autoMobile Monday

Just got back from having to buy two new tires for my vehicle. $145.00 ouch. No gas to go anywhere now but I've got tires.

I think I said I would tell about my experience with the electric fence while on vacation one summer.

I was living in New Orleans at the time and came home to Florida for a vacation. While here my oldest brother and I with our pickup trucks went and got hay for the fall and winter. Pa had a very small heard of cattle at the time. Of course he was all of Eighty years old and still worked his gardens, livestock, etc. He had quit raising and cropping tobacco when he was sixty seven and just had concentrated on his large vegetable garden and had a little time to sit on the front porch in his rocking chair watching the birds eat the seeds he had scattered for them. OK back to the story promised. We decided we could get all the hay Pa needed on both the trucks if we stacked it high and drove slowly home from the neighbors farm about a mile away. Well we did just that and my oldest brother decided he would unload first so he could get to his second job on time that evening. We unloaded his truck in record time and had it stacked neatly in the pack house. As he drove off he shouted "Hey sis watch out for that electric fence wire overhead now so you don't dance your jig hahahaha" all the way back out of the field. I should have known he had in mind for me to touch it because while we were unloading my truck, I grabbed the last bale of hay on the cab and the blanket used to keep the truck from getting scratched up came with it and as I turned around my foot caught on it and I went flying over the second layer of hay bales and ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPP my forehead connected with that dang line and I couldn't move for awhile. My new dance steps were just going in the air trying to get that blanket off my foot. After getting my foot loose I was able to get down onto the ground to find relief for every orifice on my body. My sil was laughing so hard she wet herself. I didn't know what I was going to do about the hay because I told her that blame hay could stay there or unload itself before I got up there again. It took some time to get myself together and try to find a solution to the problem of getting the hay off my truck. We ended up getting a longer pole/tree sapling to raise the line to my satisfaction so we could finish the job of unloading that truck. After all I did have to drive back to New Orleans in it. I told my sil don't you be telling your husband about this, you hear, and she just started laughing all over again. Sure as could be she went inside laughing and ended up telling Pa and them about my buck dance on the hay.
That wasn't my first experience with the electric fence oh no.... my oldest brother always tried to get me by doing something when we were out working in the fields. The first time I shook hands with Mr. E Lectric Fence was when the same brother told me to "lift that wire so I can crawl under it then I'll hold it for you so you can get under it." Since he hadn't been too mean to me that day I just grabbed that wire to lift it up and it didn't want to turn loose. I was a hollering and a crying and dancing around and he started shouting let it go, let it go. He must have felt bad for that one because he told me he didn't think I would pick it up that way, he thought I would pick it up the sissified way with my thumb and forefinger. I let him know the only fence I picked up that way was barbed wire.
We can sit around now talking about all of the old days and laugh til our sides hurt. I did tell them that it wasn't right for me to not get my trip down the red carpet for being the family entertainment though.
Life was so simple back then and we didn't have to make all the decisions we do today because they were made for us. It is hard to believe we have come so far from what we were back then. It was difficult making decisions on my own for the first little while and then along came some real life education. I don't think we started growing up til we got out on our own because it was certainly a reality slap in the face when we left home. Oh the simple days of sitting on the porch on a Sunday afternoon after church turning the crank of the ice cream machine knowing we were in for a real treat when it was done. We all have our long ago yesterdays and some are more fondly thought of than others. Time marches on and we are soon forgotten just as our ancestors were. We do have an advantage of being able to capture those memories and store them for our future generations though. My children and grandchildren ask for stories about when I was young and I guess this is my way to preserve those stories.
Perhaps a story of the polecat and cane grinding would be good for next time. Until then I remain Just This...Alice