One of my main memories of the fair was the day my brother was showing mom which little boat he wanted to ride in by grabbing it and then neglecting to let go before he was dragged into the water and under the boat. It was a short visit to the fair that year. We had hardly got there when it was all over. Oh, he survived. Didn’t even come close to drowning.
When we went back to school in the fall and the town kids read their assignments on “What you did this summer”, it was like we lived on different planets. Some went to places I had never heard of. Others went to places I’d heard of and really wanted to go to like Banff and Jasper but their summers often seemed a bit less exciting than ours. Sometimes our parents didn’t know just how exciting. We had horses, some of our friends had horses and we all had a lot of freedom. Sometimes I think they were just happy to be rid of us for a few hours and sometimes even all day. We were happy to get away from chores and weeding.
But then sometimes we got busted.
Like the time we were playing toreadors with a herd of the neighbors young bulls in a corral. Just hanging over the rails and shaking our coats and they would charge the coats and we would laugh.
That was until the rail broke. And the bulls were out with the farmer’s prize cows. Seems it was no time at all that our parents were informed – not sure to this day how they found out it was us as we certainly weren’t telling them about it.
That little escapade was real hard on the freedom for awhile. Spent way more time weeding the garden and cleaning pens and doing chores.
Now I love to work in the garden and clean pens and do chores. Maybe our parents were preparing us for a pandemic. LOL
We have very few photos from that period in our lives. Seems most of mine include Echo, the little paint horse who made my life so much more interesting and fun.
Stay safe. If I see you wearing a mask I know you are trying to protect me and my family. Thank you.
