Me as a kid - Part 2

Original post in Facebook by Greg Stier on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 11:34am

All my favorite memories are family memories until I moved to college. I have a great family. We all accept what is in front of us if we don't know better so I didn't realize how well adjusted we were till I talked to a kid who hated his parents, lived with his grandma and avoided his thieving drug addicted brother who beat him up on a regular basis. That kid exists. I thought, "Holy Crap! I got it good." It took me years to realize it but I don't plan to forget that family is one of the greatest strengths I have at my side.

Oh what a family too. Eleven uncles and aunts, fifty first cousins (give or take), and only God and Grandma know how many second cousins now that everyone is having kids. Anyway, with a family like that there was little need to turn to strangers for entertainment. It seemed like every other weekend we were rotating to one grandma's house or the other. There was nearly always someone around to play with or raise hell with, depending on who you ask.

Official family functions at the Grandma Stier's house were sure to have volleyball as part of the fun. The Stier family used to take volleyball pretty seriously. They are a competitive bunch, and mostly in pretty good shape. The games could get pretty tough. I wanted to be part of that group out there when I was little. They were having so much fun, I wanted to jump right in. Luckily there was always room for a little one on the court and it was usually a while before they realized that most of the shots were going around them. I got my share of serves and eventually grew into the game. It was as fun as I thought it would be and I'm still looking for a league to join on a regular basis.

Grandma and Grandpa Moeller's house had different allures. First of all, Grandma kept chickens. When grand kids were around, those chickens probably didn't sit on an egg more than five minutes before a grubby hand was shoved under their butt to steal it. The only defense the chickens had was the meanest rooster in Indiana. That nasty so and so used to strut around the yard waiting for an excuse to kill a child. It chased adults too. Grandma didn't like it one bit and used to give us permission to kick it if we were attacked.

If the corn was in, we would climb the huge pile of on- the-cob corn in the corn bin and slide down like it was a ride at some country theme park. There were machines of mysterious nature all over the farm to be examined and speculated upon. It was even more exciting when Grandpa would show us what they really did and how they worked.

Inside the enormous wood barn, with its hand hewn beams and columns there was the mother of all rope swings. The rope was an inch and a half thick and reached thirty or forty feet up to a beam over the main aisle of the barn. It was a rush to really get going in that thing. We would all wait impatiently for our turn to blast off.

Also in the barn was the haymow. Grandpa stored bales of hay for feeding his cows above the stalls. The bales, for the uninitiated, were about 2'x2'x4' of tightly packed hay held together with two pieces of twine. We used them as gigantic Lego blocks. We built forts and tunnels all over that barn. We chased each other and had wars with the old mud wasp nests hanging from the ceiling. They exploded with a very satisfying dust cloud but hurt if they actually hit you. Luckily we had terrible aim or fast reflexes. Martha, Grandma's spinster sister, used to scold us for making a mess of Grandpa's barn and coming in the house covered in hay but Grandpa never seemed to mind much. Martha lived with Grandpa and Grandma. She was tall and a little scary when I was little because she wasn't too patient with the little ones but as I got older, she mellowed a lot and I found out she was a wonderful lady.

Another perennial activity at our house was cutting wood. We burned wood for heat and had to travel to the farm on a pretty regular basis to get a truck load for the next winter. Dad used to bring a bag lunch and we would stick glass bottles of Coke in the creek to cool, safely held by an old mesh potato sack. Woodcutting wasn't my favorite job as a kid. When I was little the wood was huge and the only job available for someone of limited muscle was dragging brush. I must have piled half a forest before I got big enough to be trusted with the more dangerous jobs of cutting little limbs with an axe and, eventually, a chainsaw. On the way home we would stop at the Letts gas station and buy some candy as a reward for all the hard work. Dad believed in rewards for a good attitude during slave labor.

What a rush that chainsaw was, and is, moving through hard wood like a knife through butter. The moment before a dead tree fell, when the direction of travel was, so to speak, up in the air, left you wired to run any direction at a moment's notice.Then at the end of the day, there was the satisfaction of visible progress. A fence row was clear. Cut wood was piled in the back of a truck for a useful purpose. There are few activities I find so immediately satisfying. There is the almost total focus of splitting piece after piece of wood off a large round. Swing! Crack! Turn. Repeat. It is honest, uncomplicated labor with few political overtones, no one to offend and a good work out to boot.

One of Dad's enthusiastic hobbies was hunting squirrel in the woods and when I got a little older, he started taking me occasionally. I didn't enjoy it at first, mostly because we had to climb out of bed at 5:00am to get to the farm before the squirrels started moving. Think about it. I had to beat a squirrel out of bed. What does that say about me? Who has more sense? Anyway, I eventually got into the spirit of being in the woods so early that the world was just waking up.

I never cared much if I got a squirrel. I don't like the smell of boiling squirrel anyway. Baked and barbecued is a bit better. So, as I got older I developed the philosophy of going for a walk with a gun. When I found a nice place to rest, I would take a little nap. Any squirrel that woke me up probably deserved to die. One time while practicing that philosophy, I opened my eyes to see a red fox staring at the idiot sleeping against the tree. I didn't move. I was totally captivated, having never seen one so close in the woods. It was an experience I really enjoyed.

We also camped at the farm a couple times a summer, usually in conjunction with cutting wood. We weren't the hard core rough-it bunch of campers. There was always a cooler of goodies even though most of the food was cooked over a camp fire. Mom would usually stick in a pan of baked beans, which Dad loved, to go with our hot dogs and some Little Debbie snacks for dessert. We slept in tents, on air mattresses intended to float in a swimming pool. These took approximately three days to blow up and caused dizziness and nausea as all the useful air in our lungs was forced into them, but were much more comfortable than the ground.

Mom was usually conspicuously absent at these events. She preferred a bed to a sleeping bag. I'm sure it was a much needed break for her. Raising five kids as a stay at home mother, she probably had a little party while we were gone. Dad enjoyed teaching us a little something every trip. One time it was tree names and leaves, another, animal tracks, cooking over a fire, setting up a tripod, and most importantly, what NOT to wipe with when hovering behind a tree. We would wade in the creek and wander in the woods exploring this little kingdom away from home.

Hope you enjoyed. More later..