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4 THE RURAL VOICE
Keith Roulston
Memories of a `heavenly' childhood
Keith
Roulston is
editor and
publisher of
The Rural
Voice. He
lives near
Bluth, ON.
Sometimes we know things but it
takes someone else talking about it to
remind us.
The recent death of our next door
neighbour from my childhood
brought me together with my best
friend from those days growing up on
the farm in the 1950s. We were
reminiscing about our near -insep-
arable boyhood when he mentioned
that he had already experienced the
closest thing to heaven: growing up
in our Kinloss Township farming
community in the '50s. I'd thought it
was just me who felt that way.
A country childhood is one of the
greatest privileges a child can be
given, and farm families who can't
give their children the latest video
game terminal or $150 name -brand
sneakers should never forget that.
Our childhood is not so fondly
remembered because we had the toys
that some of our town schoolmates or
city cousins would have had. Instead,
we had what you couldn't buy with
money: the freedom to roam unhind-
ered and unsupervised most of the
time without our parents having to
fear we'd cause problems for others.
And roam we did. From the time
we were old enough to be on our own
'til the time we were expected to
carry more responsibility, we were
explorers, inventors, hunters,
voyageurs — pretty much whatever
excited our imaginations. There were
five boys nearly the same age in our
extended neighbourhood (from a mile
west of us on the concession to a mile
and a half east) but it was the two of
us who spent the most time together.
From school's letting out in June to
Labour Day, we came inside only to
eat and sleep. We explored the upper
reaches of the 18 Mile Creek that ran
through the back of my friend's farm.
Spurred on by school history lessons
that told of native civilizations and
the early French explorers, we
searched for arrow heads we never
found and were sure we found burial
mounds in the woods which were
likely the remainders of upturned
roots of fallen trees.
Parents today would be appalled
at many of our adventures. We
cobbled together rafts of old fence -
posts and whatever was handy, to
float on the frigid water of the spring
flood in the meadow on our farm.
Lord knows what would have
happened if we'd fallen into that
water which was deeper than our
heads and still had floating ice in it.
On rainy days one or the other of
our barns became our indoor gym-
nasium. We scampered along the
heavy beams 25 feet in the air and,
when the hay was new and fluffy, in
those days before balers became
prevalent, we'd launch ourselves
from the highest beam, using the hay
rope, to plunge into the perfumed hay
below.
I doubt our experience was unique
for farm kids of the time. Certainly
our perfect childhoods could instantly
have disappeared had one of our
adventures gone wrong. I don't
remember hearing of any youngster
who paid the price for the kind of
risks that were an accepted part of
our lives then.
Why were our parents less
concerned about our every danger
than parents of my generation or the
parents today? Certainly parents are
more aware, between better media
coverage and plenty of warnings,
about the dangers kids face — from
falls to being kidnapped by sexual
predators. Parents who let kids out of
their sight these days would be filled
with guilt at being unfit parents.
But our parents, who had so little
cash they couldn't give us much else,
gave us a precious gift of letting us be
free. I'm sure the greatest computer-
ized learning tool could not have
developed our imaginations or our
self-reliance as much as those
carefree explorations of boyhood did.
I can think of no greater wish than
hoping other kids could have as
happy a childhood as we did.0