Memories

This guy? He's my other brother... not the one with kids in another post but the one that's next to me in age. He was my first best friend- partly of course, because I was just enough older and he was just guillible enough to try things for my enjoyment that I was too chicken to do...stuff that would earn a solid whack from Mom, for instance- stuff like running through the pile of dirt she'd just swept up in the dining room...funny thing, though- she saw through that andwhacked me instead of him... he ran through it...I told him too... I must not have been quite as smart as I thought I was... wowWe lived in this big old farmhouse with a big old barn and a smaller and very rickety barn behind it.


That barn had a steeply pitched roof that flattened out at the bottom to a much shallower pitch. We could climb up a fence at the side and get up onto the lower roof (we were about Oh, 5, 6, 7...something like that). Once up, we scooted all the way to the top of the steep roof, sat down and slid down...it was great...fantastically fun! Addictive... and proly a little dangerous; at least we were told in no uncertain terms NOT to do it.


Of course, we didn't listen. I mean... come on... How many kids have their own amusement park-style slide in their backyard? We loved it. And Mom always knew... always. I couldn't figure out how. I mean- she was busy, babies to look after and food to cook...plus she was Dad's 'Hired Man'- milking cows and feeding calves and helping in the fields. There was no way on earth she could keep track of us every single minute, so we hung out on the barn roof...
but she always knew.


Later, I found out we were wearing out the seats of our play clothes on the rough metal roof! Well ,What brought that back? This Baby Blues comic strip... I love it! Sunday evenings are usually 'fried brain' types. End of a long day, more Russian than I care to deal with (Ukrainian feels downright homey in comparison), generally company for supper- and I'm not worth much afterwards. There's verb work to do...and I contemplated it...looked at it... and couldn't face it. Dug around old pic files instead and found some 'stuff'.