Grandma House
... and all the good times ...
Is there anything more nostalgic than Grandma's house? I think not. You would be hard-pressed to find a place besides home that is more formative in shaping you as you are today.
That is if you grew up anything as I did, years ago, someplace where the family was first and Grandma's house with the gathering place with some strange magic that called folk from everywhere, sucking them into that blackhole where time seemed to stand still.
My parents let me drive to Grandma's (affectionately known as Grandma Huckleberries) house long before I could legally do so; the instructions were, "Keep the gravel roads; see you later." Away I went, windows down and radio blaring, heading to what I knew would be a good time. I thought wolves raised me in the middle of nowhere, but Grandma's house was even better; a boy was never more unrestrained.
Once you had driven a few miles down that gravel road, one would see that grove of more than a hundred-year-old old oaks raising their grizzled fingers to the sky, an oasis in the rolling prairie. It was a rundown place, but that's what gave it that allure and uniqueness that seemed to draw us all there.
Cousins, aunts, uncles, you were guaranteed a good mixture of people when coming to Grandma's house; that was part of the excitement—wondering who's cars would be in the driveway when you arrived, you knew, based on the car(s), what kind of time you would have before the car was in park.
Pulling into that long gravel drive in front of the house, driving under that towering pine tree, you would first see the open-ended barn where the Allis Chalmers D17 was parked unless someone was already up to no good on it. The old wire corn crib stood there like a weary sentinel; the old grinding wheel lay up next to it.
That tractor might have already left, pulling a hay-wagon load of folks around the grove or maybe down to the creek. You didn't want to miss that. It could have been hooked up to the sickle cutter and cutting the tall grass. If it was winter, there might be someone perched on top of it driving the gravel, looking for a pot-shot on a stray pheasant for dinner. Might have been me.
If things were bad, it might be parked back in the big red barn with the stray cats and dim lights getting worked on. Cigarette smoke mixed with foul black tractor exhaust and open cans of Old Milwaukee, now that’s a smell you won’t come by anytime soon. You get the idea. That tractor is still in the family, doing the Lord's work.
Guns, Beer, and Cigars.
I shot my first gun, drank my first beer, and had my first puff on a cigar at Grandma's house behind the barn. All at the same time. I don't recommend that, but it's up to you. That's what older brothers and uncles are for; they did their duty with me.
That Bolt Action 410 was the pinnacle of existence and meaning at my young age. Once I had mastered not closing my eyes when pulling the trigger, a new world and responsibility opened. Like a prairie explorer long ago, I was free to roam with a gun in hand, sunshine, rain, or preferably snow.
Back in those days, the tree lines (fence lines), as we called them, were about the width of 2 or three cards side by side. This was before farming became a rich man's game, and every square inch of dirt was turned over. Those tree lines held a veritable Sherwood Forest within them. Rabbits, foxes, coyotes, pheasants, quail, deer, squirrel, everything a boy with a gun could dream of. I loved skinning out those rabbits but hated picking out the bb's from the flesh, and I didn't enjoy it that much when they came out of the oven, and I had to eat my sins.
If I was really spicy, I would make the long slog northwest out the back of the grove and over the hill to the woods down in the bottoms, about half a mile from the farm. You were sure to kick up some deer and bag a pheasant there. There's nothing like the feeling of returning to Grandma's house proudly holding a few dead animals to show off to everyone gathered around that big table.
That table and the walls of Grandma's house will forever be in my mind. Big enough to fit a dozen people even though it was only her there. The walls were covered with wall pockets, the floors with Redwing pottery, and those Arnold Friberg Canadian Mountie paintings. The walls were thick with trinkets and hangings, almost as thick as the green carpet that your feet sank into like mud.
Luckily, Grandma did have a TV with a VHS set, wasn't much to pick from, but it was good enough for a bunch of tired folks who'd been working all day. The usual culprits are AFV, Mr. Bean, Dances with Wolves, and that sort of stuff. We were always tired from playing or working hard, usually both. There is never-ending work to be done on a farm, even a dying one.
There are sheds to fix, vehicles in dire need of repair, junk to move, a burn pit to fill and light on fire, patching a roof, cutting up timber, and cutting grass, and that's just before lunch. It was sort of a rule of the place that if you came and played, you had to leave some sweat and blood as payment.
Fire.
My favorite was lighting the burn pit up when the sun finally set, although it was dangerous at the start because you were liable to hear some old ammo popping off that got thrown in by accident; no one ever died, so maybe I worried about it for nothing.
When those flames started getting higher and higher, it affected us, too, but that's probably been going on since the Stone Age. If enough people were there, a few tents would be set up back in the grove next to the burn pit for overflow sleeping, which always involved a few fireworks. My Grandma hated those fireworks.
Inevitably, one of the cousins would light off a big one that was saved just for that occasion, about 11 p.m., just when they knew Grandma would be falling asleep. She would come storming out through the grove, yelling about the grandkids trying to sleep inside and so-and-so who had just worked the night shift. We would wait till she was halfway back to the farmhouse and then let loose on another set. The laughter would set in real good, and we would howl at the moon like wolves.
What a way to grow up! You can't put a price on that. I'm not sure it's even legal to raise someone like that these days. Grandma's house, am I right?
