Driving, tractors, trailers and even go carts
My first years were spent in a trailer in my aunt’s yard. My parents first lived in a single wide trailer and when my brother came along, they upgraded to a double wide. During that time my mother tells stories of everything from me having to share my room with a lamb so that my mother could bottle feed it at night to the time she was putting toys in a toy chest in the dark to clean up and felt a mouse. She had checked the odd feeling toy in the morning to see what it was and of course it turned out to be a mouse. That lamb thought of itself as a dog and would want to go everywhere the dogs went. It was a constant playmate for us for a while — though at one point it knocked my brother to the ground (in the mud) and tried to eat his hay colored hair.
I’ve always said we were lucky to survive childhood and those first years were just the start of it. Stories include:
- Stepping on my first of many nails (before I was even 5)
- Getting stung by wasps while picking wild strawberries
- My first go cart at 2
- Many more go carts
- Being spun in the bucket of a tractor while my dad raised and lowered it.
My first experience with stepping on nails occurred in the old barn in the barnyard by our trailer. I vaguely remember stepping on a nail in the barn we were raising rabbits in. My dad sent me to the house to tell my mother who told me to go tell my dad. No idea what they did after that…. my next nail was after we moved and friends were adding a garage to our house. I’ve also stepped on nails on boards while cleaning at my mothers and even a lightening rod coming out of the ground by our house while checking our phone service. My foot has a pain that randomly comes and goes at the spot. No matter how hard I try to avoid them, it seems nails find me about as often and at the time span that I need a new tetanus shot.
My aunt whose yard we lived in, had two daughters… I spent a lot of time with my cousins despite the age difference. My cousins while growing up on the farm had their own struggles that included everything from falling down a well and being drug by horses. While playing together in the barn lot, we somehow found a next of wasps and got…
