I don’t know why everybody was so fascinated with the little stream up Deer Creek, but it was a big thing to bike up from Portville (N.Y.) the three or four miles, traipse through a field and over (or under) a barbwire fence and locate the one spot in the creek that had a hole big enough to swim in.
So several times a summer I’d agree to go up Deer Creek, find the hole and swim about for an hour or so. I never enjoyed this swim. First, the creek wasn’t very big and it made little sense to me for several of us to puddle around in it for any length of time.
But the bike ride up the road past farms on a summer day was worth it. The days were usually quiet with a smidgen of a breeze that was just enough to keep the sweat off my forehead as I pedaled in unison with the thoughts in my head.
Over my head hawks circled looking for their next meal. I never quite figured out what they preyed on, nor did I ever ask an adult, but hawks were a constant presence in the valleys between the Alleghenies, circling, circling, and then on occasion I would see one dive and disappear.
Days when it was particularly sweltering the breeze did nothing for the sweat and the asphalt road would make a slick sound as the tires on the bike rode over it. The smell of asphalt and weeds and hay and straw swirled into a strange smell concoction, the quiet grew so quiet the wings of a butterfly could be heard.
When all that came together, that was about as good as it got. Time slowed to slow motion and each push on the pedal was amplified and it was like I was alone in this vast valley with just the hawks overhead the only company.
The strange thing about walking alone in a hay field in mid-90s weather is seeing scurrying here and there the mice. Field mice. Makes you wonder what mice in a house are called; house mice?
I always wondered why they were so small. And why were they in the fields? I guess that is why on the farms I worked as a young boy there were always plenty of cats around. They were the field mice catchers.
There was not much more scary things around a farm then rats. Big rats. When you are eight or nine or 10, rats are very big. I don’t know why I remember them, but I do. What was really scary on the farm, especial the Schutt Farm, was the big-horned cattle as they came in the barn from a day out on thepasture. They would look me in the eye, shake their head, and be confronted by a farm hand and told to scoot along.
Still, I didn’t like the look in their eyes.
The milking stalls and the haymow sang to me. I could not resist constantly walking through the barn and taking each stall in with a long pause. Those scary big-horned cattle were not as intimidating when they were in lock-down in their stalls. They still gave me the evil eye, but I could look back at them without fear, knowing they could not touch me.
I must have gotten in on the farm business about the time those new-fangled milking machines came in because they suddenly began appearing, although most of the milking was still done by hand. I was taught how to do it, but never really got the hang of it. Which was alright with me; I wasn’t interesting in being a milker.
It was in the haymow where I tried to hang out. Something about stacks of hay made for a big playpen. I could build forts out of them and climb in. I could hid among the bales. Or just sit at the every top, king of all I surveyed.
On the Linn Farm, we had a basketball court in the haymow. Well, actually it was on the lower level, and the court was just a hoop nailed to a big wooden pillar that carried part of the load for the roof.
Countless games were played there. During the winter, the big sliding doors that were at least 100 feet tall, or so it seemed to a young boy like me, were shut, but still old man winter would ease his way in between the cracks to let you know he was around.
One big beam ran diagonal over our heads, serving as our George Miken to block any shot attempted. But you learned to shoot over the beam, not always successful, but still attempted more than necessary. I made a basketball one day, putting up a shot over the beam and everybody’s jaw dropped.
I can still smell the hay when I think back to then. The wooden floor seemed slick, but, hey, it was better being inside sliding around then it was being outside sliding around on the ice and snow. And this was back in the 1940s and 50s when the winters were cold and long. There were weeks when the temperature never got above zero, and sometimes crashed into the minus 20s and 30s.
You adapt, though, to what is. No matter how cold, no matter how deep the snow, it did not stop us from going outside and playing in it. We had the hillside up on Linn’s Farm to ski and sled on. As long as you could stop before the barbwire fence or duck your head and sled under the barbwire, you were good to go down the hill.
The Allegheny River would freeze over, but it was a hairy proposition to attempt to walk to the other side. I don’t remember ever doing it. I do remember walking halfway and hear the ice start to crack and turn around and head back to safe ground.
There were some wetlands next to the restaurant just down the street from our house. It would freeze over and we neighborhood kids would play ice hockey. We used tin cans for the puck and broom handles or just any old sticks we could find. Nobody had a regular hockey stick. That wouldn’t be fair, anyway.
Somebody’s dad, and I don’t remember whom now, put up lights around one bank of the ice so we often played at night when it was really cold. But, that’s the way it was. We adjusted and played on.
One night we built a bonfire in the middle of the pond. I don’t remember the bonfire melting the ice. Now that had to be really, really cold that night.
I wasn’t a great skater. I was decent enough so I didn’t fall. My athleticism was marginalized because I was not an expert skater. It evened things out and our games were hotly contested. The main thing is we had fun and who won was not as important as just being out there and exploring our ice limits.
A very small creek fed into the wetlands and I often would skate up the creek just to see how far I could go. The creek came off the hill behind my sister’s house and somehow ran underground from a holding pond on one side of the railroad tracks and came up on the other side. So I could skate almost to the tracks, which was probably a quarter-mile.
The big thing I had going in the winters was football. I loved to play football in the snow. When we had enough guys that is what we did. When we didn’t have enough guys, my older brothers would play defense and hike the ball to me and I would have to beat them. It would not have been fair for little ol’ me to be smacked down by them, so their handicap was they had to play on their knees. My concession was the playing field was only five or six feet wide.
Given all of that, I have great memories of trying to shake and bake my brothers and gain ground on them. They took delight in knocking me off my feet and into snow and ice. I never got hurt enough that I cried, but I sure remember being angry enough to want to take the ball and run right over them.
As I got a little older, probably around 10 and 11, I used to run barefoot in the snow and ice. Talk about stupid. But it was kind of fun. You have to keep moving or else the feet would freeze up, but it was liberating to run free without shoes. Even if it was stupid.
