Iva Growing Up On A Farm

It wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.  Sometimes it was a pleasure, but most times it was a hard life.  I started school in Scottsville.  Two months later my father decided to farm.  We moved to Wilson School District held in a tenant house on a farm.  My father farmed on shares.  My mother had to carry water from a well across the road.  One day my brother Earl went with mother after water.  He climbed the wind mill ladder, and when he came down he sat right in the pail of ice cold water.  He scrambled home with a cold wet seat.

It was two miles to school.  Often cattle were in the road, and it became necessary to detour through the woods to get around them.  One day at school the boys were pulling my hair so I ran and hid until they went home.  Is it any wonder my mother had to bribe me with pennies to get me to go to school?

My dad worked hard long hours in the field.  We liked to run and meet him when we saw him coming home.  One day we ran really fast to meet him returning from town in a buggy.  When we reached the wagon it was some bearded man we didn’t know.

One day I got angry at my mother so decided to run away.  I intended to go to where my father was working in a potato field.  When I got there he wasn’t there.  Then I remembered he had gone to town with a load of potatoes.  There was nothing to do but go back home and face the music.  Mother met me at the door with a switch, but she had to laugh so she said, “You just wait until your dad gets home.”

I was back in a field one day where my father was cultivating.  He sent me to another field to get a water jug.  Just as I was about to pick up the jug I saw a monstrous big blue racer.  I left the jug and ran.  When I looked back the snake was following me.  I reached my dad all out of breath and told him the snake was chasing me.  He said, “Don’t worry!  He’d never catch you!”

Three years passed and we moved again.  This time we were about ¼ of a mile west of the Jenks School where I was in the fourth grade.  Here we could walk to school even in winter, and we could go home for lunch.  We lived on this 80 acre farm, on shares, for six years.  We moved, and our first day of school, was the day after Halloween.  We must have been strange looking as every kid stopped playing and followed us into school.  Pranksters had a two horse cultivator on the boys’ outhouse, a one horse buggy on the girls’ outhouse, and a wagon on the wood shed.  I was afraid to go into the girls’ outhouse as it looked like it could tip over.(to be continued)