So, my Aunt Elsie passed away and I am yet again left with the sick feeling in my stomach and a rage against the airline industry for not being able to make it to the funeral. Instead of resorting to violence to vent my frustration I am turning to technology. Some of my favorite childhood memories revolve around Ronnie and Elsie and their farm and before I forget too many of them I am going to put them down here.
The last time I saw Ronnie my son and I were visiting in the summer. Sebastian has a deep abiding love of all things with wheels and we spent a lot of time looking at all the equipment in the machine shed. Ronnie, being a 3 yr old at heart himself, was sitting in the living at one point and looked at us with that smile of his and said, "Hey, lets just take the backhoe out and dig a hole somewhere." We couldn't get Sebastian to go (as much as he loved to look, the loud engine wasn't his thing) but it is still one of my favorite memories - Ronnie in his element happy to go out and do something just for fun.
Hands down favorite: Karla shooting a deer slug in the field and landing on her ass from the recoil. Dad, of course, grabs the gun and lets her fall. Classic.
I cannot remember how many hours I put in on there farm on the light blue-handed-down-from-everyone-before-me moped before the official age of 14 rolled around and I was legal to ride in Storm Lake. And why was it even fun cause it wasn't like I was going anywhere but around the machine shed for the 89th time? Cause it was illegal baby...
2 words: baby chicks.
1 more: piglets. Why piglets are cute, I just don't know but I did spend many, many hours contemplating...
Ah, the sweet smell of soy beans and the even sweeter sight of all your siblings disappearing into said field to walk beans while you get to stay at the farmhouse with the baby chicks cause you are too young...
Picking apples is never as fun as when you get to do it from the bucket of a tractor.
Squirt. Such a weird pop but they always had a stack of it by the back door and to this day the taste of it takes me right back to that house.
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Matt, Miles, Kate, and I went to visit when Ronnie was sick at home. Elsie offered us a snack. 3 choices of ice cream, 2 different bars and some cookies. She really wanted us to have some of each!
Elsie once said that if she ever couldn't find Dawn at the farm, the first place to look was the chicken coop.
Oh the food! Eric and I stopped there on the way back to Iowa City once and left with the biggest, thickest roast beef sandwich on homemade bread. Each slice of bread, beef and cheese was at least and inch thick and damn if that wasn't one of the best sandwiches I have ever had.
I think the squirt went well with the whiskey, so that is why they had so much of it around.
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