Our Dirt Road

I've posted this before, in 2008, in another forum but my words are so close to my heart that ....I will repeat them again..here.


Our Dirt Road......
My brother, sis, and I shared a "girl's" bike and bit the dust on our dirt road.
My sister did the milking and my chore, sometimes, was to drive the cows 1/2 mile down our dirt road to pasture and then walk back in the opposite direction down our dirt road to our one-room school house which was 1 1/2 miles from our farm yard....so that made that a 2 1/2 mile walk in all....down our beloved dirt road.
(There were times, when I went to high-school "in town" that I had to walk 5 miles down our dirt roads to home from school, because my Dad was busy with farm work).
Dirt roads......
I vividly remember our bully neighbor kids who met us at our 1/2 mile corner on the way to school..... bullying us into walking in the ditch of our dirt road, much of the rest of the way to school. (To this day...I have no great love for them!)
A mile from our house....down our dirt road, a lovely elderly neighbor-lady...would meet us at her gate on our way home from school with treats of baking or fresh cucumbers or peas from her garden and we happily munched as we walked the remaining mile home.
Dirt roads......
......and the mud and ruts of spring!!....or after a downpour!!
In the spring, Dad walked the muddy roads with spade in hand, digging trenches across the road along the way to allow the water to run off more quickly. There was no such thing then...as culverts to help with drainage. Horse and wagon transportation was difficult in the springtime on those muddy dirt roads but the greatest disappointments were (and many times ...we were STUCK at home because of our muddy roads) when there was a festive or special occasion to attend when Dad decided to chance our '48 Dodge ...only to find ourselves up to the axles in mud in a rut and Dad....sweatin' and cussin' and shouting out commands to my inexperienced driver-Mom to "Rock-it" - "Give-it-gas" -"Whoa"- "What-the-heller-ya-doin'" - and there was Dad......all decked out in his Sunday-best at the rear of the '48er -pushing with all his might and spattered with mud and shoes suctioned to the mud in the rut.
Dirt roads.....
Winter time wasn't much better on our dirt roads. Drifts of snow, sometimes like Alpine mountains...made motorized transportation impossible and so we reverted to horses/sleighs/cutters and vans (sometimes called cabooses). The drifted snow created a topsy-turvy sloping trail that required balance expertise. Many a time, our van was on the brink of tipping, and sometime...it did. Dad would say..."...everyone...lean to the left...or ......lean to the right!!" but sometime the slope was too steep and over we would go....plop....onto our side. Our "van" was a homemade little "house", painted light green, on runners...about 5' x 5' with 2 bench seats...a window at the front and a tiny window at each side and rear. Ours had only one door and that was at the right side of the van. The front bench was a short one to seat only the driver and at my Dad's right knee was a tiny homemade wood-stove to keep us warm with a few sticks of firewood at it's side and....of course...a stove-pipe chimney poking out of the top. (Would this pass today's safety standards??)
Sometimes, after enjoying a visit on one of our outings...just a little too much visitin'...or maybe even a few too many shots of "homebrew"....our faithful horses would navigate our way home under the watchful eye of my Mom and the instinctive alertness of the shift of the runners...by my Dad.
Dirt roads.....
Dirt roads leave a trail of memories through my heart. Alongside those narrow dirt roads, were beautiful goldenrods and brilliant orange tiger-lilies and sunny black-eyed-susans and purple fireweed and Russian thistle and wild mustard and foxtail swaying in the wind and there was grass growing down the middle of our .....dirt road.
There were little ponds with ducks and geese and croaking frogs and overhanging willows. Along those dirt roads, were rusty barbed-wire fences and hand-hewn posts with cows grazing lazily in a pasture on the other side. Not herds of cows....just a few happy cows, and our horses nuzzled and and rolled in expectations of wind....and flung their tails at the flies and enjoyed a little break from the farm work and the winter roads.
Dirt roads......
No garbage was strewn about my dirt roads and cars didn't have the speed to speed. If a horse-drawn or motorized vehicle was approached by an uncoming vehicle, there was always a wave or a stop to say "hello".
'Road rage' was an unimaginable phrase on my dirt road.
Neighbors and family and friends...traveled my dirt road.

Dirt roads....
Would I ever have thought......away back then......that they would mean so much to me ...now

~ Willows~
June, 2008

Beautiful Willows! Simply beautiful!

Gald E Olah, thank you for appreciating my post.

Those words are true and real and from my heart.

I went back to my little hometown and to my sister's farm a couple of weeks ago and my feelings are the same. As I neared my little community, I was overcome with pride because of the beautiful job that the younger generation have done in maintaining and promoting my little town. A few miles north of the commumnity...my sister and brother-in-law maintain a huge yard impeccably with gardens of flowers and vegetables . Their neighbour farmers do the same. It's ever so beautiful ...there in the country-side of my home town. Years ago, there wasn't the equipment...nor the time to maintain "park-like" lawns and gardens. Today...whether it is competition or availability.......the farm yards are ever so beautiful!

