Seven

            One day Father let me help shoe the horse.  My first time.  Boy, I was scared.  He showed me how to pat the horse, talk to him and slide my hand down the leg toward the foot.  But I was too much afraid that first time.  It seemed every time I put my hand on him I could see that horse kick at me and something must of told me I just didn’t want to die yet. 

            Anyways, it wasn’t long after that I did manage to pick the front foot up.  I was pulled back and forth, dropped his foot time and time again.  At one point he jerked his foot and picked me off the ground.  Boy, I soon worked just to hold it up and get my own feet out of the way every time I dropped his, but it was a while before I had enough nerve to go near them back feet.  Father said I had to know more about it so the nail would go only in the hoof and not the tender part of the foot.  So it was a couple more years before I done it myself.

            We used to raise some cauliflower and I used to tie the leaves up on each one so the white head would be covered from the sun.  The sun would cause it to turn a dark color.  We put it in crates and shipped it on the train.  Father told me if I saw a big white worm on any of the heads before I tied them I should knock them off but I wasn’t about to touch them things.  I used to tie them right inside and let them keep on eating their way to Market.

            I used to go out in the hay field at night with a glass jar and catch fire flies.  Sometimes I caught seventy to seventy-five of them.  Then I’d find a dark place and dump them all out at once and watch them light up the place enough so I would almost see my hands. 

            I used to have fun with the old rooster we used to have.  He was a mean one.  He would chase any one and fly on to their backs.  I used to let him chase me.  I’d run towards the house or barn and just as he’d jump and fly at me I’d jump to one side and watch him slam into the building.  A couple of times I thought he’d broken his neck because h fell to the ground and flopped around a while.  I though he was kind of stupid because he never did stop doing it until one day he landed on the back of my Father’s neck and we had chicken for dinner the next day.  What a mistake he made that time and I lost my fun too. 

            We had to cut and split a lot of fence parts every spring to replace the bad ones.  I used to hold the wedges and drive the staples while my Father stretched the wire tight with the hammer.  I was glad we didn’t have any rail fences.  We had a lot of stonewalls and that’s where we put the stones that we picked off the fields.  Boy, I never see so many jobs as was on a farm.

            One summer three or four of the farmers went together and bought a second hand threshing machine so we could all use it to thresh the grains we grew like wheat, oats, barley and buck wheat.  It would be fed to the cows, horses, pigs, chickens or whatever animals the farmers had.  I used to watch them try to move the threshing machine around.  It was so big and heavy they had to hitch the second team of horses ahead of the first one to pull it.  Sometimes the other men would get hold of the wheels and try to help turn them.  I used to try to help but I was too small and not strong enough.  I got caught on the wheel one time and went half way around.  Boy, did I holler for them to stop.  One of the men got me loose and straightened out.  Then they wouldn’t let me help any more.  They told me to grow up first before I died.

            We had to cut the corn by hand.  It was hard work to chuck it up until we could take the ears off and husk it and put it in the corncrib for fall and winter.  I used to take about six ears and go sit down, start shelling it, and I’d soon have all the chickens around me, then the ducks, and three geese.  There used to be two squirrels but they’d come only so close.  I had to toss it a few feet to them.  They used to fill their cheeks then take it some where to hide it then come back for more.  I used to use it to catch the horses when they were out to pasture.  I’d hold it out and they’d come to me.  The coons liked to get in the cornfield too and Father showed me how to make a box trap to catch them.  They were good to eat.  I used to get a lot of groundhogs that way and rabbits too.  Always had some kind of meat through the summer then had the beef and pork during the winter when we could keep it frozen.  The squirrels and groundhogs were always chewing their way out of my box traps if they were in too long before I got to go back to them.