All that activity that you and Ish are about with the birds in the great outdoors sounds wonderful, but no swallowing, so to speak, for this city dweller.
Well, it's always been my belief that adventures have more to do with attitude than with location, so I think a trip to the nursery and the cleaners might be right up there with mowing lawns or hiking through the wilderness.
The story of the barge-like Olds Delta 88 brought back some memories of a similar car owned by my uncle. He used to drive a big boat that eventually became something of a beater over time. However, he didn't want to give it up, for several reasons. You see, my uncle couldn't walk well.. just with crutches as he wore leg braces, so his car seemed to be an extension of his body. He had it custom-fitted with a hand-brake and accelerator system back in the days before such things were common. He owned a large farm and raised beef cattle, and his big old car was his main way of getting out through the fields to check on his cattle. He would drive the big old boat right out through the middle of the pastures to get wherever he needed to go. Somewhat miraculously, he managed to do so without getting stuck -- either a testimony to his driving skills, the kind of soil, or perhaps something about the car.
Over the years, I usually spent a couple of weeks of each summer at my uncle's farm doing haying or other chores. It was always a lot of fun as my aunt and uncle were great people. One of my funniest memories is of one afternoon when my uncle asked me to come along with him to check on some cattle that he had pastured on someone else's farm. We took off over there in his big car and upon arriving, the owner of the farm said that there was a calf wandering around on the wrong side of the fence and it couldn't get back with its mother. We couldn't catch the calf as it would just run off every time we got near to it, so we decided to catch its mom instead. Then we intended to lead her over to the fence and along down to the gate to move the calf back into the field. Problem was, the cattle had all wandered off into another part of the farm. My uncle thought for a minute and then said, "Get up and sit on the roof of the car and I'll drive really slowly through the field while you moo like a scared calf."
I'm sure I gave my uncle my most perplexed kid look, but I did as he said and climbed up onto the roof and sat with my feet braced down against the cowl ahead of the windshield. Then, very slowly, we cruised out across the fields through the deep grass, with me doing my best "MAaaaaaaahhhhhhh", hollering like a scared calf.
My uncle's strategy worked great...sort of. Except that, instead of attracting one cow, we attracted about half the cattle in the herd, who came racing across the field, mooing noisily as they ran up to the big old car, meanwhile leaving their own calves bawling and trailing along behind.
We ended up driving back across the field with me continuing to moo. The spectacle was somewhat akin to the Pied Piper leading a noisy, grunting mass of worried cows. As we neared the lone calf outside the fence, one of the cattle broke away from the herd and ran up to her calf, apparently having suddenly recalled her maternal instincts. We turned the car and drove along the fence down to the gate, opened it and then drove back away with the mooing herd in hot pursuit. Eventually, mother and calf were reunited, leaving only the problem of getting the cattle to stop following the car. I climbed back in through the passenger window and then my uncle blasted the horn a few times, sending the whole herd stampeding back to the other end of the farm.
Just one of my own little adventures experienced down on the farm.
(o: |
