I grew up smack dab in the middle of nowhere. Most Americans prefer to call that Missouri, but I call it, well, the middle of nowhere. I did most of my growing on a small plot of land that my mother grandly dubbed a farm. The Eighth Arrow farm to be exact. And each of us had an Eighth Arrow name. My brother was Elijah Blue (Cher was not a hot ticket item for my mom – nope, no way). My sister was Hope Arrow, and I was Mariah (as in they call the wind). My mother’s name was True Arrow, though I didn’t know that until she told me. In my recollection, she always came to mom, so I’m sure that name suited my purposes just fine.
My mother says that she had always wanted to be a farmer. So, when it was time for the family to relocate, she bought a place that had more land than house. And then she set about creating the reality of living on a farm. She bought geese, chickens, goats, cows, horses, some seeds for the garden and a tractor (o.k. it was a lawn mower, but you get the idea).
Our house was a tiny shoebox of a thing. Perhaps my mother’s desire to recreate the reality of the Old Lady in the Shoe nursery rhyme. I would have preferred Scarlett and the plantation myself, but then it wasn’t my dream. There were only two good things about that house being so small. The first was that Jodi, Jason and I had to spend all our free time outside – as there was no room really to play much inside. The second is that since the house was painted the in vogue avocado green that was so fashionable in the 1970’s the small size of the house probably prevented our neighbors from having a car accident every time they drove by and tried to shield their eyes from the unattractive shade.
Walking into the house was not unlike walking into a diorama box. As soon as you stepped into the front door, you could see the entire house. Actually, this house would pass for a child’s play house for many influential people in Bowling Green today. The first room in the house was the living room. My mom’s bedroom was off to the right. If you looked straight, you would see what was meant to be a hallway, but was in fact converted into my brother’s bedroom. The room my sister and I shared was through the hall – umm.. Jason’s room – in the back of the house. If you veered left from the entrance you would have entered the kitchen, which was really a lot like a long hallway in which someone had placed a sink and some appliances. And on the other end of the kitchen was the dining room. This was actually an enclosed porch that the original owners had intended to be a mudroom I think. The dining room was connected to my room by a sliding glass door.
The best part of the dining room was the table. This was an old wagon wheel table that my mom had put over a barrel. My mom has fond memories of this table. In part because it was made from authentic parts – not some table that you actually purchase. What I remember about this table, besides the fact that it was an antique slate blue color was that there was about a 2 to 3 inch space between the top of the barrel and the bottom of the table top – and through that opening, Jodi, Jason and I found several opportunities to place items of food that we didn’t think were quite as tasty as my mom had anticipated. My mom was an adventurous cook at the time. Let me just say that spaghetti squash isn’t really that good with spaghetti sauce. And stewed tomatoes are just beyond nasty no matter what you do to them. By the time that we moved from this house, there was quite a bit of food collected at the bottom of the barrel. I was a bit surprised that my mom seemed so shocked to see our little compost heap when we moved the table – There were several inches of decomposing food at the bottom – All I can be relatively sure of that I most likely blamed Jason for the entire mess.
We didn’t have central heat and air at the house – that I can recall. I do remember that there was a furnace, and on cold winter mornings, we would jockey for position to sit by the register and warm up. In the summers, we were most likely outside playing. And as I was young, I didn’t feel the heat the way we do now – I never remember being too hot when I was little. While mom was at work, we would ride our bikes in town to the city pool. But more often than not, we would just goof off around the house. My mom had built a play house for us out of pallets in the garden. And until it was overrun with wasps, it was a good place to play.
