The out buildings at my grandparent’s farm also provided a wide a varied playground for our adventurous play. We built “forts” in the barn by moving bales of straw or the stacks of bushel baskets around, we walked across the high, hand-hewn, beams from one section of the barn to the other with our arms spread out on each side for balance.
We climbed around on the “mountain” made of ears of “horse corn” in the corn crib. We made “highways” and dug holes in the dirt for our trucks in the empty “beds” of the greenhouse.
While my grandfather’s farm was the most exciting place for us to play, it was unfortunately, sometimes dangerous. One day Dan and I decided to make an “elevator” on our favorite climbing tree; a Maple in front of my grandparent’s house. We had had found a small square piece of wood that we could use for the floor of our elevator, we had scrounged a rope from the greenhouse shed, which we attached to our floor, then swung the rest of the rope over a limb.
It all seemed good, until we tried it out, then when one of us stood on the floor, and tried to pull down on the rope dangling from the limb, thinking that would lift our elevator, we discovered that the muscles on our small arms were useless in our attempt to lift us or our elevator off of the ground.
We came up with a brilliant solution however; if we could add a heavy weight to the free end of the rope as a counterbalance, that would probably help us pull ourselves upward. We knew of the perfect heavy counterbalance. It was a solid iron ball with a very short chain attached that had been used to hobble horses, preventing them from wandering away. The iron ball was a bit larger than a softball, and very weighty.
After a search in the well house, where old rarely used items were kept, we found ball and struggled to carry it over to the Maple tree. We tied it so it dangled from the end of the rope and then I took my place on the floor of the elevator, reached high on the rope and began to pull. Unfortunately, the elevator still didn’t work. More unfortunately, my pulling on the rope caused the heavy iron ball to swing, smashing into my face.
It not only busted my lip, but more seriously, broke a big section off of my permanent front tooth. (My other front tooth had already been similarly chipped when playing “Blind Man’s Bluff.” I was blindfolded, seeking my playmates when my mouth ran into the trunk of the family’s parked car.)
One September, on the afternoon of the first day of school beginning the fourth grade, which was actually only a half day of school, Neal, my neighborhood friend and I had assumed the dramatic roles of pirates and where chasing each other through the various levels of the barn. In my attempt to escape, I jumped onto the wooden ladder that led to the upper level of the barn where the bushel baskets were stacked.
In my rush to quickly scramble up the ladder, about halfway up, my hand missed grabbing the side of the ladder, and down I tumbled to the floor. As I fell, I stretched out my left hand to break the fall, however it was not my fall that was broken when I slammed into the floor, it was my left forearm. I had broken one bone and fractured the other.
While these injuries slowed me down for a while, they didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for hard and energetic play at the farm.
Take a look at my paintings: davidmarchant2.ca
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