11 15 12

More back roads to the front of my mind

 

Let's see, when you are in the third grade...your what 8 or 9 years old.  So any cogent explanation of the world has to wait for sixty or seventy years to make any sense to anyone over the age of 12.

 The old man thinks that is a pretty good explanation for his thoughts as a turkey buzzard drifts over his head making lazy circles and feeling the atmosphere for any rotting debris below.  Amazing how those birds have a totally different view of the world than do we.  Sure it's an areal view, but the scent is the thing that grabs them alighting only to feed on the carrion it finds. 

 

 The barn of his youth is gone. Probably would have been smaller than he remembers anyway.
 

But just like the buzzard, he can almost remember the feelings in his nose and even on the taste buds of a large working barn with thirty milk cows and three horses.  On the ground floor there is the scent of cow and horse waste. Not really all that bad once you get used to it.  The second floor and the tell tale musty sniff of ground corn and wheat mixed with some soybean meal to provide feed for the farm animals and chickens.  The third and most exciting floor smells of dried hay and straw baled into building blocks for the forts of nine year old minds.

 

"Jim T" ran the barn.  Literally ran [managed] it.  Took care of the farm animals.  Hand milked the cows, twice a day, every day, every year.  He fed the myriad of cats milk, directly from the source, hitting them squarely in open mouth every time.  That source of calcium kept them balanced with all the mice they were in charge of corralling.  He mid-wifed more pregnant cows than probably now inhabit that urban county.  In fact he helped to deliver the first live birthday gift given to the old man by his grand parents.