Memories Of My Animals Large And Small

By Fay Risner

Fay Risner has been a fan of Dr. James Herriot's ever since she read his Yorkshire Dales, England series. For over forty-five years, Fay jotted down notes about tending her livestock. Some of the stories in her book are heartwarming. Others are sad, and still others are humorous.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fay Risner
• Release date: May 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005927677

Fay Risner

Fay Risner lives with her husband on a central Iowa acreage along with their chickens, rabbits, goats and cats. A retired Certified Nurse Aide, she now divides her time between writing books, livestock chores, working in her flower beds, the garden and going fishing with her husband. In the winter, she makes quilts. Fay writes books in various genre and languages. Historical mystery series like Stringbean westerns and Amazing Gracie Mysteries, Nurse Hal's Amish series set in southern Iowa and books for Caregivers about Alzheimer's. She uses 12 font print in her books and 14 font print in her novellas to make them reader friendly. Now her books are in Large Print. Her books have a mid western Iowa and small town flavor. She pulls the readers into her stories, making it hard for them to put a book down until the reader sees how the story ends. Readers say the characters are fun to get to know and often humorous enough to cause the readers to laugh out loud. The books leave readers wanting a sequel or a series so they can read about the characters again. Enjoy Fay Risner's books and please leave a review to make others familiar with her work.

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Chapter 2

Memories

In 2005, when I returned to the place I had called home for fourteen years it didn't look the same. I asked Harold to stop our car on the country blacktop road 800 miles from where we live in Iowa just so I could take in the old home place. He complained about blocking traffic. The road didn't have shoulders to stop on. I explained that traffic wasn't ever bumper to bumper on this road, but if he saw a car coming he could drive away. He asked me if we should pull in the farm driveway. I could get out and see if anyone was home so I could explain I'd like to look around. No, I answered. I didn't want to bother anyone. We were strangers to them. I just wanted to sit in the car to look and remember.

Next to the road ditch in the front yard, the two cedar trees still stood. Fifty years ago, my younger brother, John, and I climbed those trees many a time to look in the turtle dove's nest. More than once, mother dove flew off the nest and landed in the driveway. To distract us she stretched a wing out and fluttered like she was hurt. Down we scrambled to catch her only to have her fly away.

I remembered the stormy night when lightning struck the tall, ancient oak tree in the middle of the yard. Wondering where the lightning struck when it lit up the house and the booming thunder rattled the windows, we all bolted upright in bed. It was the next day we found the shiny groove of new wood that ran from top to bottom of the tree's side.

When we were big enough to be trusted outside, Dad put a tractor tire sandbox under that tree. John and I spent many an hour in that sand with bright colored plastic pails and shovels.

Mom told me about the time in 1949 when she let me play in the sandbox alone. John was only a year old. She said I screamed for her to come quick. Thinking back about that moment, in my head, I could hear my childlike voice calling to Mom from where I sat in the sandbox. Transfixed, I watched wide-eyed when I screamed that a big black worm was crawling by me. I could still hear the hurried thuds of feet on the wooden floor of the front porch. Mom snatched me out of the sandbox and ran with me to the porch. We watched the nervous black snake do an about-face and slither as fast as he could to the ditch. That snake was harmless unless it was looking for eggs or a chicken to eat. There were poisonous ones like copperheads slithering in the yard to surprise us and water moccasins near the creeks to watch out for.

One time we spotted a car, with two women in it, stop in front of our house. The driver kept inching the car forward and backing it up and then driving forward again. Finally, Dad decided to go see what was their problem. Turns out a big black snake was stretched across the blacktop road. The driver didn't want to run over the snake so she was trying to scare it away. Dad did that for her so the women could be on their way.

The family spent many a hot summer evening in the porch swing as long as we had it. Rock slabs made the front porch steps. It seems I was always in a hurry. In the summer of 1958, I tried to run up the slabs and tripped. I bumped my shin and put a gash in it. I may have cracked the bone, because I wore bandages and limped all summer. There is still a dent and scar on my shin bone to prove it.

5I recalled outbuildings such as the barn and chicken house that were gone, and landmarks vividly the way the farm was in the forties and fifties. Though I didn't mind the way our old house looked in those days, I have to admit the remodeling makes it look much nicer.

