Just Country Girls

I babysit two of my four grandchildren every day.  Jack is in pre-school, so he is only here a little while each day.  He is almost five and full of energy.  Yesterday was a sunny day here in the bluegrass state, which has been rare this year. As a matter of fact, I’m still waiting on spring.  Anyhow, Jack was literally bouncing off the walls.  He was playing something that required running fast through the house, then run head on into a wall, talk to himself in a language I didn’t understand and then get up and start all over again.  Halfway through the day, I was getting short tempered with his playtime.  I suggested he go outside too play.  I told him he needed to run off some of that energy.  He should ride his bike, throw a ball, play with the dogs, and play in the dirt just anything to get him outside.  His excuse was he didn’t want to go out unless I did and of course I couldn’t without taking Layla and it was a little cool for her.  I thought about Jack and his day long after he went home.  I began thinking about my own childhood  and how much fun I had.  I came to the conclusion that Jack needs a cousin to play with, which he has, and hopefully I can drag him outside this summer because he’s missing some good times.

I am an only child.  Growing up, I spent most days with my cousins, Kaye who is 9 months older than me and Anna Lee who is 2 years younger than me.  They too are only children and lived about a mile away from me.  We all grew up in the country with tobacco, corn and cattle being a big part of our lives.  Our parents were all close to each other and visited my parents several times a week.  My grandparents ran a country store which was a great gathering place for the neighbors every night when the work was done.  No one had to tell us to go outside and play because we were ready to get out of range of the adults talking about farming, UK basketball and the good old days.  We played outside morning, noon and night.  We played in the cold and in the scorching heat and never complained.  

For three girls, we managed to get into a lot of trouble.  Several times our stunts ended up with at least one of us in the hospital. Kaye broke her arm, Anna Lee ran into a tree and had a concussion, and I fell off the tailgate of a truck and needed 5 stitches just to name a few.  Kaye and Anna Lee’s grandfather, Purr Rigsby, was in his 90’s and lived with his son and grandson in the family farmhouse that’s been standing for years.  He walked with a cane and couldn’t see too well.  We girls found a pair of roller skates in the basement.  We couldn’t skate, so I wore one skate and Anna Lee wore the other.  We skated through the house one whole day non-stop.  Our route took us past Purr’s sitting spot which was in his room in a straight backed chair.  He told us several times to stop skating around him, but we didn’t pay him any mind.  So he began adding a new gauntlet for us, his cane.  When we skated around him, he would try to whack us with his cane.  He never did make contact though and we knew he wouldn’t hurt us anyhow

Another game we played a lot was Doctor.  The Rigsby farmhouse at one time had the kitchen upstairs, so it still had a water pipe going up the wall in Anna Lee’s bedroom.  One session of Doctor had me playing the doctor, Anna Lee the nurse and Kaye the patient.  That day I had diagnosed Kaye as having a broken leg.  Nurse Anna Lee tied her leg to the old pipe with a jump rope and there laid Kaye apparently in traction. Anna Lee and I snuck out of our “hospital” and went to the kitchen to have lunch.  Before too long, we heard Kaye yelling in the other room where we left her.  Seems she had figured out we were eating and she wanted to eat too, but we had tied her so tight she couldn’t get loose.  The adults took over and untied Kaye.  After she ate, she was still mad and went home.

One summer we took possession of an old lawn mower body.  Anna Lee’s dad, Glen, modified it for us and made it somewhat of a go-cart.  It didn’t have pedals; we had to drive it like Fred Flintstone, with foot power.  It was heavy and was more trouble than fun.  Anna Lee’s house sat on pretty level ground and we needed a hill to ride the go-cart down.  Just so happened that there was the perfect place just on the other side of the fence.  It is very and I mean very steep with trees and huge boulders dotting the landscape.  At the foot of the hill was a farm pond.  Out of the 3 of us, Kaye would be the least likely to take the maiden ride on the go-cart, but she did.  Anna Lee and I gave her a push and away she went straight into another” girl” made disaster.  Anna Lee and I thought it was hilarious.  Kaye was flying, bouncing off a pine tree, side swiping a huge rock and bumping over dried cow patties and pebbles all the while screaming bloody murder.  The ride, thank God, was a short one.  She managed to hit a tree head on which stopped her suddenly.  When the force pushed her forward, she hit her chest on the front of the cart knocking the breath out of her and bruising her chest.  After she quit crying, and we decided she was going to live but maybe we better not ride down that hill again.  Kaye went home, told her mom and the go cart suddenly disappeared from our lives.

