Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl Read Online Free PDF

Story
     
    On most days, at around four o’clock in the afternoon, Dad opened the barnyard gate to let the cows in, cows that were standing in the lane, crowding against the gate, mooing. When it rolled around toward milking time, the cows usually came up from the pasture on their own. Their internal clocks and pulsing full udders told them it was milking time.
    On other days, though, the cows lingered in the quiet, cool shade of the Back 40. Then Dad stood in the barnyard or in the yard in front of the house, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled in a deep voice that carried over the farm’s entire 180 acres: “Come boss! Come boss!” Our dog Butch sat by his side, calm but alert to Dad’s voice. After calling to the cows, Dad reached down and scratched behind Butch’s ears. “Let’s see if that does it,” he’d say, talking to Butch just as though Butch could understand. Actually I always figured Butch could understand because whenever Dad directed him to do something, like go to the house, or round up the cows, or get in the truck, or circle around the pigs, Butch did it.
    I often stood by Dad’s side, too. I liked being with Dad about as much as anything. When I was with Dad, I got to do important things, learn important things. Those things often had to do with cows.
    As Dad waited to see if the cows were making their way back up the lane, he pulled a crumpled, red handkerchief out of his hip pocket, took off the sweat-stained seed corn cap that covered his nearly bald head, and wiped beads of sweat from his deeply tanned face. Usually the cows came to his call. To urge them along, he called again, “Come boss. Come bossy.”
    On those hot summer days when the cows decided that staying under the trees near the creek was more appealing than the trek back to the barnyard, Dad might look down at Butch and say, “Okay Butch, go get ’em.” He would wave his hand toward the pasture and say, “Go get the cows, boy.” At Dad’s urging, Butch took off like a shot, racing across the barnyard, scooting under fences, taking the most direct route to the pasture, earning his keep as an all-around great cow dog. Very shortly after Butch was gone from sight, we’d see the cows coming up the lane, Butch barking and nipping at their heels, moving them steadily toward the barn. Not running them. Just keeping them moving.
    And on other days, for reasons that were never spoken to me, Dad didn’t send Butch for the cows but instead would motion me toward the truck. “Come on, Squirt,” he’d say. “Let’s go get the cows.”
    Dad gave each of us kids a nickname the day we were born—Tooter, Squirt, Bugs. Mom was not at all happy to have her sweet little girls tagged with such unfeminine labels, but the nicknames stuck. I didn’t think much of it until I was a teenager and Dad called me Squirt at a pancake supper in the school cafeteria. I flushed as my classmates laughed and said Squirt?, looking at me with big question marks in their voices. It took weeks for them to let it die. Before that embarrassing incident, Squirt was Dad’s name for me and I was totally happy to hear him use it. When he called ‘Squirt,’ I was there, ready to take on whatever chore he threw my way.
    One day when Dad said, “Come on, Squirt,” we climbed into the old blue Studebaker pickup truck with its worn-smooth, brown leather seats, AM radio that got only one scratchy station, and a coat of dust that smelled of summer, and headed on down the bumpy fence line lane toward the Back 40 pasture. Dad drove with a big right hand on the wheel, his left arm crooked out the open window. With the sleeves of his work shirt rolled up above his elbows every day when he left the house, Dad’s forearms tanned a deep red/brown under the summer sun. As we drove, dust as soft and fine as baby powder billowed behind the truck, filtered into the cab and coated the thick hair on his arms, making the dark hairs shimmer faintly gold. The strength