My dad had an old army truck. He took the sides off when he was taking the D2 Caterpillar tractor to the other farm.
The barn is a good 2 city blocks from the house, so sound didn't carry very well.
I, as usual, was climbing and the truck looked like a good bet...who knows why, I was a kid.
I had on shorts and a top and bare feet...always bare feet.
It was a hot summer's day and I was sweaty, so when I heard mom calling me to come clean up and go to town, I jumped off the truck bed.
But, I didn't land on the cement floor as I intended.
Instead my shorts got caught on one of the metal rectangles (?) that hold the sides safely in place.
I took my mad leap and ended swinging upside down and back and forth like a bedsheet in a strong wind.
I began to flail my arms thinking I was close enough to the ground that I could get purchase and by throwing my weight downward I would land on my hands and knees.
Not such bloody luck!
I was 1 inch from the cement floor. I bloody inch. Using my weight I swung one way then the other. When the toes touched the fingers didn't and vice versa.
I was becoming frantic. I began yelling, help! help me! This went on for days...well minutes but it felt like days. Me yelling and flailing and swinging back and forth under the damn truck. ,
Finally, after what seemed like a year.....my sister came to the big door and looked at me. I pulled my head up and saw to my horror that she was laughing. Laughing so hard that she was doubled over. I yelled at her to help me and she just kept laughing. Finally she ran halfway to the house and called my mother to come, quickly. There I thought, hearing her in the distance, mom will get me down.
I lay still for a while, blood running to my head and beginning to go numb in my legs.
Eventually my mother arrived and standing next to my sister, both still in the doorway, I looked up to see them both laughing their heads off.
I don't know what I said, probably 'kiddy swear' and then.......I told mom if she didn't get me off the truck I would tear my shorts if I had to.
They were still laughing as I, blind with anger threw my body weight as hard as I could until I heard the telltale sound of my shorts give way.
I landed as I expected, in the dirt and on my hands and knees.
I got up dirty, sweaty and tear stained, pulled all of my shredded dignity around me and stalked past them with my head high....probably 'kiddy swearing'.
They stopped as I passed them, then as I moved toward the house, I heard them........................still bloody laughing.
Many years later I saw in my vivid imagination, what I must have looked like and then................I too laughed!

My grandfather bought a steam driven tractor, it was part cash part barter. They were large and cumbersome. But they allowed the farmer to get on the field sooner than those using horses. They didn't need to be feed or watered or rested. They just worked and worked. And my grandfather did just that. When he was done with his own small 100 acre farm, he drove down the road to help other farmers get their fields plowed, disc-ed, harrowed and planted weeks before others.
This ability, increased the farmers time for other tasks. It allowed them to give their crops extra grow-time and have an earlier harvest.
Because my grandfather took the risk, others profited. And his foresight helped his neighbours as well as himself.
If it had failed, he would have lost, but because it succeeded, he was applauded.
My father did the same thing. he bought a D2 Caterpiller tractor which he used on his and my uncles fields, thereby leaving much time to do 'custom work' for other farmers. He helped them. They paid him. My family gained. No one lost.
I find myself proud of both of them for this.
There's nothing quite like being born with mud between your toes. (although it was a bit hard on mom)

The rain was coming down in buckets. My sister and I asked mom if we could put on our bathing suits and go out in it. She, checking the sky for lightening, said yes.
We tore out into the front yard where the water was collecting in our dainage ditch. It was shallow and grass lined. And we, laughing used the grass as a slide. In and out of the water we went. Wet from above and wet from below. We screamed our joy at the rain. We splashed each other and swam in the slow moving ditch as children will til we tired of it. Eventually we came in and when in the house mom said 'now you need a bath' at which we howled our displeasure. What made one a joy and the other a curse?

In the summer, on the farm, you could quite literally eat your fill without ever leaving the fields. The purple plums,the yellow pears, the fuzzy peaches, six types of apples, raspberries, cherries both sweet and sour. Elderberries, blueberries, gooseberries, crabapples, lush ripe, wet tomatoes and all manner of vegetables. Then, in the fall the potatoe lifting.
All summer long the fruits of the farm filled our always empty bellys and taught us to forage.

After a blizzard we all went out into the snow. We ran, jumped and laughed. It was wonderful and cold. One day my younger sister got lost. We all spread out to search for her following the muffled screams of both fear and exasperation. She was finally found in a drift quite far from the house. We had failed to see the trail. She, with her rosy cheeks and blond curls peeping out from her helmet like cap was blisteringly angry. She was only two but she told us off in no uncertain terms. My brother said, 'Fine, stay there then' She looked at him then howled the howl of a wolf cub....which brought my mother to the door. Taking in the situation she just said to my brother, 'Go get her.' So he did. He tucked her, still red faced with screaming, under his arm and hauled her back to the house, where our waiting mom declothed and calmed her.
The rest of us shrugged and went back to the snow banks.
Kids eh?

In the lake in front of our grandmothers cottage there was a sudden and deep hole. My brother warned me to stay away from it. I thought I had. Apparently not. In I feel and began to drown. Now I won't tell you that my six years of life flashed before me. No, what flashed before me was my brother standing there watching me go up, gaspe for air, then go down again. I was bloody furious. 
On my third trip down I had lost my anger and was now seriously frightened. My brother again looked at me (with I think disgust) and then reached over and grabbed me by the hair and pulled me out.
I have never felt such gratitude and was gulping my thank you to heim when he just said, 'Idiot, I told you not to go there.' 
 And that was the end of my gratitude.
Kid's eh?

My mother and father both had a grade eight education.
They grew up and married during the depression. And this is what they did.
My mother taught herself how to cook, to sew, to clean (and yes you do have to learn) to decorate, to make a dollar do the work of ten. To raise children, to can fruits and vegetables, to do laundry and to hold a finger food luncheon.
My father, went from a two horse hitch to a steam tractor, to a D2 Caterpiller tractor. He build his house, his barn, his implement shed, his work shop, he wired, he plumbed, he bartered, he traded, he learned to fill out government forms, to start a farm co-op.and to donate a tenth of his money to his church.
We ate well, we dressed well, we had manners and we treated our neighbors with respect..even when they didn't deserve it.
They did all of the things required of them and they did it all with a grade eight education.