There were also a lot of animals around the house. And we spent a large amount of our time running from many of them. The geese were very aggressive and had a find wings out, hissing attack that would strike terror into the heart of any child. My mom tried to get Jodi to overcome her fear and realize that she was boss, not the bird, by making her chase the goose with a stick around the house. My sister was crying as she swatted blindly at the bird. IN the long run, I think that it increased the animosity between the bird and the rest of us. We also had a rooster – THE WHITE ROOSTER. This rooster’s greatest joy in life was to chase and attack us. I can’t tell you if Jodi and Jason were scared of that thing, but I was terrified. Before going outside, I would check to see if the rooster was anywhere around and then make a break for it. Invariably, the rooster would hear the screen door slam and come barreling after me. I know that Jodi, Jason and I would huddle on the front steps waiting for the bus – armed with a stick. Jodi would count to three, hurl the stick and we would all run as fast as we could for the bus. My deepest gratitude was that there weren’t a lot of people on the bus when we got on – because that would have really been more than I could have born --- though the humiliation would have been greater for Jodi than for me – as she was old enough to realize what losers we looked like. I have since learned that all rooster’s hate me. We’ve had chickens here at the house and the roosters would always stalk me – and no I’m not being paranoid – it’s true. When Elijah was a baby, we had some dominequer hens and a rooster. And the rooster would wait for me on the steps of the house. So when I was coming home from work, he’d be there. Being a good parent – I would use Elijah’s punkin seat as a barrier between the two of us – and negotiate my way past the fiend to get into the house. Sometimes, I would rush to the back door to get in before he came – but by the time I shut the door, he’d be just a breath behind me. Every day it was a race to see if I could make it into the house unscathed. One afternoon, I came home from work and the rooster was on the stairs by the door (and the stairs were so small that only one of us could be on them at a time – he had staked his claim). Keeping an eye on him at all times, I got out of the car and crept around the front of the car – so as not to appear aggressive – he could have the steps if he wanted, there were other doors. I got Elijah out of the car, and looked over to the stairs to make sure that the rooster was still there. He was gone. I looked in front of me, then behind me – he was no where to be seen. I began to walk slowly around the back of the car and had almost reached the steps when I felt a weight strike me on the back and wings fluttering about me. That damn bird had walked all the way around the car to come at me from behind. I made it inside, and told Jose that the bird had to go. He didn’t seem so cocky when we pulled him out of the trunk of the car and handed him over to Jose’s sister – who was going to make a lovely soup. I only felt guilty for a brief second or two. Anyway, back to my childhood
In the front yard of our house, there were two large trees with the remnants of a fence between them. We used a branch of that tree to play volleyball. The porch, the gate, and the driveway were our bases as we played baseball or kickball. Beside the house was the garden – the physical manifestation of my mother’s intention of never buying groceries again. Unfortunately she planted row after row of, well vegetables, and such fodder weren’t really that appealing to me. I mean really who eats asparagus, tomatoes, squash, and what not. Thank god for the wagon wheel table. We also had a couple of apple trees. My mom took the apples and sliced them and dried them. She then put them in a canister and called them candy. That lie only works once – after that we realized that they were really just slightly sweetened shoe leather. Apparently when you got older the concept of candy changed from sweet-tart necklaces and bracelets to browned apple peelings.
More than vegetables, the garden grew my sisters aspirations for stardom. ABBA was the singing sensation at the time, and my sister had memorized the words to every song, I think. Anyway, we would dress in towels and head out to the garden stage and plan our routine. It has long been my lot in life to sing back up. My sister had me chanting in the background – take a chance, take a chance, take a chance. Later, as I was hanging out with my old friend Craig (old as in we’re not really friends any more) he made me sing back up too – I don’t know if that means that my voice isn’t that good – or if I’m really indifferent to music really and without the passion, couldn’t really sing the lead. We also sang Helen Reddy songs – Ruby Red Dress and I am Woman – though in my memory these are more bedroom in the evening songs – accompanied with shoulder shimmies more than actual dance routines.
Other than that the parts of the farm that I most remember is the mint patch that grew behind one of the sheds. It always seemed somewhat magical that it smelled like Grandma Walker’s gum. I think it was hard for me to grasp the concept that a plant (which equaled vegetables which were my sworn enemy) could smell so good and not have a flower. The pond was also a pretty cool place. I remember one winter that it froze over – ½ clear and ½ white ice. And we would move over to the clear part every time a car came past so they would think that we were skating on water. It’s the same ignorance that makes you go into a store and pretend that you are deaf. You really think that everyone believes you – when in fact they merely believe you are crazy. I remember swimming some in the pond, but not a lot. I am a part of that generation in which swimming in ponds wasn’t a necessity because swimming pool existed for public use. And really if you can choose between pretty blue water in which you can see the bottom and pond water in which the cows have most likely pooped, well there’s really no contest.
This farm is forever etched in my memory. It is the place of many firsts for me. It was the place where I first looked out the window and realized what it meant to rain in sheets. I saw birth and death for the first time and decided both were more than a little messy. I learned that the reason we call geese and roosters fowl is because they are, literally, foul. I learned that Shetland ponies are small not because they are for children to ride, but because it makes it more convenient for adults to smack them around. And I learned that parents more often than not attempt to recreate their own childhood fantasies with their children – which I’ve learned yet again as I embark on my own parenting journey. But more than anything, I learned that you can create any reality that you want to. What for most people was nothing more than a run down hole in the ground, was for my mother a farm that with a little work would mean that she would need to rely on nor ask anyone for anything. For me it was a magical place. I have also learned that we are able to create any reality that we want to – that our future and our past are ours to manipulate at will. Living is nothing more than the process of creating memories, and sharing those memories to our friends and family – merging some together, forgetting others, adding to some, taking away from others – but cherishing them always. These recollections are not the same that my brother or sister may have – though they are founded in the same experiences – but as I get older – the role of my brother and sister seem to fade away into the background – and these stories, the ones that we have told over and over again, are the ones that I best remember. (except for the time that I got to drive the lawn mower home from some mowing job we were doing – and I began to sing really loud my own personal little opera and Jason hid in the bushes and caught me – then teased me – I was always really big on making up songs for myself -- )
