Five Full Blown Farm Fears- What One Farm Boy Remembers

There were several scary things about the farm where I grew up.

I call the scary things the “Full-blown Farm Fears, and they may just have, as they say, “helped develop my character.”

Anyway, here is how I remember them.

There Were These Things Called Snakes

The first fear, without a doubt, was of SNAKES!

Whenever a brave, but unaware, snake made its way into our yard and was spotted by my mother Ruby, the result can only be described by the phrase, “all hell broke loose!”

“GET THE HOE! GET THE HOE!, ”my mother would shout, in her loudest and most authoritative voice, causing the chickens in the yard to scatter to the winds. All the troops (children, and whoever else was there) mobilized immediately, and rapidly delivered my mother’s weapon of choice — a garden hoe.

It was as if the President of the United States had learned via the red phone that the enemy was within our gates! We must defend ourselves against the attackers! And Commander Ruby led the assault.

With approximately 50 quick and vigorous chops, seemingly given in the time frame of about 5 seconds, she made triply sure that the snake had met its demise, if not its total dismemberment.

As quickly as it had started, calm reigned again, and it inevitably became my task to dispose of what was left of the snake.

You can now probably understand how a fear of snakes quickly developed within me, and still affects me today.

Yet, the snake experience also helped me develop resourcefulness, because as I grew older, I would plant a dead snake, which I had shot with my BB gun, in the most appropriate place, and wait in excited anticipation until my mother spied it.

Many a dead snake got totally demolished in its afterlife by Ruby’s trusty garden hoe.

 Aren’t Windmills Gentle and Harmless?

The second big farm fear was of the WINDMILL!

It may seem strange that the windmill would create a farm fear factor, because it was such a helpful thing– pumping water out of the ground for horses, cattle, and us.

But the big fear came from the windmill’s simple on/shut off device– with it’s macabre accomplice, the high wind.

The device was a smooth stick handle tied to a wire that went up to the propeller on top.

When you wanted to turn the windmill on, you released the handle, loosening the wire and allowing the propeller blades to be turned by the wind.

When you wanted to shut the windmill off, you pulled the stick down against the tower piece, thus tightening the wire and putting the brake on the propeller to stop it.

The problem came, however, when the windmill was turned on and the wind suddenly came up. A very high wind could turn the propeller so fast that it would either break the pump or go flying off the windmill if it wasn’t breaked by pulling the handle down– and that took “three men and a boy.”

Now comes the fear. If the windmill was on and the wind came up, calmness did not abound.

My mother approached this as impending disaster. “Go turn off the windmill! Hurry! The wind is coming up fast!”, she would shout, as if the lives of all of us entirely depended on completing this task in at least one millisecond.

The intensity of it all put the fear of the Lord in me, especially since I, being a very fast runner, usually got there first (even though a strong wind blowing at a rate equal my weight tried mightily to keep me from getting there), and usually was unable to shut it off.

I can still feel the relief that ensued when a couple of us were able to pull that stick down and literally bring the propeller to a screeching halt.

I think the windmill experience must have helped me learn to deal with stress and pressure, because there sure was plenty of it when the wind began to blow on the farm.

Lightning Never Strikes the Same Place Twice

Oh Yeah??? Bill Odaffer’s barn just down the road was struck twice–burning to the ground each time–during the time I lived on the farm.

I remember getting out of bed during a storm and driving to Bill Odaffer’s farm with my parents to see if we could be of some help the first time it happened. All of the neighbors were there, and it was a roaring fire that could not be put out.

The second time, in my mind, was a rerun of the first. There was talk in the neighborhood that Bill might want to consider putting lightning rods on his next barn, but as I recall, for reasons beyond everyone’s comprehension, he never did.

By now you probably know that the third full-blown fear on the farm was LIGHTNING! Witnessing the barn burnings greatly heightened the conviction in my mind that this could really happen to us!

Our house was built okay, but it was all wood, and just a little porous. When a severe thunderstorm came upon us, you really felt that the lightning was going to tear that house asunder—especially if you, like me, slept in the upstairs, pretty close to the great outdoors.

I think the coming of lightning in the middle of the night while I was sleeping upstairs in that old farmhouse gave new meaning to what my Sunday School teacher, Ernest Dickey, always said about standing in the need of prayer.

 Isn’t Fire a Good Thing?

The fourth full-blown farm fear was the uncontrollable GARDEN FIRE!

After harvest, it was fine to burn the dead grass off the garden on a quiet day, but if the wind suddenly came up, as it often did, a garden fire could get out of hand.

And there was a large gasoline tank just east of our garden, and if you are familiar with the Midwest, you know that the winds always blow from west to east.

My mother seemed to have this amazing knack of stirring up the wind.

One quiet day my mother set out to burn off a small southwest corner of the garden. Out of the blue, a good ole strong west wind came up. I was just over 2 years old at the time, but I’ve always had this feeling that I vividly remember this incident.

My mom and I were the only ones home. As the wind came up, she ran in the house, placed me in the kitchen, and shut all the doors.

Then she ran to the garden to try to stop the blazing fire before it got to that tank and, in her mind, blew us all to kingdom come.

Using superhuman force, beating the fire, running for water, and throwing dirt, she did finally contain the fire just short of the gas tank, and before having to deal, again in her mind, with a scorched earth aftershock.

When she returned to the house, she found me under attack by a baby gosling–whose box I had knocked over– and screaming bloody murder.

So I was saved by the firefighter hero of 1936, but have always been leary of garden fires and geese!

 Don’t Go Near the Ditch!!

The fifth, and final major fear on our farm was the DREDGE DITCH! My mother, with all her good traits, was deathly afraid of the dredge ditch.

Part of the fear probably came from her experience of very nearly drowning as a teenager.

But when I was growing up, it seemed that she thought that if any of her children got near the ditch, it would take a couple of gulps and completely swallow them up!

She must have transferred her image of the spring rain ditch (which could get pretty violent) to the lazy summer ditch, because for whatever reason, it was like pulling teeth to get her to let us “go down to the ditch.”

The fear of the ditch was heightened by the fact that land area under the bridge often served as a camping place for Gypsies that came through the area. Since the bridge wasn’t far from our house, and Gypsies had a penchant for coming to a nearby house to beg or “borrow” things, my mother was in a dither when the Gypsies arrived.

She would send my sister Jane or I to the door to tell the Gypsies something like “my mother is busy and the workers will be here any minute for dinner,”

The dredge ditch, in some strange way, got associated with the Gypsies–giving it an even more ominous character.

In the end, I was able to gain freedom to explore and enjoy the dredge ditch in both summer and winter, but my mother’s fear of water, in a small degree, must have transferred to me, and I admit to grabbing my kid’s arms when they got too close to the edge of a river or lake.

Suffice it to say that finding a way to not totally take on my mother’s fear of the “ditch” may have been an experience in developing courage for me.

Conclusion

Someone once said that “our fears paint the heavens for us.”   That may be true to a degree, but I can truthfully say that I didn’t panic when I met my first rattlesnake in Arizona, I love windmills, I gave my kids and grand kids a convincing argument that lightning is natural and beneficial, I love bonfires, and I can swim a couple lengths of the pool.

The Farm! Some healthy fears, but a great place in which to grow up!