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Newspaper Columns >
My Brothers Thought I was Dead!
I Couldn't Move....Or Talk!
by Carol Breidenbach
Farmland News
13 May 2003
Please Don't Try This At Home!
When we were kids growing up on a farm south of Findlay, Ohio my brothers and I used to ride the dairy heifers like horses. This is something I am ashamed of now. I hope we never injured them. We would hurry up and finish our barn chores so we could ride the heifers without Dad wondering what we were doing in the barn so long. We fashioned a halter out of baler twine and mounted off the hay feeding rack. This was great fun until I got bucked off and hit the wall. My brothers thought I was dead. I couldn't move or talk. It was only the wind knocked out of me, but the scare put a stop to our riding days.
Another source of entertainment for us was Eagle Creek that ran through our farm. The people before us had dammed up a deep fishing hole. Hours were spent fishing, ice skating and swimming in that creek. We weren't supposed to swim in the creek because our mom thought it increased our chances of getting Polio. My brothers and I kept old clothes hidden to swim in and then hung them in the woods to dry. Our mother never knew what we were up to.
One summer, my brother Jim and I made a map of the whole length of the creek on our farm. We fished to see what kinds of fish were in the different pools and described the current and depth. I have often wished that we had saved that map. My father was very generous about allowing people to fish in our length of the creek and we planned to duplicate the map and give it to people who fished there. The beginning of the school year interrupted our intentions to get the map copied by hand. The next summer it was forgotten. Dad even provided a picnic table and barbecue pit near the deep fishing hole for people to use.
In the winter we created ice rafts by knocking off big chunks of ice and floating down the creek when the ice started to melt. This activity lasted until we fell off or the raft broke up. In the summer we built real rafts out of scrap wood. We had a couple of close calls with those rafts. My bother Tom almost drowned once when I tipped the raft over pulling up the cement block anchor. One time we wanted our raft moved down stream and this could only be accomplished by moving it during a flood. The high water allowed the raft to pass over the rocky shallow places. None of us wanted to ride this raft down the dangerously flooded creek so we convinced our cousin Dennis that we would allow him the pleasure of this wild raft ride. He accepted and thank God he wasn't killed. Always be suspicious of overly generous cousins.
I remember one early winter skating adventure. The ice was barely thick enough to hold us, so we skated back and forth as fast as we could. The ice weaved up and down and we managed to not fall in because we moved quickly. We convinced our usually cautious and good older sister, Virginia, to join in the fun. She thought the ice was too thin, but we pointed out that we had not fallen in. Part of involving her was so that she wouldn't tell Mom. Because she was cautious, she skated slowly and consequently fell in. I can still remember her crying all the way home and promising herself that she would never listen to us again. It never seemed fair to me that she was the one who got soaked and frozen to the bone. I am very fond of the guardian angel picture with the children along the waterside. I am sure that is all that saved us.
That creek had some of the best sledding hills imaginable. As an adult now I look back on those hills, and can't imagine riding a sled down them. Believe me when my children visited their grandparents, they were never allowed to sled on those hills.
Sometimes when the creek flooded and spilled it's banks into the neighboring pasture it created a unique skating pond. We skated for hours on this perfectly smooth surface and around and around the scrub brush that protruded randomly. It was fun to walk along the creek after the spring flood waters had subsided and see what great treasures had floated in from up stream.
Another great source of entertainment was the haymow. When we had bales, we built tunnels to crawl through. We played basketball up there when the hay was nearly used up for the season. Like most farm kids, we also swung from the old ropes and pulleys left from when hay was gathered with a buckrake and hauled in to the mow with a sling system. The rope broke once and I nearly killed myself. That was the end of the swinging. Please don't try any of this at home!
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