or shoveling snow or doing some other useful job. Believe me, you came back in tired. Sometimes school was scheduled on Saturday to make up for days missed when families needed help in the fields.
I liked to go blueberry picking with my grandma, my sister and my brother on Haystack Mountain. We would get our pails and start walking up a dirt road that led up the side of the mountain to where the best wild berries grew. I kind of knew that the mountain was more like a really big hill, but all the people there called it a mountain, so that was good enough for me. It was a steep walk, but that didn't slow Grandma down at all.
Grandma would say, "If you eat too many berries there will be no pie for dinner." The rule was we could eat one berry for every handful we put into the pail. We did follow her rule, but we had kind of small hands so we still ate a good number of the blueberries. We loved the berries warm from the summer sun. That was a very different time. We could eat the berries because there was nothing on them but what nature put there.
My brother and sister and I went fishing off an old bridge. We didn't use poles; we used some line tied to a piece of wood. We leaned over the side of the bridge to drop the hook in the water.
I was fishing one day, leaning over the side of the bridge and enjoying the peacefulness around me when a very big fish decided to catch me. The fish pulled so hard and so unexpectedly that my legs shot up in the air. I thought for sure I was going for a swim. My sister and brother saved me, but the fish took off with my line. It must have made a nice trophy for his "guess what got away" story. I can hear him now: "She was this big!"
Grandma and Grandpa knew so many things, like the names of birds just by their songs. They seemed to see things that we didn't even notice, like poison ivy. Grandma saved us from it a few times. She would say that "we looked, but we had to learn to really see what was there."
One day cows got into the cornfield nearest the house. The cows looked huge to us kids. Grandma was a very small person, not quite 5 feet tall, but she wasn't afraid of anything! She picked up her broom and went out into the very midst of them and swept them right out of that field.
My grandparents always seemed invincible to me. At home we were told don't do this or that, you'll get hurt. With our grandparents, everything was possible and in that way we felt invincible too. They made us fearless. That led to bruises, but also great adventures and joy beyond measure.
If you’d like to be on or off this Upper Midwest/outdoors/rural list please FR mail me. And ping me is you see articles of interest.
Hardly a day passes when I’m reminded not of some bit of great grandma’s wisdom from her childhood on a northern Michigan farm.
I think I miss that woman mostly because she could erase all the worlds stupidity with her perspective on what was really important.
Great story. Can’t wait to hear more...My grandparents on my mom’s side had an outhouse and it was cold in the winter!!!!!
You could ping me. Nice story. I dont live far from Freedom
Wonderful!
Thank you for a pleasant story to read.
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