Still 1974
So now we are in the summer/fall season of 1974 in small-town Iowa. These are quite the seasons for me.
One night when mom and dad went out, the boys were in charge. There was a storm that night as it was summer after all. Lightning struck the television antenna and it followed it along the side of the house and ended up bursting my fan on fire that I had running next to my bed. Now mind you, I was five years old at this time. I woke up to smoke, coughing, and unable to see anything except the red flames that oddly went around my bed. With my bed next to the wall, it was around two sides, and I couldn’t get out of my bed.
I screamed and yelled as anyone would. My brothers came running, two of them took off and one stayed and kept yelling “Run and jump to me!” I finally did what he said. He caught me in his arms, and we took off outside. By the time we got downstairs, the two brothers who took off were spraying the fire through my window with the garden hose. (What fast thinkers!) That is when mom and dad pulled into the driveway. Mom took me and dad went to relieve my brother on the ladder. By the time the fire department arrived, the fire was out. To this day, dad says “The fire department arrived after the boys had the fire out, what does that tell you?” (1974, of course.)
After the fire, I developed pneumonia and so I was hospitalized. At the age of 5, one would think I would be easy to handle. But nope! It took five people to hold me down so they could get the IV in me. (Mom told me this much later as we were talking about the good ole days.) I still dislike needles and hospitals.
Let’s not forget the tea party I had. Mom knew it was me because of the tiny little footprints leaving the scene of the party. How mom tells it, she was painting the walls along the staircase when the phone rang. She went to answer it downstairs, because that was the only phone we had at the time. She said I was taking my nap, little did she know, I woke up. I took my tea set and used the paint as the tea. She said it was all over the floor, which was carpet at the time, but that wasn’t the part that really made her mad. The little footprints going down the stairs and out the door were the last straw. She ended up taking me to grandma’s house as soon as she found me. She says, “It was to save my life.” (Now she can laugh about it, not then though.)
Next on the list of shares is our tree swing. The only thing I really remember about it is my closest brother and I would push each other on it. One evening the whole family was sitting outside and he wanted dad to push him. So, dad did. It wasn’t long before the rope broke and the brother went flying through the air, landed in the tire, and got up wanting to do it again. Mom, on the other hand, was freaking out! Once she saw that my brother was alright, she went into the house.
One day I went down to my cousins’ grandparents’ farm with dad. Little did we know dad would be rushing me to the hospital, but he did. I always went over to the German Shepherd like normal. I petted him but did not know about his sore ear. No one knew about it until they heard me screaming bloody murder. I do remember riding in the car with daddy holding a towel on my head. When dad tells it, he says they thought the dog got my eye because I was holding my hand over it. There was blood everywhere on my head and face, running down the front of me and the back of my head. He says it took 72 stitches to sew me up. That is a lot when you consider I was only five years old!
That summer was not fun for me. We went up to the lakes for the Fourth of July, but I wasn’t allowed to go swimming with the other kids because I wasn’t supposed to get my head wet. I wasn’t happy one bit about that. That night mom had to take me to the car because I was terrified of the fireworks and yes, I do remember that. Maybe due to the fire, I was in? That I don’t know.
I started preschool that fall, and I loved riding the bus. Our lane was half a mile long, so we usually got a ride down to the road, especially when it rained or was snowing and cold. Daddy had put an old farm tractor cab at the end of the driveway, so we had somewhere out of the wind when we waited for the bus.
That brings us to the snowstorm of 1975. We were snowed in for days on the farm, we couldn’t get out our front door for the first few days even! The snowdrifts were up to ten feet high in places all over the state of Iowa. Once we finally were able to get outside, the two older brothers got on the snowmobile and ended up getting it stuck on top of the hog shed. Dad had to help get it unstuck and the boys didn’t get on it after that. I do remember dad taking the tractor and digging out the driveway, it took a couple of days for him to get to the road. (I would suggest looking up the 1975 snowstorm of Iowa.) But once things got back to normal, back to school it was and I loved my new friends. The sad thing though is that we moved that summer and I didn’t see them again.
That summer was the last one I spent in that house, on that farm. That is where my adopted life began. I used to wish we would have stayed there, maybe life would have been different. Today, I am grateful my life has been the way it has. I may have many heartbreaks, but I also have many happy times in my memories, my two children, and even found my soulmate!
So let’s recap 1974. I was locked in a shed with a snapping turtle, I was stranded in a silo, I had a tea party with paint, I was in a fire, I got pneumonia, I was bit by a dog, and we had the worst blizzard Iowa has ever seen.
In July we moved to Wisconsin to run a dairy farm. Dad still can kick himself in the butt for not staying there. Tune in next week for my adventures in Wisconsin. Until then, be kind to yourself and keep journaling daily!
