Life in Farmyard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Driedger

Christmas 2002

 

 

 

 

 

 

Farmyard was a large and sprawling land.  From the backdoor of Home stood a sheltering band of pine trees which established an inner-circle enclosing and protecting Home.  First and foremost this band of trees stood as the eternal physical border which defined the boundaries of Frontyard.  Frontyard was always a safe place.  The center of Frontyard was Home.  To be inside Home was to have found a restful place.  My earliest memories seem to focus on the Department of Domestic Affairs, or the Kitchen as we called it.  I only have vague and general memories of what went on there.   This may be due to the Kitchen’s consistency in form and function.  Here, mom, who was Minister of Domestic Affairs, was always in motion.  Even if she seldom left the Kitchen, other than to make the necessary shipment to dad, she was always in motion.  The table was the center of industry there.  I am sure that baking buns must have been the primary source for sustaining the Home.  Mom was always in the process of baking buns.  This was a day long event which never seemed to end.  I never took much interest in the process until the dough was actually made.  Here her mandatory laborers, who must have been hired because of some legislation to fill minority quotas, would sneak up and dip into the bowl for a taste of what seemed better than the final product.  Mom always allowed me to taste, even though she told me that too much would be bad for me. 

I do not remember where my sisters were during this time.  These were the only other Kids who lived on Farmyard.  I don’t remember them being in the Kitchen all that often.  Perhaps that is more a testimony to often I actually was there.  Only a few images arise when I think of my sisters and in Home, or anywhere on Farmyard for that matter.  Whatever our interaction, the end result was the same.  I was sitting on chair by myself, waiting for the judge (aka mom, she held many posts in the Home) to tell me when my sentence was over.  However, usually the crime was not too bad and I was simply given a restraining order.  I should note one peaceful memory of my sisters which readily comes to mind.  I am sure there are many more to be found.  However, the dominant images that emerge when I think about my relationship with them always seemed to involve conflict.  There was the time I destroyed Holly’s ‘straw house’ that she built with a tractor that I just learned how to drive.  There was the dice throwing incident during monopoly.  I also never gained the understanding of boundaries when the three of us rode together in the back seat of the car.  In any event the peaceful time with my sisters, or at least with Holly (Elexis, the oldest was usually too many steps ahead of me for me to understand), was Christmas.  On Christmas Eve we would bring our blankets into the living room and stare at the lights of the Christmas of tree.  Yes I am quite sure Elexis was around for many of these.  We had not the faintest hope of seeing Santa.  Santa was only introduced later as something you already knew to be silly.  I am not sure why we spent the night together.  Perhaps it was simply to be close to the presents which had already been under the tree for some time.  Whatever the case was this night always seemed peaceful.  It was easy to focus when something so close was at hand.  As I think more of the unity I had with my sisters I am also reminded of the baby-sitters (well the one baby-sitter in any event) that we had.  Again, in this instance we had a common goal, which was to avoid being detected by her after we were supposed to be in bed.  I remember us crawling on all fours peaking around corners to see where she might have been.  She was not normally difficult to locate as she was usually singing to herself.  In fact I think we have a recording of her singing.  Whether or not we taped her without her knowledge or whether she was taping herself I no longer remember.  I think one of the lines went like ‘sometimes when we touch the feelings just too much, so I had to close my eyes and cry . . .’ This time with my sisters was not so much about peace as it was about solidarity.

            Home was safe, but it was certainly not as fun as outside.  As mentioned earlier Home was centered in the middle of Frontyard.  Frontyard consisted of a wide green lawn which was bordered by the Road.  The Road, in turn, was bordered by the Ditch.  And the Ditch was the last place you wanted to find yourself playing.  You knew that if you ventured onto the Road you would, in all likely hood, be hit by a car.  I think we lost a dog who didn’t know much about playing far from the Road.  Frontyard, like Home, was also a safe place.  It was usually used for the family to play together.  There wasn’t much in Frontyard for one person to do by themselves.  The only thing I ever found to do was to take a baseball bat and hit the baseball as far towards the Road as I could.  But after awhile I was hitting them over the Road and losing them in the other side. 

