Cow Pie

This post contains one of my memories of my mother as a young woman. She was always very proper and correct. Here is the incident as I remember it from the perspective of a 7 year old child.

Skirt flapping and legs flashing, my mother made a one-legged bee-line for our rented farm house as her family doubled over with laughter in the apple orchard. I can still see her in my mind's eye as clearly as the day it happened.

Friends of my parents were visiting us at our house that butted up to an old apple orchard belonging to our dairy farmer neighbor. It was a balmy summer day - warm and breezy - the perfect day for a group stroll in the orchard. It trees were old and gnarled and their fruit was spotty and mealy so the farmer sent his dairy cows into it daily to graze. Large thistles dotted the closely cropped grass, so you had to watch your step for more than one reason in this old orchard turned cow pasture.

My mother was wearing a plaid shirtwaist dress and thin rubber flip-flops (we called them Zorries.) The adults were walking in a group as my twin sister and older sister buzzed around them like flies circling a warm apple pie. The adults walked too slow for us to stay with them all the time, but Mom, Dad, "Uncle" Leland, and mom's sister, Ruth, were lazing along enjoying the sunshine and good conversation.

Suddenly we heard a screech followed by... "Leland! Put me down!" We kids stopped in our tracks, turned to see Leland grinning and gripping my shrieking aunt around her waist holding her above a huge thistle plant bristling with sturdy thorns. Her tanned legs bicycled as she tried to wriggle out of his clutches as his smile spread wider. "Okay! I'll put you down right here!" he chuckled and started lowering her down onto the thistle plant.

As Ruth's shrieks increased in volume, Mom went to her rescue...and stepped smack dab in the center of a fresh cow pie!! Pasty brown manure squished out between the ground and the rubber sole of her flip-flop in slow motion as my mother stared at her foot in horror!

Time stopped. We all stared at the manure curling up over her bare toes like a tsunami.

Then...my Dad snickered, opening floodgates of laughter from the rest of the adults...."Ha, ha, ha, ha!" I looked incredulously at Dad, stunned that he was actually laughing at Mom. He NEVER laughed at her! Soon we were all howling so hard we had doubled over clutching our stomachs.

Mom's face reddened when she saw that even the sister she tried to rescue was laughing at her. She turned and started hopping and running back to the house, disgusted with us all. I can still see her make that desperate run for the house, cow-pie bits falling off the flip-flop that she held gingerly at arms length.

Those were good times...but not for Dad. Someone didn't talk to him for quite some time!