I Remember This Day

This photo was taken in Hope, Maine at a Hunt/ Howe family reunion.  I remember the day.  The setting was a dairy farm owned by my grandmother’s first cousin Francina Pearse and her husband William.  I am sure if you asked an old Mainer they would say I had it wrong.  No, the farm is owned by William Pearse and his wife Francina.  (side note is Francina and William are also cousins, and, no, that isn’t common in Maine).  To me, the farm will always be Francina’s.  Well, a farm is a wonderful place to hold a family reunion especially when you are young rambunctious children like we were in those days.  Especially when there is an over abundance of very old and very boring relatives.  As you can see by the photo, there were.  I mean, when you’re six or seven or, I don’t know, just young, anyone old enough to find sitting around and chatting fun was too old.  So we set our sights on the cow barn.  I don’t know if I found the smell of cow manure as pleasing as I do now.  I do know watching cows was very fascinating to me AND Vinny.  You would think by the never ending cow presents I received as an adult, I was the only one in the family who found cows cool. Vinny never received those lovely treasures (ha-ha), but he DID love cows too.  In fact, we used to sneak up the dirt road near our house in our little suburb of Appleton to the dairy farm on the hill.  (I know it’s hard to believe not all the roads were dirt in that town).  For some reason we did find the elderly woman on that farm to be quite interesting.  Maybe because we were the center of attention when we stopped by and maybe she gave us food.  Who knows.  Well, on Francina’s farm that day we checked out the cows.  Then we found another room.  For some reason it still instills fear in me to this day.  I thought Vinny was going to die.  Picture this.  The floor abruptly ending.  A few boards of uneven lengths jetting out from the end of the floor OVER (let me emphasize OVER) a massive drop TO… a massive drop to what seemed like an ocean of cow manure.   Have you seen cow manure in an ocean form?  It’s like thick pea soup but brown and smelly.  You could definitely drown in it.  And Vinny, of course, wasn’t satisfied with standing on the edge of the floor.  He had to walk on the boards jetting out.  And teeter on the edge.  Maybe that’s when I got an appreciation for prayer.  He didn’t fall in, but I still think of it every time I drive by the farm and every time I see this photo.  I seriously thought my brother was going to drown in cow poop.   It over shadows every other memory of the family reunion.  Good or bad.