Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

My parents were lawbreakers before their time

by Julie Carter

For once, it is good I'm as old as I am, or my parents would have criminal records.

Last week I heard a word of caution about possible legal ramifications of paddling your child. What I need warned about is my frequent temptation to paddle other people's children, oh say, while standing in line at the grocery store.

Don't call or write me about child abuse statistics. That's not what I'm talking about here.

I grew up in the periphery of the pioneer years when most families still believed that to spare the rod was to spoil the child. With that as a measure, I assure you I wasn't spoiled nor were my siblings.

That wasn't the only thing about life that current regulatory agencies, planning commissions and zoning laws would never have allowed.

We had an outhouse! Yes, the hole-in-the-ground, wood shed-over-the-top, splinters-in-your-hiney outhouse. And furthermore, you had to walk across a little plank bridge over an irrigation ditch with rushing ice-cold water to get to it. It was truly down the garden path.

There were no EPA and Hazmat permits posted at the outhouse and there was no code enforcement or engineering on the bridge.

We ate hunks of smoked ham that came directly from hanging in the rafters of the smokehouse and washed it down with cold, raw milk. We ate eggs fresh from the chicken's effort and processed our own meats that included pork, beef, assorted fowl, trout and venison of various kinds.

We had open-air fires and slept in flood plains as we camped along the creek, again without permit and worse yet, without adult supervision. (Mother's x-ray, telephoto vision not withstanding as she kept an eye on us from the ranch house on the hill.)

We rode horses with reckless abandon. We shoveled out barns and weeded gardens fertilized with the byproduct. We assisted dad with veterinarian jobs that involved blood, bodily fluids and sharp objects.

Child labor laws were just that. If you were a child and big enough, you labored.

We climbed hills, rocks, trees, haystacks and barns. We used ropes, boards, canvas, blankets and anything we could find to create forts and cabins for our imaginary games.

Since the beginning of time, children had been made to work along side their parents. The government would eventfully regulate that and more, but in our neck of the woods, child protective services existed only in the form of my grandmother.

She established her credentials as such on many occasions. For example, my brother who was maybe 3, and I, the older, wiser sister at 5, decided to leave home and walk to grandma's house a couple miles away.

My parents watched us amble up the road and out of sight. My dad, before following discreetly behind, phoned my grandmother and told her we were on the way and to watch for us. He instructed that when we arrived, she was to "paddle our butts and send us back home."

Of course, that didn't happen. She gave us milk and homemade cookies and then drove us back home.

My parents' have a perfect criminal record. We four siblings survived childhood under those deplorable, dangerous conditions. I recall only the occasional need for stitches and no broken bones.

We were all reasonably civilized when integrated into polite society. My brother Lon even learned to keep his shoes on and not leave them lying in the field. Bruce and I finally gave up running off and trying to lose him in the hills. Like a pound puppy, he always found his way home.

I may have breached the mental cruelty laws when at the age of 8, I dressed my baby brother Jim like a girl to soothe my disappointment that he was not born a sister. Instead of seeking therapy for him, my parents sent him to Army boot camp when he was old enough, which to him was preferable to working for my Dad. So it turned out fine.

I'm thankful for a childhood without many rules except those enforced by my dad's leather strap.

The freedom of living with nature's laws next to those of God and my parents, created a generation of self-sufficient, dependable, hard-working adults who don't expect life to be delivered to them.

I'm thinking that is the process that should have been written into law.

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net. See her two books on her website at www.julie-carter.com