Friday, September 21, 2007

More farm life

Two more memories of farm life, just for fun.

I made my first big break from farm life to go to college in northern California at Stanford University in the fall of 1969. This was the end of the Bay Area full on hippy days, when going back to the land on a commune somewhere was the thing to do, Whole Earth Catalog days. Here is the first one, out in Fall 1969. I think we have one back in Austin. (One of the things I am reading these days is a book, From Counterculture to Cyberculture, that is largely about Whole Earth's founder, Stewart Brand, who was a pretty interesting guy. I got to interview him on the radio once at KZSU.)

So when I told people I was from a farm in Idaho, a common reaction was, "Wow, man. You grew up on the land, man. That must have been so cool, man."

I would then get a certain sadistic, bubble bursting pleasure out of saying, "Yeah, let me tell about the land on a February morning on a dairy farm in Idaho. You get up at 4 or 5 a.m. It is right at zero degrees (Fahrenheit) with a nasty wind and blowing snow. You get the cows in the barn. They aren't very smart, so they have pooped and lain down in it, and it has frozen onto their udders. So you take a warm wet rag to wipe off the frozen s**t so you can put on the milking machine. The cow doesn't like this so it swings its frozen s**t encrusted tail at you and tries to kick you with its frozen s**t encrusted hoof. If you really want to go live on the land, I'll give you the directions."

They would usually look a bit confused at this point and wander off.

There were some amazing things about it, though. One of my very first memories is of the enormous work horses my Dad kept for farm work until the mid-1950s, when he finally got a tractor. (My Dad was a bit conservative about technology.)

This photo shows me (the short one on the right, in my prized Hopalong Cassidy hat) with a neighbor girl at haying time, with those horses.

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