When I was about nine or ten, my Aunt Shirley and her family lived on a farm in Lytle, Ohio. I think that my Mom was going to Beauty School during some of the time they lived there and we spent a lot of time there one summer.
My cousin Bobby (Aunt Shirley’s oldest son) is about a year and a half younger than me and we were always great friends. That summer we did all kinds of fun things, swimming, climbing trees, riding bikes, making bows and arrows, catching turtles, crawdads and fish in the nearby stream, just about everything that a couple of all-American boys did in the 50’s.
A constant theme of our talks was how much we wanted a horse. We’d spend many happy times up in a tree or along the creek describing our ideal horse, what we’d name it, what it would look like, what tricks we’d teach it, etc.
Well, the chances of getting a horse were pretty low, so we looked for alternatives. One day we thought we had struck gold. The farm had one pig – a huge old sow with about 8 or 10 piglets.
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| She was probably about this big -- we probably weighed about 60 pounds each. |
As we were wandering around the farm we noticed her come out of the shelter in her pen. We realized that if we got up on the top of the shelter, when she cam near by we could jump down onto her and get a “horsy ride!”
That’s right – we two geniuses were planning on jumping onto the back of a 300-400 pound Mama sow.
Well, the reason that you are reading this now is because, during the time that we two incredibly patient boys waited for her to come near, she never did. If she had done so, I’m sure she would have stomped us both to death and eaten our silly butts.
Some time after this, not exactly sure how long afterwards, we mentioned our plan to Bobby’s Dad, Uncle Junior. His face went white and he told us that if he ever saw either of us anywhere near that sow’s pen he’d “tan our hides!”
By the way - neither of us ever got a horse.
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