ANOTHER TIME 'N' PLACE

I grew up with three brothers. I was the second and from the oldest to the youngest there was only five years difference in age. It goes without saying that four boys in five years is enough to drive anyone nuts - right? Anyone except my Mother that is.

My Mother was a wee bit of a lady. She was about 5'2" or 3" tall and weighed about 130#. She wasn't tiny but she didn't have any fat on her either so didn't look fat. She was as strong as a horse and could do many jobs that most men couldn't do. She said her strength came from being her Daddy's boy. She grew up with three sisters and no brothers and being the oldest she got most of the farm chores assigned to her. That didn't bother her at all because she was with her Dad and always got to ride Pansy (a Kentucky bred race horse that her Dad bought as a foal because her mother died on the train in Paris, Idaho) or Tux Pansy's first colt. Both horses lived to ripe old ages and I can remember riding both of them when I was young.

My brother that is just younger than me is a powerful man. He won the NCAA weight lifting while he was in college in his weight division and in the division above him both on the same day.

The information above is just a lead-in for this story.

When my Mother wanted us home when we were in High School she would get in her car and drive down Main Street in our home town and then go home. Her expectation was that we would see her and beat her home. We did, most of the time, because we didn't want to be embarrassed by her telling us to get in the car it was time to be home in front of our friends.

One night my brother saw Mom driving down main street and told his friends it was time for him to go home. One of his friends asked him why he didn't just tell his OLD LADY to go to hell. He told the group - Have you ever seen my MOTHER pick up a hundred pound bag of spuds? She picks it by the ears---that's why I don't tell my MOTHER to go to hell, and he went home. From that point on there wasn't any questioning from his friends when he told them it was time to go home. For that matter none of our friends ever questioned what we were going to do when we saw her driving down main street either.