In my mind, I could hear the crunch of the yard's sparse, dry grass under my brown, bare feet when I pushed the clacking reel mower. Summers were always hot and dry. Mowing didn't have to be done very often and wasn't much of a job. Guess I was just looking for something to do.

In the left corner of the front yard grew a large lilac bush. One time I hid behind that bush with one of Dad's pipes, a cloth tobacco sack, and matches. While my parents were milking, I thought it was a good opportunity to find out what Dad liked about smoking. I did manage to get the pipe filled and lit, but I didn’t know whether to suck in or blow out. Never did figure out how to make that pipe work so I put it back where I got it before Dad missed it. Best of all, I managed to get the matches put out before I started a grass fire. That old lilac bush could have been history along with the house if the dry summer grass caught fire.

To the north of the lilac bush was a large fire bush. John and I decided the hollowed-out middle made the best hiding place from Mom. We crawled in and sat up, waiting for her to notice we were missing. When the bush was leafed out and loaded with a mass of red blooms we thought she couldn't see us.

Along the north side of the house grew a honeysuckle vine outside what became my bedroom window. My brother, Bill, had the bedroom until he grew up and moved away. I'd stop to smell the white and gold flowers. I could never imagine a scent more pleasant to go to sleep with when that sugary smell floated over my bed in the cool, evening breeze.

I have a honeysuckle vine in my front yard now that came from my Aunt Liddie's yard in Centerville, Iowa. Every time we went south on vacations, I had relatives get out their shovels and dig me up a honeysuckle start. The starts never lived through the winter. It was finally the start from Iowa that took off and grew. I guess that plant was acclimated to Iowa winters. Recently, I made honeysuckle jelly from the blooms on my vine. First time I ever heard of that jelly.

Dad's grain wagon set on the north side of the house when it wasn't in use. One afternoon in 1953 when I was seven, a bunch of us cousins was playing Hide And Seek. I hopped into the wagon to hide, thinking I had a good hiding place. A large piece of tin Dad used to patch a hole in the wooden bottom, stuck up just enough to slice a chunk off my knee. I still have the scar from that, too.

Beyond the wagon to the north was the clotheslines. Past them was the grass strip in front of the cornfield where we played softball with the neighbor kids. I'll never forget in my enthusiasm how I hit the ball then threw the bat back into John's face, giving him a bloody nose. That hurt him, and I worried I might have broken his nose. Luckily, he came out of it okay once the swelling went down.

We had what was called a summer porch on the back of the house facing west. The windows were screened but didn't have glass, and there wasn't a door. The main purpose of the porch was to keep the icebox and gas washing machine out of the rain or snow. The washing machine had an exhaust hose that needed to be stretched out when the machine was in use.

The well where we got all our water was just outside the back door. Many a bucket of water all of us pumped for the kitchen, wash days, baths, or the chickens. A tin trough, hooked by a wire over the knob on the pump, funneled water to a barrel by the well. The milk cans set in the cold water to keep the milk cool until the milk truck came.

West of the pump was the root cellar. Mom tried to make the cellar roof look more attractive by planting irises on it. That was one of the biggest root cellars I have ever seen. We lived in a region called Tornado Alley. On stormy nights and some days, Dad and Mom bundled my brother and me in quilts and carried us into the cellar. We called it the cave, the dark, damp pit used to store canned food jars and potatoes. At the back on a wooden bench was an egg crate. I'll expand on the root cellar in another chapter.

On one end of the back porch was the huge bronze bathtub with a gas burner heated water tank. That bathtub probably looked funny to some people, but it sure beat sitting scrunched up in the rinse tub behind the heating stove.

Next was the wringer washing machine and on a nail hung the large aluminum rinse tub that was placed on a wooden stool on wash days.

By the kitchen door was the blue icebox. Blue because Mom came up with a partial can of paint so she brightened up the icebox. We were taught to never waste anything. When we went to town to do what Mom called the trading, Dad waited until last to purchase the ice block when he stopped at the gas station to get gas.

The kitchen door had nine panes. One night John threw a toy truck at me because I was standing on the other side of the door, making faces at him. The truck went through a pane. Dad wasn't too happy when he came in from milking and found we had a new air vent in the back door. Good thing he was handy at fixing things.