I met with old farm friends and old school friends, and my heart will never leave ................my "Home Town".

Willows, Our farm was on a dirt road and your post brought back
many memories similar to yours.
The nearest small town was about ten miles away.
I enjoyed your story.

Hi Willows;

Your memories about growing up on a farm have stirred fond memories about annual visits our family made to a farm near Lindsay ON.

We lived in Toronto but my mother had a cousin who farmed with her husband on a 100 acre general farm. We children knew them as Uncle Bill and Aunt Elsie. They had young son that we felt was a cousin.

We did not have a car in those depression years and the train trip to their farm was part of the joys we experienced in those times. In those days you could stand in the vestibule between the cars with the car door half open and the wind blowing occasional cinders in your eyes from the coal-fired steam engine. What a sense of excitement!

We of course helped out with the daily activities that were more of pleasure than work for us.

Remember the fun and laughter my cousin tried to teach my twin sister and I how to hand-milk a cow. He could hit the open mouth of one of barn cats and showed us how lift a chicken in the hen-house to remove an egg without getting pecked by the hen.
We marveled as we turned the handle on the milk separator about how it produced a small stream of cream into one pail and a much larger stream of skim milk into other pails where it was mixed with chow and fed to the pigs.

My father and us kids also helped in the fields when the hay was being loaded onto the hay rack and moved by horse-team to into the barn and stooking the wheat sheaves after they had been cut by the horse-drawn binder

How we laughed as we tried to see who could jump farther from the huge timber barn beams into the hay mow.

A tradition after the chores were done on Saturday evening was to all pile into my uncle's Model A Ford and go into town.. Walking down the main street and meeting relatives and other local farm families was about the only social activity they had.

We kid were allowed to explore on our own but not to go past a certain point because there were a couple of small hotels with beer parlors beyond it and was considered by my teetotal family as a no-go zone.

A few years later, I worked my Summer High school break on a nearby farm. Admittedly it was the area that I went to when I got into town on a Saturday evening listening to other older guys and learning more about the facts of life.

I went to the farm as chubby 14 year old and came home lean and fit with a little more worldly knowledge.


My cousin went on to obtain and Doctorate degree in plant biology and and worked for many years for th Dupont Corp. in the US. After retiring he became a Professor at a US University and is a a consultant for the US Dept. of Agriculture.

Of such are the lesson of life.

I'm sorry for my belated reply Wuzfuz...but I loved your post.

Your experience on the farm, was much the same as that of my late husband, who along with his siblings...spent their summer holiday at their grandparents farm. His experience was different from mine. They looked forward to getting out to the farm for their summer holiday. I however, spent year-round on the farm, and the chores and the time spent on the fields, "coiling hay"...picking rocks....stooking....and milking and running the cows to and from the pasture...and stacking wood and hauling water from the well.....and working in the garden.....walking a mile and a half to our one-room school house...and sometimes....5 miles to high school when my dad couldn't drive me...hmmmmmm....was no fun and I coudn't wait for the day that I could be away from there. Then my mother became ill, and I had a little brother....4 yrs. old at the time. My older sister was married and was on her own, with her hands full with twin babies. My brother who is one year younger than me, helped on the farm and helped other farmers to earn some extra money to help him through his Journey-Man Carpentry training. I took over my mom's position as head of the house...when I wasn't even 15 years old. My school friends would bike over to see me on a sunny summer-holiday afternoon.....and the aroma of my freshly baked bread and cinnimon buns greeted them. I baked...and I canned...and did all the things that one would do as the head of the house. I'd done two grades in one in school and after my eleventh grade I went to work, in my nearby town, but came home for the weekends to resume my duties at home. When I was 17/18, I went to the "city" ....found employment....but had to take some leave-of-absences, to return home....through my Mom's illness and her passing. By and by, I got back to the city and my job, but my little brother played heavily on my mind. My Dad did a great job and my Aunts and my Sister helped out as much as they could. All in all...we came through our experience and heartache, with much strength and determination and we're all doing great today. But my farm years were very difficult with little conveniences and much hard work and much distress.
Still today, I look back on the farm with the deepest nostalgia and love for the strength of the people who's toils are so very hard. Now finally, when I go back to my home town...and to the farms in the area, I can relax and enjoy and appreciate the beauty and the hard-working, genuine way of life. Brings a tear to my eye...just thinking about it.
Murray Mclaughlan and The Farmers' Song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1eoOI6gi24&feature=related

and to top it off.....this song will devastate me.................

John Denver......~.......Hey It's Good To Be Back Home Again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1sjOg8TFYw&feature=related

Nothing can replace my roots. Will my son and his family feel the same connection with their past? I think not....much as I'd like them to.