Frontyard was where we played catch.  It was where we played games at birthday parties.  It is probably the only place I remember playing with my dad.  He would come to Frontyard for while and we would play catch.  I remember that he could throw the ball so high that I would lose sight of it before it eventually came back down.  I was with my father a great deal growing up, but I only remember Frontyard being the place where we played.  Well that is not completely true.  When my father was resting at Home I would wrestle with him.  He lay on his back while I tried to keep him from being able to move.  I don’t know if I ever had sense of there being a winner or a loser in these bouts.  In retrospect I am not even sure that I understand now why kids wrestle with their dads.  It simply strikes me as essential and hardly worth finding justification for.  In any event Frontyard was a place where People played.  On my own it never held much attraction.  This was probably in light of the accessibility to Backyard.

            Backyard was an entirely distinct region from Frontyard.  For the People Frontyard the boundaries were clearly marked by the pine trees that horseshoed Home.  I did not mention that there was a reason for another distinctive boundary from the Home.  It was the Fence.  This was not to keep the People from Backyard, but it was to keep the cattle from getting into Frontyard.  Past these trees and past the Fence you entered into an entirely unpredictable area.  And the Fence itself was no small thing for a Kid to get passed. To look at the trees you would more often than not miss the Fence.  It was only a thin metal wire upheld by skinny metal poles.  However, it did not take you long to respect the Fence.  Only once did you have to touch it in order to know that you never wanted to touch it again (and yet invariably you knew that you would).  It literally sent a shock completely disorientating you.  It was a flash, a solitary moment confirming something in this world that you could live through and yet would not wish on your worst enemies.  And everyday I was faced with the reality of the Fence.  Everyday I would pass by it, usually on multiple occasions.  Each time you knew you were taking life into your own hands.  When you approached the Fence you were given three choices.  The first two were to go over or under it.  You were always nervous going under because you could never quite see where it was above you and with one wrong move you would feel its sting sent instantly down your back.  There was no judge in the act of making a wrong action.  The consequence was simultaneous to the action.  Then there was the option of going over the Fence.  While this became more desirable as I got older it still held within it the same fear as going under.  In fact you always knew that there was a better chance of getting shocked if you went over the Fence.  However, it was an easier quicker movement.  In addition to this I knew that I was one step closer to being like dad when I could hop over the Fence.  The third option was to find a gate.  There were usually about three or four gates around the whole Fence and at times it did not seem convenient to find one.  But there was another reason for not choosing the gate.  There were plastic handles which were used to unlatch the gate.  They were spring loaded to keep the Fence tight.  I would have to use all of my effort to pull on the handle and release the hook at the end of the handle from the wire loop that connected it to the other end of the Fence.  Not all the handles around the Fence were the same.  Some handles were broken making them nearly impossible to open.  Sometimes I would reach for an old handle just to find that it was cracked opening the channel from the Fence into my body.  The handle could never be fully trusted.  The only true safe option was a fourth.  This was when dad was close by and he could open the gate for me.  Then I could pass through without the slightest fear of receiving its great and awful purpose.                       

