I Grew Up On a Farm
With so few people on Experience Project who have even grown up on a farm, how can I meet my goal of finally finding someone like myself? I doubt it's possible. I've found only one person in my life, but I can't access her anymore. And she didn't even grow up on a farm.
Yes, but I did...a real farm. We were self-sufficient with diverse livestock and crops and over 800 acres, more than half of which was woods. My father had amassed the acreage by dint of extremely hard work during WWII. We barely/rarely saw him; he was getting 2 hours of sleep a night. He would fall asleep on the moving tractor and wake up when he came to the end of the corn row. Good thing, because at the end of the row there flowed a creek.
When I was little, farmers and ranchers still had work horses; we did too: 2 work horses and 3 riding horses...and milk cows, a herd of Herefords, goats, and Durocs. My father branded and cut the steers and cut the swine himself; we ate the mountain oysters. We also ate possum, coon, and more frequently squirrel, but also chickens and guineas. Most of all we ate steaks from the herd. Behind the chicken house grew poke berries that had provided the last resident with ink. We harvested maple sugar, sassafras, blackberries, elderberries, oats, wheat, corn, soy beans, alfalfa, and we baled hay and straw and grew a half-acre garden.
I entered school at age 6 and learned to read the first day, which was expected. I was the only girl in the school. I loved school but hated my classmates including my brothers; they were all bigger than I, and since I was the only first grader, they tormented me physically and unmercifully. Probably that also was expected. The school had grades 1-8, one swing, two outhouses, one pla
When I was seven and in third grade (I'd worked my way up), my father and mother learned to fly and bought a two-seater plane. Then my father taught me to fly; my older brothers didn't seem to be interested. I couldn't IMAGINE that...
By the time I began school I had gone to 2 parties with children my own age. Both times were disasters, which caused me to withdraw socially even more than circumstances made necessary, but I'm willing to now endure a social occasion if I'm more/less drunk. I couldn't believe how the children at those parties behaved. One birthday girl humiliated me because I had no toys, and the birthday boy was injured at his party in a minor way, and he CRIED. I couldn't imagine that either. If I had ever done such a thing I would never have heard the end of it; I thought him a disgusting sissy. Ironically, he was much influenced by my father's wild ways and grew up to be a bush pilot in Alaska.
In the 40's we went to town only once a week, which I didn't enjoy, because I was stuck with my mother. It was well known that she didn't like children. She especially didn't like how I was turning out...too much like a boy. I didn't give a rat's *** for clothes and frills or any of that social stuff she thought was important. She forced me to attend the high school prom and my graduations. I hated every minute of that nonsense, and I hated being around her as well. Why wasn't it enough for her and my brothers that I cared about my studies and that I got good grades? Did she think she could force me to like my peers?
When I entered high school I was disconsolate with the social arrangement: The boys were supposed to be important because they played sports. I was appalled. Silly me; I thought that we went to school to learn. The bulk of what I was learning was to note that the boys were privileged and that the girls were supposed to encourage that. I didn't. Subsequently I got in trouble, but I didn't care. My parents, college educated, didn't care either. Girls worked (all farm kids worked), and town boys PLAYED. Although I was the "sissy girl," I believed they were the real sissies. They had little or no concept of work, whereas I was proud of the farm work I did, the more strenuous, the better! I wasn't allowed to do nearly as much of it as I wanted to. I still have no regard for people who play when they could be contributing. Sports are self-aggrandizing; work contributes to others. Why waste one's energy?
When I was 13, my father died suddenly and violently. He was all I had. From that point on, I worked to escape my mother's clutches; that was my only goal until I was shed of her. I encouraged her to remarry for my own selfish reasons. When she did, she didn't invite me; she "forgot". Actually, I was relieved.
What do you think? Will I ever meet my goal? It's not that my experiences were so different; it's that being alone has had the result of my thinking outside the box in regard to just about everything. There's virtue to that; I know that's true, but when I look to see others doing the same thing, I don't/didn't see any, even when I was in college (which was a damned long time because I attended 13 of them and I more/less frequently switched majors).