When Kaye and I were about 9 and Anna Lee 7, we decided it was time for us to smoke cigarettes.  We were at my house playing in the tool shed.  It was decided that I would steal the cigarettes from my Grandparent’s store.  I did this with no problem.  I even stole matches.  We went to the shed to have our cigarettes.  I remember being very disappointed with the smoking experience.  We never got sick, but didn’t enjoy it much either.  We dug holes in the dirt floor of the shed and buried our cigarette butts.  Then we hid our pack of cigarettes in the drawer of an old cabinet.  We took several smoke breaks over the course of a month or so.  One day we went to smoke and our cigarettes were gone.  Seems my dad’s old bird dog had been digging in the cool dirt of the shed and had dug up our butts.  When my grandpa saw this, he knew right away what we were up too.  He looked around for our cigarettes and found them in the drawer where we left them.  As I remember, we didn’t get punished at all for smoking and me for stealing.  Grandpa didn’t tell anyone and since we didn’t like smoking anyhow, we left that addiction alone.  Well, Kaye and I did.  Years later and Anna Lee still smokes.  I guess two outta three ain’t bad.

At one point we formed a band.  We didn’t play any instruments, but we danced to our own choreography to Stevie Wonder’s song, “Superstition.”  One winter, during hog killing time, the men gave us each a pair of pig’s eyes to carry around in a can.  That was cool, but we weren’t allowed to take them to school.  Almost every night at dusk, we caught at least 50,000 lightening bugs and placed them in a Pepsi bottle.  Of course the bottle was glass and one of us had it with us while we were running over uneven ground.  Thank goodness, it never broke. 

We always had pets.  I had cats, Kaye and Anna Lee had dogs, Jack and John.  They followed us where ever we went.  Anna Lee’s old “mamma” cat we called her,  always had a litter of kittens hid away somewhere for us to find.  Once we found them, they then became little dolls.  We dressed them up in outfits, caps, shoes, and blankets.  We rode them around in doll strollers turning the curves too fast and losing our cargo several times a day.  I’m happy to report that the kittens all survived.  Once we hiked up the big hill across from my house that we called “the knob.”  It had once been mined for his rock and a gravel pit was left.  It was such a wonderful place to do some rock climbing which we were told over and over not to do.  My mom could see us from my house and would scream to the top of her lungs, “Get off that cliff.”  With that activity omitted, we decided to catch lizards.  We must have caught over 100 and put them in an old cooler we had taken with us.  We took them home to show everyone.  My mom wasn’t as thrilled with the lizards as we were.  She made us take them back up the hill and set them free.  When it looked like a day was going to be wasted, we just went fishing.  For girls, we were pretty good.  We weren’t afraid to bait our own hooks or take our fish off the line.  We always threw the fish back in the pond.  We decided to leave the big time fishing to our dads who took fishing very seriously. 

Our very favorite thing to play was Barbies.  We were lucky enough to have mothers who were great seamstresses and had made us tons of Barbie clothes.  In the summer we played in the corn patch behind my house.  We didn’t have a Barbie Dream House, but we had a Barbie jungle.  We dug holes, put Reynolds wrap in them and made Barbie a pool.  I had a Barbie car that we shared.  The back wheels were gone, I have no idea what happened to them.  We tied a string on the front of the car, placed Barbie and Ken inside and pulled them to exciting places.  Barbie and Ken were speed demons and had several roll overs, but in Barbie Land, no injuries were allowed.

When we got a little older we were allowed to ride our bikes to each other’s homes.  This makes me cringe when I think about doing that today.  Sometimes we walked.  This was a good time to talk about boys and stuff we had heard about but didn’t understand.  None of us were very athletic.  We played some kick ball, but that was about it for ball games. We liked Brodhead Tiger basketball.  We went with our parents to every home game.  This is the only thing I can remember doing with my dad who passed away when I was 13.  He loved basketball and fishing. 

I don’t remember us ever sitting down and watching TV.  We didn’t play board games because we couldn’t sit still that long.  We each had a record collection, mostly 45’s because they only cost .79 cents to buy.  We sang and danced to those records until they were too damaged to play.  A big treat for us was going to Renfro Valley to the drive-in.  While our dad’s were at Lake Herrington or Lake Cumberland fishing, our moms took us to the movies.  We mostly talked, giggled and ran back and forth to the concession stand.  I don’t think we ever watched a movie. 

As I write this, I thank God for letting me grow up in the country.  I’m sure someone that grew up in Chicago or NYC can also write about what a wonderful life they had growing up in the city, but it’s hard for me to imagine.  Jack, Camden, Gray and Layla will also have a wonderful time growing up, I will see to it.  I hope they will prefer the outdoors to the indoors.  Making up games instead of playing Playstation for 12 hours a day.  I hope they will walk, run or bounce a ball over to see their friends, not call or text them.  I hope Camden and Gray, who live in Georgetown will come to NaNa’s house every summer and hang out with Jack and Layla.  I hope they go fishing, catch lizards, and all the stuff I did as a girl.  Layla can play Barbies, the boys can play baseball, but they won’t be allowed on the highway with their bikes. Increase in traffic and crazy drivers have taken over these days. 

Everyone thinks those were the good ole days and to us they are, but right now belongs to our children and grandchildren.  Let’s work to make it what they will someday call their good ole days.