The Best Bicycle Ride

You know how scary it is when you’re riding your bike and you come to the top of a looming hill? You have the thought too late that you might not be able to stop. Instead you charge down that hill like you’re a professional bicycle rider even though you are only nine years old.

Half way down the hill your bicycle gains too much speed. You are frozen with fear and that makes you forget how to use the brake. You hit a hole in the dirt road and your heart jumps into your throat. Matter of fact your stomach goes there as well. You have a chilling thought that your mother will kill you for going down the hill.

All of a sudden you look down and your tires have left the dirt. You keep pedaling to go faster. You fly higher and higher. You pedal over the mesquite trees. You no longer feel the boundaries of the ground. You tilt to a side but the bike comes right back up.

You dip down and zoom through the trees. The doves take off afraid for their life. You smile as you yell at them, “I won’t hurt you. I can fly now!”

You look down at the ground and you see the old barn that’s falling down. You see a large hole in the roof and the hay inside. You remember how many times your dad has said he needs to fix that roof. You can practically smell the hay from up here. You take a deep breath.

You turn back up the hill. You must get home and show everyone what you can do. Your heart is racing and you are breathing so hard your lungs pounding out of your chest. You are pedaling hard but you’re not moving very fast. You pedal harder.

Suddenly you run into a tall tree. Its branch thorns snag onto your sleeves and in your hair. You don’t want to let go of the handlebars but the tree won’t let go either. You yell at the tree, “Let me go! You’ll make me fall!”

The tree grips tighter as you try to free yourself. Now you can hear the tree calling your name. The tree shakes you so hard you fall hard to the ground.

When you open your eyes your dad is kneeling beside you. His eyes are wide with fear. He must have seen you fall. You hope he saw you flying. No one will believe you so you need a witness. You look around and you’re in the same spot at the bottom of the hill. You bike lays beside you with the front tire missing.

Your dad sees you are okay and he looks relieved. “Whew. You scared me there for a minute. You kept screaming to let you go because you’ll fall. I missed your fall but from the look of your bike it was a doozy.”

Dad brushes the dirt off your jeans. “Anything broken?” he asks. You can only shake your head. He helps you up then he gathers the parts and pieces of your bike.

On the drive home you can’t seem to look out the window at the trees. They know the truth but they aren’t talking.

The Letter B tells my life

Beef: Two years ago the family dairy that had been operating in our family for 4 generations closed. My dad was ready for the closure since he turned 70 that year. He was tired of dealing with the government crap that they forced on him. A few years ago they sited him for not having a lagoon for the wastewater from the milk barn. He had to dig a large hole for the water to collect in. The water collected there anyway. It’s a shame how government has put most all of the small dairy farms out of business. Government is for the large conglomerates. Dad was also tired of dealing with the hired hands that milked the cows. Sometimes they would fall asleep with cows in the barn. A cow is one of the few animals on a farm that will eat itself to death. Sounds like some humans too! These cows would stand in the stall way too long and several died because of that. They couldn’t fire the milk hand because then they would have to milk the cows themselves. Now the farm has beef cattle. They are so glad they don’t have the work that they had with the dairy. The amount of maintenance is half of what they did before. During the winter they put out hay for them and make sure all babies are born okay. That’s about it. Now Mom and Dad can go to more 42-domino tournaments!

Beets: I love to grow beets in the garden. You just can’t beat fresh beets. Their taste is so much stronger than the grocery store ones. Once boiled with a little coarse ground pepper, the meat is tender yet firm and sweet. They are sweeter than a turnip but not as sweet as a sweet potato. They are so easy to grow also. Even the green tops are good in salads. They also have a caution to them. Don’t eat them several days in a row. You will think you have colon cancer and panic.

Bull: Goes along with the beef. When I went to college and the city girls would ask me questions about the farm. The most asked question was do only bulls have horns. They also asked what’s the difference between a heifer and a cow. I had lots of fun with them. I told one girl at school that we lived so far out in the country that our zip code was E-I-E-I-O. She thought about it for almost a minute before she realized that it couldn’t be. I still laugh about that one.

Butter: When I was very young, my grandmother would give me a Mason jar of fresh cow’s milk and tell me to shake it until she said to stop. So I shook and shook and shook that jar. I thought my wrists were going to fall off. I learned to slide it and spin it along on the carpet. Finally she would take it and it would be almost solid. I had turned that milk into butter! She added a little salt to it and formed it into a nice oblong shape on a saucer then put it in the fridge. I couldn’t wait for the hot, homemade bread so I could melt that fresh butter on it. Oh, it was so creamy and sweet. There just isn’t any like it now.

Birds: During the winter, I keep the bird feeders full so that the big fat cardinals will eat in our backyard. They are so bright red and regal. I feel a little guilty because at least a cat or two will hunch down on the back porch and watch the birds. If one of the cats looks like it’s prowling toward one of the birds, I’ll knock on the window to alert the birds. The cat will glare back at me with a look saying, “Hey, this is our game!”