Along the north wall was the sink cabinet. The drain pipe ran out through the wall into the yard. We hadn't always had a sink. John and I used to wash and rinse dishes in white granite dishpans with a red edge trim. We always argued over who was going to wash and who was going to rinse and dry. Like one job was better than the other. Right!

On the counter on the north wall set the water bucket with a submerged long-handled, aluminum dipper in it. Uncle Buck came out and helped Dad put in the sink and dug a hole in the ground to bury a water pipe hooked to the sink. Improvements like that made a big difference to Mom.

By the sink was the wood cookstove on the east wall. I wondered in 2005 if I inhaled deep enough I'd be able to smell one more time Mom's fried chicken and angel food cake, buns and cinnamon rolls. Later on, Mom had a gas range hooked to a hundred-pound LP tank which sped up the cooking time and was less labor-intensive. No need to cut wood to cook with. The tank had to be filled in Nevada on a day my parents were going shopping. Dad took the back seat out of the car, and John and I had to sit on the tank. When it was cold outside, that tank was a cold, hard seat to ride on all the way to Nevada.

Beside the gas range was an electric refrigerator. The icebox was gone. In the dining room, John and I straddled the curved feet on the wooden table legs, pretending to ride horses. The built-in cupboard with glass doors held some fancy pink and green depression dishes, wedding gifts, that Mom hardly ever or never used. She called that cupboard the safe. Maybe because she wanted to let us know what was in the cupboard was off-limits to us.

Mom told the story about a time I was too small to remember. Dad's mother's sister, Aunt Alice, came with her son to visit from North Dakota. The son wanted to go squirrel hunting with Dad. While the men were in the timber, Aunt Al had a craving for a cup of hot tea. She spotted the blue teapot in the Safe and asked Mom if she had tea leaves. Mom got the tea leaves to put in a pan to heat for Aunt Al and found the elderly woman holding her precious teapot.

Aunt Al filled the teapot with water and put in the tea leaves then placed the teapot on the wood cookstove. Mom cringed all the time the tea was brewing but the teapot came off the stove unharmed. Tea had to be poured through a strainer in those days to get rid of the leaves. Tea bags hadn't been invented yet.

Mom didn't get up the nerve to tell Aunt Al that the Safe was off-limits to everyone including her. If there had been another visit from that aunt, Mom probably would have hidden the teapot before she arrived to keep Aunt Al from using it.

An old, brown, horsehair couch sat along the west wall of the dining room near the table. In front of the window that jutted out to face the south was John's small white bed. He says it was a hospital bed Dad bought at a sale. I remember us crawling up on the bed so we could sit on the window seat beside a small fish bowl which held a goldfish when we wanted to look outside.

The dining room and living room were one large room. The heating stove by the north wall was the divider. In the living room, the couch was on the south side with a dresser at the end of it. While my parents milked, my brother and I explored. One time, I pulled a chair over to the dresser and got Mom's makeup off the small shelf above the mirror. She had two small sample tubes of bright red lipstick someone had given her. She was careful with the lipstick because she didn't know when she'd be able to afford to buy more, but I didn't know that at the time. One during milking time, I decided to put on the lipstick, but not being experienced at it, I looked like I had clown lips. As soon as Mom came back from milking, she washed it off. That face washing wasn't too gentle as I recall which warned me I better leave Mom's makeup alone.

In the evening, Dad sat in his rocker, watching John and me play as he gently rocked and puffed his pipe. Across from him, between the two bedroom doors was a blackboard attached to the wall he had brought home from an old schoolhouse. Sometimes, Dad drew pictures on the blackboard for us of cowboys, horses, and pistols.

My parents read western paperbacks when they could get them. My parents' room held their bed, a weaving loom, and a dresser. Between the mattress and the springs on Mom's side of the bed was a stack of True Romance magazines one of the neighbors gave her. I saw Mom stick the magazines there and knew those magazines had to be interesting if Mom kept them hidden. While Mom was helping Dad milk I looked through one of the magazines. I got why Mom didn't want me reading them.