            Successfully crossing the Fence I would gain access to Backyard.  Backyard was a wild and lawless place.  It was a place I usually traveled alone.  In Backyard there were rundown old buildings with broken windows.  There was a forest with tree summits to attain.  The terrain in Backyard was often covered with dense tall grass hiding potholes, exposed roots and nail-studded boards.  I was a minority in Farmyard.  The only other male was dad.  And while he had much love for me, he also had much work to do.  My mom and my sisters generally stayed close to Home.  The only time my sisters usually ventured out with me into Backyard was in winter when we challenge the snowy peaks that formed in farthest recesses of Backyard (known to us as the Shelterbelts).  Winter was a whole season on Farmyard when we all seemed to have a lot more time.  But it is not with winter that I am concerned here.  In the other three seasons industry was always in full force needing to make up for the relative idleness of winter.  In summer when I was not conscripted to labour in the Fields (contrary to my earlier statement there were more than one, though to see one would have been to see them all, except of course for the Tree) or in the MachineShop (a place as industrious as its name) then I was exploring in Backyard with the periodic companionship of my dog.  Her name was Lady, but she was never afraid to bare her teeth when needed and she would back down to no man.  With or without Lady I was the sole human traveler of Backyard.  But I was never there alone.  It was not the rugged unpredictable terrain of Backyard that made it such a risk to venture in.  Backyard was the place were cattle roamed and grazed.  They were a completely unpredictable variable in my life.  These were huge beasts.  Some of them weighed over 1000 pounds (a number which only meant something later, at the time I just knew they were as big as a truck).  They traveled in packs.  Ones with massive foot long horns would be prominent among them.  I grew up watching my dad walk among them with ease.  He understood their role.  He had respect for them, but they did not own Farmyard.  I did not understand.  I never felt any level of control when they were present in Backyard.  Backyard was always on the brink of a political coup if my dad was not around.  Stability could only be regained on the other side of the Fence, although there were times when the Fence did not hold and legions of cattle had to be driven back into confinement.   Any time that I was playing in Backyard I was liable to see them coming.  Sometimes I would see them as I turned the corner around a building or else I would see them coming from a distant.  There was a fear and fascination that I had with these animals.  At times I would try and see how close I could get to them before they noticed my presence.  Other times I would need to frantically search for some refuge when they spotted me.  And they did acknowledge my presence, often following me.  I also knew that my actions made a difference to how they would respond.  I knew that if I ran there was a good chance they would too, and I can not think of a more scary image from my childhood.  My dad would sometimes tell me too look over the cattle to see if any of them were bloated.  A bloated steer had a high hump on the side of his stomach.  It resulted from eating too much grain.  I once saw a steer that got bloated and died.  It was on its back puffed up like a blowfish.  These cattle played a vital role in the well-being of Farmyard and needed to be tended to.  Sometimes I would check them inside the Coral.  This was a place where all the cattle gathered to eat, sleep and drink.  The terrors of the cattle in Backyard were acutely multiplied in the Coral.  I would carry with me stick or even a whip in hopes of establishing or defending my right to be there.  It was here that Lady was trustworthy.  I never remember teaching her but I always knew that if I told her to “go get ‘em” she would chase any steers away from me.  One time I was walking along a  windbreaking fence that was too high to climb.  A steer was staring at me and I made eye contact with him.  This was always a strange event.  There was some type of connection when I made eye contact but it remained impossible to discern anything of what it may have meant, I only knew that the one thing eye contact usually meant was that they would approach me.  This time without any apparent reason the steer began running straight at me.  Now steers had followed and even chased after me before but always with enough distance to safely get myself out of the way.  This time there was nowhere to go.  The wall was too high and the steer was coming too fast.  I stood there and I screamed at it.  I yelled as loud and passionately as I could.  I don’t know if a single intelligible word came out.  There was neither cursing against nor crying to God.  There was no time for either.  I simply released all the fear that was inside of me.  Then with what could not have been more than ten feet in front of me, the steer stopped and simply walked away.  I cannot remember how I felt after that.  The only thing I recall now is the absurdity of that moment of chaos unleashed and order restored.  Life in Backyard was always filled with this element.  But it never stopped me from enjoying the great and exciting opportunities that Backyard held over Frontyard.

 

            Though there are many more stories from Farmyard this will suffice in illustrating that in the world which I grew up there was the prominence of Family the centrality and safety of Home and the distinction between Frontyard and Backyard (two places which are likely found around the world, though called be various names).