Shoelaces for Josie

* We made all our own hay and stacked it in long rows near the gate. We (Brother and I) used to race along the top of the bales, jump from row to row, dare each other to try a particularly large gap. And they all seem large when you own short, little pixie legs.

* Every summer we shoveled out the barn. That wasn’t the fun part – the fun part was playing endless hours in the barn and the hayloft. Don’t ask me what we did in an empty barn, but whatever it was, we did it for hours.

* The same token goes for the old chicken house (converted to a catch-all storage shed) and the cement slab next to it. We…I…carpeted the chicken house floor with old shingles and used corncobs for the fire in an old feeder. We even had guns and canteens. And a store. And a saloon. I know you’ll have a hard time believing this, but we watched a lot of westerns.

* We also spent a lot of hours sitting on tractors. And I’m not talking about the have-to-for-work-sitting-on-tractors. No, before we were old enough to drive, my brother and I would pretend like we were farming with all the equipment…while it sat in the shed. On those power-steering tractors, the wheel doesn’t even move!

* In the fall, we played a wonderfully magic game known as Getting Ready for Winter (unimaginitve name courtesy of yours truly). We were pioneers and had to catch fish and hunt and prepare our house for the cold weather and feed our animals.

* In addition to being pioneers, we were also cowboys and indians, homeless people, sheriffs, mountain men, farmers, characters from animated movies (I liked to ride my bike up and down the driveway pretending to be Cruella de Ville) and exchanging turns being Liberty Valance, John Elder, Rooster Cogburn, Old Moze and Tom Dunson (characters in John Wayne movies for the uneducated).

* While most kids are building snowmen in the winter and playing in snow forts, I was pretending to be lost in a blizzard on the verge of freezing to death. Morbid, I know, but I thought it was fun. Sometimes I buried myself in the snow in an attempt to save myself from death. I also played Getting Ready for Winter in the winter. Chunks of snow made great props. To this day, I still have never built a snowman.

* Half a mile back in our property was a small stand of trees where we dumped all of our tree garbage – sticks, cut down trees, branches, etc – Brother and I had our own world back there. We each had built a house – and I mean built – and had trails and clotheslines and watering holes for our horses and…we should have gone into construction because the houses we erected out of old sticks and branches stood for a really long time.

…and now that I’ve read back over this, I’ve realized what a consistent picture is being painted here. I did have one Barbie. Some stuffed animals. I always wanted one of those echo-y microphones. Why, I don’t know, I can’t sing.

My brother always got the cool toys – all the miniature farm equipment and the shooting games and the ropes – but I was the one that made them all come alive. All the tractors had names and personalities and stories. It’s how we could spend hours in a barn or a chicken house and never get bored. When everything is a story – a story you created – it can go anywhere and become anything you want.