Bicycle: I don’t own one now but I have most all of my life. Growing up I had a bike with this great psychedelic colored banana seat and a high bar on the back. The handles were tall and curved. I loved that bike. I don’t remember when I was finally too big for it. Matter of fact, I probably didn’t grow out of it. My height hasn’t changed much since then. Once I started driving it probably sat around the yard, leaned up against the house for so long that dad took it to the dump. When my husband and I got married we bought bikes to ride around the lake. We would ride for 16 miles on Saturday and Sunday mornings. We would start out early when the sun hadn’t cleared the trees yet. The morning dew was still on the grass and the air smelled sweet with newness. I still love that first morning air. When we moved back to the farm I decided to sell my bike. It had those skinny racing tires and I knew those wouldn’t work on the gravel road. Now my favorite mode of outside exercise is walking. There is so much to see, hear and smell while walking. Many times I have walked upon tools that must have fallen from one of the pick-ups. My dad or husband always tries to claim that it’s theirs. One day I picked up a clump of coarse hair hanging from a mesquite tree limb. I wonder if it hurt that cow when the mesquite thorn ripped a chunk of its tail out. Then again a cow’s brain is probably too small to realize what had just happened. The solemn mooing of a distance cow is very relaxing. If you moo back, sometimes they will moo back to you. Bruiser, our Boxer, loves to go on the walks with me. He has to pee every few feet. I take him so he can be my protector. The road that I take has an area that has thick trees and vines. Each time I walk past it I am certain that something is in there following me. I walk very fast past this area. By this time, Bruiser has run way ahead of me. I’ll call to him and tell him he’s not being a good protector. Sometimes he’ll look back at me if the trail he’s sniffing isn’t all that interesting, other times he just ignores me. I doubt I’ll ever buy another bicycle. When I need a good ride, I turn on the TV and ride the stationary one.

My life through the alphabet

This is the letter A and My Life:

Avenues: Avenues come full circle in my life. Growing up on my parents' 1,200-acre dairy farm, I would see the lights of the nearby town from the top of our hill and wish I were there. Everyone was doing things and seeing the world and here I was stuck on the farm. So I left in 1981 to go to college and to never live there again. I needed the Taco Bell or Blockbuster nearby for whenever I needed them. I wanted to be around people and do things all of the time. I wanted avenues! Then in 2000 it hit me like a brick wall at the end of a long avenue. I was done with the people, bad drivers and noise day and night so I moved back to the dairy. We have satellite now and home cooking that beats any Taco Bell. Best of all we no avenues!

Armadillos: The farmers' enemy and the marketing campaign favorite for the grand ol state of Texas. They are interesting, prehistoric-looking animals but their holes have caused many tractor accidents and fatalities. I would love to have a stuffed one but my dad would kill me!

Animals: What can I say? I have many. I have not only dogs and cats but also cows of all ages, horses and llamas. I used to have a guinea pig but she died at 6 years old. I've wanted to get another one but our old black cat in the house would have a fit. She hisses and screams at the outside cats. Our boxer Bruiser loves his cat buddies. We have about 12 but they go to the barn and hang out in the fields hunting mice and other rodents. During the cold nights if you peek out the garage door, they are all on his dog bed keeping each other warm. What a sight. They'll look up at me as if to say, “What? What did we do?”

Anger: I used to have anger or the proverbial road rage. Not so much anymore. If I get stuck behind a tractor on the farm-to-market road that is going 20 miles per hour, I just take a deep breath and tell myself at least I'm not stuck in traffic on the toll way. Then I wait for a straight road and zip around the farmer. I have to wave because either I know him or I'm related to him.

Annual: Two things come to mind when I think of this word. The first one is the annual flowers that I can't wait to plant as soon as the ground warms up. That should only be in another month or so. I'm so ready for spring. Then about August I'll be ready for fall. I'm glad we have seasons here. The next annual word that comes to mind is yearbook. We called them annuals when I was in school. They might still, I don't know. I was the editor of our annual when I was a senior. Gosh. Those were the days. We wanted to grow up so fast. We couldn't get there fast enough. Now that we are, what do we do? We act like kids so we don't have to think about being an adult.

The Snipe Hunt

They promised us that we would catch a snipe. All we needed was a tow sack. But what does a nine year old know. I was ready to go on my first snipe hunt.

My sister, Belinda, my friend, Dana, her younger brother, Matt, and our leader, George, the older “wiser” one of the group and I head out about 9 o'clock with no moon to help lead the way for a pasture with newly plowed dirt and a large wooded area in the middle. The dirt is soft and smells sweet. I still remember how dark that wooded area looked. Like a black hole ready to take us in. Yet I didn’t question George and his excitement to catch a snipe. I didn’t even question what a snipe was.

George told us to hold the sack near a hole. Matt argued that it was an armadillo hole but George insisted that it was different. “See the angle of the dirt. That’s a snipe,” George said with authority. He would go around the back of the woods and scare the snipe out. That’s all it takes!

We are all scared but yet excited. Dana and I held the sack. Matt and Belinda kept watch. Thinking back now, I’m not sure what they were watching for. In the distance we could hear coyotes singing. We heard them all the time so we weren’t scared, yet. Then a hoot owl flew past us very near our heads. We didn’t hear or see one of those often. The silence of the dark night was the scariest part of the whole hunt.

After about 15 minutes, we decided that George got lost. Belinda made a group decision to go back to the house. We whined that we couldn’t go back empty handed. She explained that nobody came back with a snipe.

Quietly we walked back toward the house. We were deflated because we weren’t able to show our catch to the parents having their party. The plowed pasture seemed a lot bigger now.

The next thing I remembered was this loud growl and scream rushing toward us from the end of the wooded area. George tells the story that I dug quite a deep hole in that plowed ground trying to get away from this creature running at us which of course was him. I remember being scared of what the creature was. I wasn't interested in seeing what a snipe even looked like. I don't know why I thought digging a hole in that plowed ground would get me to a safe place.

Even now when I see George and we mention this outing he still laughs about, I hold this secret revenge toward him that one day I will have a great story to tell about him. We’re in our forties now so I better hurry up. I think he’s already been cow tipping!

(If anyone doesn’t know what a snipe is, please let me know and I will explain!)