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Patti Lapp Schreiner

I grew up on a farm in eastern Colorado. At the time, I believed I was the luckiest person in the world, and now that I’m an adult, I realize my experiences in the country developed many of the values and morals I hold today. Most of these were instilled in me by my father and his love of finding the joy in every situation.
 
My constant questions of “are we there yet?” and “where are we now?” or “why?” were answered by my father’s optimistic words of “it’s up there, just around the corner.” Dad believed that everything was up around the corner, even life, and he often told me that I shouldn’t be in such a hurry to get there. Still, I spent many years anticipating what was in store for me up around the next corner. Becoming thirteen years old was an exciting accomplishment, immediately overshadowed by wanting to be sixteen, then eighteen, and then twenty-one. Each journey to the next corner proved to be just what Dad promised: an adventure. 
 
Cooking was an important part of living on a farm since we had no McDonald’s. My mother often told me that at eight years old, I was too young to help in the kitchen.  That didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for cooking, though, because I found a way to experience measuring, blending, squishing, and stirring many different ingredients by assembling my own little kitchen out behind the playhouse (for privacy). My specialty was wonderfully aromatic mud pies.
 
An old paint bench doubled as a countertop.  I borrowed tin cups from the well house and used wooden spoons made from stripping the bark from tree branches. The dog’s water dish was my mixing bowl.
 
Most of the ingredients I used back then are still used in kitchens today. Water came from a spigot outside the pig’s pen and Bossy, the milk cow, willingly gave me a cup of warm milk whenever I needed it. I pilfered eggs from the chicken coop or straight from the egg basket inside the back door of Mom’s kitchen. Oats were plenty, even though I sometimes had to shell them straight from the field. Dad taught me how to smash them with a hammer. There was also the occasional chocolate chip, potato chip, or wood chip I added for better texture. I learned the reservoir in the bottom of my cupped hand held exactly one-half of a teaspoon of soda. A drop of maple flavoring added to my mud pies gave them an authentic pancake smell which lasted for days.
 
By the time I reached thirteen, making mud pies had lost its appeal, and I found other interests. One of my favorite summer afternoon pastimes was rocking chickens to sleep in the chicken coop.  I herded most of the chickens inside, closed both doors, and when the squawking and panic quieted, I picked up a chicken. After tucking its head under its wing, I hummed or sang softly as I gently rocked it to sleep. As soon as the hen fell asleep, I balanced it on a perch then picked up another chicken, repeating the process, moving around the coop as quietly as possible while avoiding the more aggressive egg-sitting hens.    
 
Often, I would have many chickens sleeping in organized rows before a noise woke them all. As soon as one woke up and clucked in panic, the others awoke, too, causing a clucking frenzy. Even before the dust settled, I would begin again by lifting a panicked hen, tucking her securely under my left arm, and rocking her to sleep.  
 
I only succeeded a few times in getting all of the hens to sleep before stealing quietly out of the door. The lesson I learned was not how to coax a panicked chicken into slumber but how to be patient and undeterred by repetition. More than once, as I exited the chicken coop, Dad would ask if I’d gotten them all!
 
Our farm had many out buildings, including a large round silo. It remained empty for all the years I lived there but was not unused. I spent many hours inside of it tromping around on the powdered dirt floor as I repeatedly smacked a red Jack ball with a badminton racket trying to launch it out of the top of the tall silo. The ball came back at me from all sides as it ricocheted down after hitting the concrete just inches from the top. Many times, I jumped up to meet it thinking I might get it over the top if I smacked it while it was still high in the air.
Two summers went by, and I was fourteen years old before watching in awe as the ball flew up to the top of the silo, bounced on the six inch concrete lip and disappeared down the other side.
 
Getting the jack ball over the top of the silo was not an easy task, and by the time I accomplished it, I was hot, sweaty, and exhausted. The only downside was that once the red ball flew over the top, I would spend anywhere from a few minutes to a few days searching for it on the other side. Sometimes, I never found it. Once, it came bouncing back over the top into the silo. Dad had been waiting on the outside, sure of my ability, and wanting to share in it. The experience of accomplishment was paramount to having lost a ball but secondary to the proud smile on Dad’s face. 
 
Some days, I’m still only concerned with getting on with life. Then I’ll remember watching my dad shut the tractor off at the end of the field, jump off, walk across the road, and slide into the irrigation ditch clothes and all just for the fun of it. Dad has since passed on, but I think of him each time I encounter one of life’s stumbling blocks because it means there’s a new facet of life waiting for me, just up around the corner.