Down on The Farm

Down on the Farm

I was thirteen years old when I went with my friend Dave to Kentucky to visit his Grandparents at their farm. We stayed two weeks, and this was my first time on a farm having been raised in the big city of Chicago. To say it was different was putting it mildly; this was a whole new way of life.
You went to bed between 8:00 pm. and 9:00 pm., and they really had roosters that would wake you up at the crack of dawn. Getting up at 4:30 in the morning was not my cup of tea. I thought it was only for two weeks, so how bad could it be?
I was brought up on meat, and did not like very many vegetables. Dave’s Grandparents only ate meat once a week, on Sunday. The milk was fresh from the cow, and thin like water which took a while to get used to, but the meat thing was very hard to get used to. I went to the farm as a kid with just skin and bone and swear I came back only bone.
We had to go out picking beans everyday, and I had to learn how to shuck them for the evening meal. Cereal with watered down milk was my main stay, and probably kept me alive, or so I thought at the time. I did not like all the vegetables, but learned to accept them. Eggs we collected for breakfast were a nice change from cereal, but I missed the bacon.
Life on the farm was very slow paced, and you had to work a lot which was extremely different from city life, where you did not have a lot of responsibilities. Exploring the farm was interesting, but soon the novelty wore off. In the barn there was an old car that they used to drive to town once or twice a month to get groceries. It was so beat up I did not think it would run, but to my surprise it did run very well when Sat we rode into town with Dave’s Grandfather. The trip to town was an adventure in itself as we slowly chugged down the road in this old car I had the opportunity to see everything around us. The thing that impressed me the most was all the hills. In Chicago there were no hills, and we would have loved to have a hill to play on or explore.
The best thing about the farm was the old swimming hole, and the stripper mines where we went swimming. Strip mining was the way they collected the coal in that area. Coal was found near the surface, and they used huge machines to strip away the coal. After they stripped away all the coal the hole that was left would eventually fill with water from natural springs that were uncovered in the process. They could be very dangerous since they might be 100 feet deep, and rock ledges stuck out below the waters surface. If you were going to jump off some of the cliffs that were as high as 30 feet you needed to know what was below the surface before you would jump.
One day Dave and I were at the swimming hole. Unlike the stripper hole this was just an old pond with a muddy bottom. We spent the day swimming, and throwing mud at each other, when Dave spotted a turtle with its head sticking up swimming toward us. As it came closer Dave let out a yell “it’s a snake.” Water snakes down here were usually the poisonous cottonmouth type. We both turned and took a couple of slow steps away from the snake trying not to attract it to us when Dave yelled, “ok run”.
We were in the shallow part now where it was only up to our waist, and as soon as we tried to run we both stepped into a deep hole sending us under the water. I thought for sure I was going to die, as we both scrambled up the muddy bank. Looking back I could not see where the snake went, so we both ran back to the farm laughing at the way we fell into the hole telling each other that we were not afraid.
Dave told me that they have a lot of cottonmouth snakes all over this area, even in the stripper holes. This took a little of the joy out of being so carefree when we went swimming, but that did not last long, because as young boys we felt we were invincible since we all ready cheated death with our first encounter with a poisonous snake.
Dave’s Mom and Dad came down to pick us up after two weeks, and that Sat. we went to Pennyrile State Park for the day. This was really nice because we had trails we could explore through the woods, and a lake to swim in with no snakes.
After exploring the trails we were hot so we went swimming. There was a rope with floats on it separating the shallow and deep water. The deep section had a wooden raft on 55gal. drums anchored out from shore, and this was where we wanted to go, so Dave and I swam out to the raft where we played running and jumping off for hours. After a while we came up with the bright idea to push ourselves down off the bottom rung of the ladder to see how deep we could go down in the water.
On the count of three we both pushed down as hard as we could. Down I went farther and farther until it started to turn dark as the water became very cold. My feet went down into the mud and I became stuck for just a second as I twisted my legs to get free. As fear set in I wasn’t sure I could make it back to the dim light above since I was already out of breath. The bottom of the lake was probably only fifteen to twenty feet deep, but to me it seemed like fifty feet as I struggled to reach the top.
Swimming as fast as I could the dim light above grew brighter until I broke the surface with a loud gasp as I tried to suck in as much oxygen as I could. I swam over to the shallow water where I could stand up to alleviate my fear, when Dave asked me if everything was “ok”. I played it off saying that I had just swallowed a little water, and told how much fun it was, but I was tired, and did not want to swim anymore. This was the first of three different occasions where I though I was going to drown. To this day I still have a fear of drowning.
This was the only time I had ever spent on a farm, and looking back I can see that the experience only made me a better person. To experience a way of life other than the city, taught me that life is different all over the world, and how you accept it can make a world of difference as to how you see it. I didn’t think farm life was for me, but I bet if I were raised there I probably would have enjoyed it.

Robert L. Murdoch

02/17/09