If a farm had a sign with the farm's name on it, seemed to me like that farm had to be kind of a big deal. Maybe kind of a fancy farm. Leastwise, that's how I figured it. And nobody ever told me any different. Of course, I never asked.
When my dad packed all of us into our big blue station wagon for a Sunday afternoon drive, I kept an eye out for farms with their name printed on a sign. I couldn't read yet, but a sign was a sign. Those Sunday afternoon drives were kind of a dirty job for me, (that's what my dad called it when he had to get his hands real dirty) but that was because of the station wagon and my seat in the car. I got to ride way in the very farthest back part of the car, next to the rear window. There were no seats back there either, so you see, once again, I didn't get a chair to sit on. Not for eating at the table and not for riding in the car. But I didn't complain about it. (I didn't complain about much back then...okay, maybe mosqpuito bites but that's about it. And yes, my brother, Fordyce with his extra long arms, but that's just about it.) The reason I said it was a dirty job was because of the gravel roads and the dust that floated around inside the car. There must have been an awful lot of cracks we couldn't see in that car. But even though it was really dusty inside, I kept on looking for farms with signs. And I don't remember ever finding another one!
The "Fertile Acres Brown Swiss Farm" sign played a part in one of my earliest childhood memories.It's about my big sisters doing yet another thing together.
You see, my sisters did a lot of things together, it seemed to me. Here are some of them.They tied scarves over their hair after supper and followed my dad to the barn to milk cows by hand. (Mom called the scarves skauts. That's Norwegian for scarf. The scarves were supposed to keep their hair from smelling like a cow but I don't know if that really worked.) My sisters piled hay in the hayloft together. They picked rocks off the fields in the springtime. They went to 4-H meetings and played softball together. They sang in the church choir and they went to Luther League together. (In case you don't know what Luther League is, this is what I figured out all by myself. Luther League is a kind of club at church, like the Mickey Mouse Club, except that it was only for teenage Lutherans. A kid went to Luther League after they were too old for Sunday School.) The sisters even sang together just for fun. A lot of people thought they were pretty good at it, too. As far as I know. At least, they said so.
The day that I remember was really hot and it must have been in between first and second crop, or between second and third crop hay. I think that because it seemed like on our farm, there was somebody puttin' up hay all summer long, except on that day. That day, my sisters were not stacking hay. In fact, they weren't doing anything but laying around!
Mary Lou was probably the oldest of my sisters that were still living on the farm at that time.
At least, I think so. She was pert 'near grown up far as I could tell. After her came Betty Jean and then Vernice. Fordyce came after Vernice but I don't remember anything about him that day. He might a' thought what we were doing was a "girl only" kind of thing.
The sisters had changed into their swimsuits upstairs in the bedroom with the two double beds, so I followed them and I changed, too. Then they spread themselves out on the lawn to bake. We had a large lawn on the farm, big enough to play softball. The yard was the first thing that a visitor would see when they drove to our farm. And of course, our great big sign, "Fertile Acres Brown Swiss Farm." My sisters lay on the grass below the sign, soaking up the sun.
I thought it was a useless thing to lay on the grass to get a tan. Oh, and get this...first they smeared baby oil on their skin which made them all shiny and slippery. I wasn't about to get too close to any of them when they were wearing baby oil. They did smell nice, though. They talked to each other a little. They talked about "getting a tan." They talked about getting rid of their farmer tans. It made "farmer tans" sound like a bad thing. And what did the kids living in town call their tans? I'd never worried about getting a tan and I wasn't about to start right then. Tan skin just happened when you weren't even thinking about it. There they lay, like they were afraid the sun wouldn't hit the right places if they moved. The only movement was the sweating and there was a lot of that going on.
My sisters invited me to lay down on the grass with them and be still, but I didn't want to. There was no breeze when you lay down. How had they not noticed? But they would a' missed my company so I stayed. I skipped around between them, chattering. I had an awful lot to say in those days. Probably helpful questions like, "Aren't you hot yet? Is it time to roll over and get the other side? Do you want a glass of water? Should I go get you a cookie?" The angle with that question was that once my hand was in the cookie jar, nobody would notice if an extra cookie went missing. But no, they didn't need me to do anything for them.
As it happened, a man, (but maybe there were two of them, I don't remember that part) came out to the farm and climbed up the Highline poles that day. He had a job of some kind up there--no idea what it might have been, but there he was, high up in the air, hanging onto a pole right next to our lawn. Below him were my long-legged sisters, working on their tans. They ignored that man up on the pole. Didn't even wave. It was like he wasn't even there. Even being shiny like they were, it would a' been nice to wave. Even if they did have farmer tans, it's always good to be polite.
When mom called us in to eat dinner, she and dad were chuckling about the man on the Highline pole. Sayin' something about how "the poor man was having a hard time keeping his mind on his work. Things were going to end up crooked up there." Dad said he was probably distracted by the view and I could see why. You just didn't see big signs like ours, with the name of the farm on 'em like that every day. No, you sure did not.
