Confessions of a Farm Wife

Confession #4 - About the years that the 'town family' moved to our farming area, we were at our annual visit to my Grandparents, which is when we, the 'farm people', tasted life in the city for a few weeks. Dad could only get a weeks vacation from making hay and milking cows, so he drove our family the full two days and deposited us to our Grandparents' home. Our Grandma got very, very carsick and could barely tolerate a ride to a park for picnic, let alone another trip to our place; once was it. So Mom and we kids stayed at the Grandparents for 3 weeks every summer.
The biggest difference I noticed about living in the city was how close kids lived to each other. In contrast, the nearest a kid my age lived was at least a mile in any of four directions from our farm. My cousin was one of them and when our parents didn't drive us back and forth, we rode our bikes. We even had our designated 'half-way mark', where we loyally accompanied the other one and then split to go home. We never let the other one ride all that way alone. Not worried about perverts back then, we were just were true friends.
This supposed 'isolation' during my childhood was deepened by our phone system. This cousin and all but one of my school mates were long distance calls. I probably called my cousin less than 5 times all during my growing up years!
So, while eating lunch at Grandma's it was unsettling to have the neighbor boy, just a year younger and sometimes rather pesky, paste his face against her kitchen screen door. Mom would ask what he wanted, and he wanted to know when I could 'come out and play'. Some days I didn't want to 'come out and play' with him, but he was already posted at the door, awaiting my exit. That never happened back at my house on the farm; we could carefully chose our playmates.
But those weeks in the city offered new adventures: real sidewalks that even went to the back door beckoning for bikes and roller skates, mysterious back alleys, the downtown ice cream parlor, and best of all was the mom & pop grocery store every couple of blocks. Ours was just a half- block walk away! Pure joy was a 2 minute hop on a sweltering August afternoon! And Mom often gave the ok. There developed my life-long fondness for orange sherbert push-up bars and ice cream sandwiches.
Still, I was always ready to go back home, ride my bike with my cousin on our rough gravel roads, and years later found myself happily, settled back on a dairy farm. But then came the years 2008 and 2009.