With fly paper strips hanging at each window, my plan that day was to do drawings of horses, not to be pushing manure. Dad volunteered me to shovel manure that Saturday, “Drawing can wait,” he said. It was milking time at Uncle Melvin's. He wasn't really our uncle, just a close friend of dad's that we were told he was like an uncle, and we were to call him uncle.
The cows seemed to know when it was time to stop eating the green grass and come down from the hill pasture. I waited in the barn by the fly paper strips as cousin Maryann opened the pasture gate. The cows lined up to get into the milking barn as the flies gathered, buzzing around my head. Somehow the cows knew what was expected, what was coming, as my Uncle locked each one into a stall for milking. I learned to make a wide berth around their back ends. My job was to clean up those misshapes that come with each milking. How they know when to begin the parade from the fields, I don't know. Why they didn't leave their misshapes up on the hill, I don't know. Somehow at five oclock they're all in the stalls, ready for their afternoon milking. As Uncle Melvin and Maryann attach the milking machines to each cow, I stand ready with my shovel.
As Dad is busy working on a new, secondhand tractor Uncle Melvin got from a farm auction, I'm shoveling away... Dad loves tinkering with motors like I love drawing living things - not shoveling manure. My plan for getting up early that Saturday was not to do drawings of the cows but to draw horses at my Uncle's neighboring farm, instead I shoveled manure that day.
Mom was always pointing out the beauty in the world, while Dad pointed out the work. Mom would wake me early some days to see the snow on the trees while dad pointed out sidewalks that need shoveling. Mom always pointed out the wildflowers along the road, while dad pointed out the fence that needed mending. That day, worn out from shoveling, I settled for sitting among the wildflowers sketching cows. The walk up the hill to draw horses would have to wait.
