As much as I loved to read at Grandmom's house, and as much as she encouraged me to be a book worm, she also insisted we all got outside to play in the barn, climb trees, pick berries, check on the honey combs, and she knew we got such a kick out of using the ages old outhouse. My favorite place to play was in the three story barn she had. Not used for decades. No one was in it much since Grandpop passed away a few years earlier. There were horse reins, yokes for oxen, saddles, wooden chests and horse pens throughout the barn. The only light was from the cracks in the oaken walls and ceiling. It had a thick pungent smell of aged manure, hay leather and wood. It was mysterious and alluring, and we felt it was haunted by so many ghosts of the past. I utterly loved it.Chris, Barb, Mary Kay and I would run to the barn the way kids run to an amusement park today. We particularly enjoyed jumping from one hay loft to another. These lofts were tiered, the highest being ten feet from the roof. we would climb the oak ladders up to the lofts and jump from one fifteen feet feet down to another across from it. One day I jumped 15 feet into a pile of hay and getting up exuberantly, I noticed the rusty tines of a huge pitchfork, I just missed being impaled upon. What an adrenaline rush! That only encouraged further misdeeds of valor. (I am convinced I shed all the constraints enveloping me from Catholic School during my "barn time.") It was the supreme outlet for all my pent up emotions and need to prove myself TO myself. We also opted to jump from the top window of the barn to the sloping grassy field below. That was double fun because upon landing, we would roll down the grassy slope another twenty feet. The ultimate ride.
We loved our visits with Grandmom the most whenever our cousin Valli would come for a visit. Valli was the only child of Dad's brother Andy and his wife, Betts. Valli was idolized by we three girls, as Valli could have whatever she wanted. She never had to share. Yet, she was totally unspoiled, and certainly the most fun person to hang out with. She was always laughing and carrying on. She was very smart, and she viewed the world through the same lens I did too, but only showed when she was around. One day we were playing in the barn and we had to go to the bathroom. Valli said there was a toilet right in the barn. She took me over to a trap door on the first level of the barn, with a basement underneath. She advised me to open the trap door, squat and do my business. She says she had been doing that for years. And sure enough, looking down the stairs were tattered pieces of book pages strewn all over the stairs. I looked at her really strangely, and she said all I had to do was to rip out a few pages from the old text books on the top step. She said her Dad said the books were a real load of crap and what better use for them than this. My sisters and I laughed our heads off, as we would like to say, as we were brought up in such a pristine, immaculate environment that we would have never, in all our wildest dreams, thought up such a thing. Valli was certainly brought up well too in such respects, but her parents would never squelch her hysterical creativity and joy she constantly radiated. That impressed me very much, so whenever I am feeling a little "zaney" I go with it, as long as it was not quite THAT ZANEY!
We also would spend time dressing up in old gowns from Grandmom's trunk in her attic. I particularly liked to put on the bone corsets and large flowery hats. I also delighted in the old button up tall black shoes. We would spend hours trying on ancient finery that saw its better days well before we were born.
Another favorite past time was to climb the hundred year old pine trres out in the meadow. Some were fifty feet high, very thick trunks, with very large and well spaced branches that would wave majestically in the wind. Perfect for climbing! I would climb up about twenty feet, sit on one branch and use the branch above me as a book rest and read for hours. I would climb up the tree with a Hardy Boys Mystery, or a Nancy Drew book stuffed in my pants and climb until I found a good solid "nesting" branch where I could sit comfortably with my back resting on the trunk and my legs stretched out on a limb. Only when I could no longer read, due to the setting sun, would I come down from my heavenly perch. I would look out and take in the fifty acres around me, feeling the wind rustle through my hair, gently lifting the branch I was sitting on. I would venture far out on the limb because I could better feel the wind lifting me. I will always remember those magical days, cradled in the arms of a tree, being gently lifted by the wind, and hearing the soft sigh of the wind through the branches.
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