Driving home, I was looking off to the west and thinking about the time my brother and I sacked up some grub, tied on our bedrolls, and saddled up the nags to go on a little excursion for the weekend. We camped by an old windmill for our own little vacation.
I don’t remember more than two or three vacations growing up. One was to Disneyland in California, and another was to Oregon — but that was because Dad was looking for a place to farm.
The other attempt was a trip to Yellowstone, and that one was a bust, because the motor blew on the Jeep Wagoneer just as we drove under the welcome sign.
Our folks had a bit more money when we were little, but our teenage years were pretty lean.
Momma was the master of making the most out of nothing. She made most of our clothes and somehow kept us fed, even with empty cupboards. Food stamps were for “poor folks” and considered an embarrassment — as was the free cheese they handed out — so they refused to go that route.
We played in the dirt and made our own entertainment. We were rough and tough… a couple of feral boys, we were. We hunted jackrabbits or rode the old nags that Dad felt were worth spending the little money we didn’t have.
We were a tight-knit family. My brother and I spent our time with Dad, riding the old Massey spinner plow or perched on tractor fenders. Refrigerated air conditioning was a luxury we only had in the ’78 Chevy pickup and the old Mercury, and Dad said it burned too much gas to use, so it was mostly “2-60 AC” — two windows down doing sixty miles an hour.
When it was hot, my brother and I rode in the back and ate dirt, but it was cooler than sticking to those plastic seats anyway.
When it was cold, we huddled together and shivered, wrapped in an old blanket, because it was pretty hard to fit all five of us in the front seat.
Something kids today know nothing about.
We worked hard, and money was hard to come by. We didn’t have much, but we had enough — and I never could understand why town kids put their quarters in video games just to spend a few minutes watching a screen. To me, that was a waste. I had better things to spend it on, like .22 shells.
We were poor, but we didn’t know it.
We couldn’t wait to grow up, but looking back on those days… times sure have changed, and not always for the better.
Sometimes, I just want to be a kid again — saddle up and ride off into the sunset — because they were much simpler times.
