Memories - Jonny

At the gentle promptings of my wife, I have decided to take the time to satiate every ones curiosity concerning my most treasured childhood memories. I must confess, this is a bit of a daunting task for me, as I have so many fond recollections of days gone by.

Growing up on a large farm in northern Indiana, I had the opportunity to take part in numerous "boyhood adventures"; however, my most vivid memories are of those times spent working with my dad. There was never a shortage of learning experiences and my dad was a masterful teacher - and he did it without making it seem like a lesson. Having my own son now, I am realizing even more just how patient of a man he was. Josiah (my boy) is the embodiment of me when I was younger, at least according to my mom (and it seems she would know as well as anyone) - anyway, Josiah is forever asking questions and wanting to "help" with whatever project I am currently working on - and he is only 3. Since I can distinctly remember being in a tractor with my dad at around this age, I can only imagine what kind of questions I bombarded him with! On a farm that housed over 400 hogs, 100 cattle and 27,000 chickens, not to mention several hundred acres of farmland, there were ALOT of questions to be asked! So, to make a long story short, one of my favorite memories is growing up on a farm. To be a little more specific: helping deliver baby pigs and calves was pretty um, neat (once we came home from church to find that one of the sows had died during delivery of her piglets and since we didn't have any idea how long she had been dead we dragged her out of the farrowing pen and performed an "emergency C-section". We delivered a whole litter of still-born piglets. It's little wonder that dissecting animals in anatomy class wasn't all that exciting for me). Helping work on tractors was fascinating (Some kids got to see cars tore apart in their garages - whoop-de-doo - I got to see whole tractors split in two pieces in order to work on the transmission or the clutch. Have you ever seen the size of a friction plate on a 250 HP tractor? Now that's cool!). Treasure hunting in the woods was always a good time (I once stumbled upon the skeletal remains of a cow; so I painstakingly gathered as many of them as I could find - and believe me, I hunted - hauled them up the barn and began piecing them back together. I nearly had a complete skeleton including the teeth! Again, why am I surprised I slept through anatomy class? Sorry Mr. Meyers and Prof. Nash).

I sincerely hope that my little anecdotes were worth the wait that you all had to endure. I apologize for not getting to it sooner; however, since writing isn't one of my stronger points, it never seems to make it to the top of my 'to do' list.