Indiana

After 4 years in Milwaukee and the only home I remembered, we moved to a farm in Indiana where I spent the next 8 years. Cows, horses, cats, dogs, pigs, and a goat were who I had instead of my dear Milwaukee family. I made new friends at school and learned to adjust to my rural surroundings. I drove a tractor and a manual transmission pickup long before I was old enough to drive a car. I learned how to bail hay and hang tobacco to dry. I learned to identify owls and songbirds by their songs. I bush hogged and herded cattle and drove posts for fences. I cut grass endlessly for hours upon hours. I bottle fed Glen, a Hereford calf abandoned by his mother, who we eventually ate. I caught fish and crawdads and snakes in the creek. We only had 5 digits in our phone number and sometimes when you picked up the phone, a neighbor was already on the line talking with someone else and you’d have to wait until they were done. My best friend’s family slaughtered their own cows with a bullet to the head…in their front yard… and would bring the chunks of meat into the house, wash it in the sink, and store it in their freezer. When my dog killed a groundhog during my 8th grade graduation party, the boys in the class cooked it on a campfire with some barbecue sauce (seriously, wtf, and what kind of parent lets their kid eat groundhog??). I learned to shoot a rifle in my school’s mandatory hunting safety class in 8th grade. Farmer’s Fair was a holiday and we had 2 days off school every Fall. I started working at the local pizza place at age 13, making pizzas and hoagies, and also sampling the strawberry daiquiris that the owner would test on us. 🙂

I grew to appreciate the quiet solitude of the outdoors and created lifelong friendships with a few of my classmates. I like to say that I spent my formative years in Milwaukee but I grew up in Moores Hill, Indiana. It was an interesting place to spend high school and gave me a unique perspective of rural America.

The back barn, the creek, and my sweet Samoyed, Toco, are some of my most precious memories.

Two of our horses, Kate and Toby, with my grandparents and parents.

The best part of spending high school in the country in the 80s is that there were no rules. I spent high school during the prime “big hair” band years, listening to Grimlock, Cinderella, Anthrax, Pantera, and obsessing over Metallica (still the best band ever!). Gen X had freedom like no other generation and I’m glad I was part of it! Massive parties with bonfires, headbanging bands, kegs, off-road vehicles, and homegrown wacky tobacky. If neighbors complained and called the cop (yes, the one cop), he was at least 20 minutes away and somebody called to warn us so that we could hide in the bushes or move on to the next party. Anyway, the cop was also the Baptist preacher and the substitute teacher and I was a straight A student so… I wasn’t too worried.