The other bedroom was mine after brother, Bill, grew up and left home. Before that, I slept on the couch which wasn't all that bad. At Christmas time, I’d doze off watching the colorful bubble lights boil on the large cedar tree Dad brought in from the pasture. For years I didn't see the lights sold in stores. I was thrilled when I found a set of bubble lights at a store a few years back and bought them so I could use them on my Christmas tree. I'm glad I bought the bubble lights when I did. I haven't seen another set, and our company seems to enjoy watching those lights which they had never seen before.

I've been told when I was going through the terrible twos I figured out if I twisted a bulb on the Christmas light string none of them would light up. A burnt-out bulb kept the other lights from working, but Mom, looking for a burnt out bulb, tighten all the bulbs, found a loose bulb, tightened it, and the lights came on. By the time she plugged in the string the next night, the bulbs wouldn't work again. This went on for several nights, and Mom kept finding a loose bulb down low behind the tree. So one afternoon, she watched from the kitchen door and spotted me slipping behind the tree. She caught me red-handed, turning one of the bulbs. I don't remember the spanking, but I bet Mom gave me one.

My bedroom had a bed and dresser, plus a walk-in closet. Things on the closet shelf always fascinated me, because John and I had been told not to play with them. In my mind that meant I'd just have to wait until my parents were milking. I'd get on a chair to reach the things that belonged to my older brother, Bill. A small, tin monkey on a handle that did flip flops given to him by Isabel Taylor, a black woman, one Christmas in Montevallo, a stick pin and metal plate for Braille writing so Bill could write letters to Uncle Jim who was blind.

Bill was a year older than Jim and since Bill was eleven years older than me, Uncle Jim was more like his brother and playmate. The one-room school house, Towne School, was in seeing distance south of our home. One year, Jim lived with my family. Bill walked with Jim to school, and the teacher help Jim learn some schooling. After that year, my grandparents moved to Vinton, Iowa so Jim could go to the blind school.

A stack of jigsaw puzzles in the closet kept us busy on winter evenings. They were put together many times.

I had a box of old heels and purses in that closet I used to play dress up. One time, I picked up a young sparrow out of the yard and decided I wanted to keep the bird as a pet. I knew Mom didn't like me to handle wild birds. She always said they had lice. So I smuggled the bird into the house and put him in a square, white purse in the closet.

I didn't know what sparrows eat so I went to the feed shed and helped myself to the molasses calf feed. That wasn't the right food for a small bird I soon found out. It wasn't long before the sparrow had an intestinal upset to put it nicely and the purse was not only messy but smelly. So were the closet and the bird. When the sparrow started cheeping to be let out of his dark prison, Mom heard the bird. She followed the sound and wasn't very happy with me when she found the bird in the smelly bedroom closet. She picked up the purse and went outside to let the bird out. The purse went into the flames under the cast-iron kettle.

The cast-iron kettle set beside the large lilac bush by the path across from the cellar. Off to the right of the path was the chicken house. My chore was to gathered eggs from the nests after I looked in to make sure there wasn't a snake curled in the nests. I'd been drilled by Mom with the story of her sister, Short, getting bit by a copperhead while gathering eggs. Aunt Short lived, but she was very sick for a long time.

The large, maple tree beside the house shaded Dad's Model T then the 1935 Chevy that had belonged to Mom's Grandfather Luther. He passed away in 1952. When company came on hot summer days, we'd sit in the shade of that tree to take turns cranking the ice cream maker. When the winged, maple seeds swirled down from that tree, John and I picked them up and squeezed the ends at each other to see the liquid-filled seeds squirt us.

A large square piece of concrete sat near the maple tree. I never asked why it was there, and now it's too late to find out. It was my table when I played house or the spot for a biology experiment.

I'd squeeze through the barnyard fence, walk along the end of the garden, climb the barbed wire fence and walk in the calf pasture to the two small ponds. I had to slide down the steep, dry bank of one shallow pond, but since the water wasn't very deep there wasn't much danger of me drowning if I fell in. I dipped a tin can into the stagnate, green water and come up with frog eggs nestled in slime. Retracing my steps, I dumped the frog eggs in a chipped, granite, wash pan on the cement platform. Each day from then on I watched as the frog eggs took shape, then as polliwogs left the slime, and later small legs formed on the wiggling brown bodies. Soon