Rural Childhood Oddities

The other day I surprised Michelle by bringing home 4 bales of straw with which Pete and I could build forts, railroad tracks, reenact circuses or death-defying stunts that we see in movies, etc. Michelle, having grown up entirely without the privilege of having a haystack on hand, failed to show the appropriate enthusiasm at me having made our first born's childhood complete. As I was explaining to her the endless possibilities that these straw bales offer our budding child I came to the realization that these life-size LEGO's may not be the common staples of every childhood as I had simply assumed.

With this foundation of my youthhood development shaken, I started to reminisce back to discover more and more things from our joint Millet childhoods that were probably unique to a rural Idaho childhood if not unique to a Millet childhood altogether. Some of these memories include every winter hitching up a rope and sled to the four-wheeler/Chevy cavalier and being towed, (sometimes on top of the sled, sometimes beneath it), around the racetrack that is Steve Clapier's field until our fingers froze around the rope; or every summer stripping down to swimming suits and irrigation boots to go play in the run-off puddles that would accumulate waste water and diesel on either sides of the shop, (so far I have not sprouted any extra limbs or gone blind so I think the side effects were minor if any.)

One of the childhood toys that our 3 year old is currently going without were the dismembered Deer/Elk/Carribou legs that were often found prancing about in the yard. It turns out that there is no meat in the lower leg portions of these animals meaning there is nothing to rot and therefore, excellent children's toys (honestly, I can't understand how Fischer Price has not come up with the "My First Dismembered Appendages" collection to add to its line). I've illustrated the deer skinning process that yields the 4 legs per deer as best as I can remember it from my childhood (you'll probably have to click on it to get the full details).

So what does a child do with dismembered deer appendages? Well ... anything they want! Play fetch with Moose or Bonnie and Clyde or Oreo (depending on the decade), play fetch with younger siblings, sword fight, pretend to be a frolicking deer in a mountain meadow of clovers, bludgeon things, make about 26,000 left-footed footprints and then try to convince the Benson kids that there's a herd of feral deer right in their backyard! Below is an artists rendition of one of the many possibilities:

...and now you know what to get Benji for Christmas.

P.S. Sorry Brooke, I spent 3 hours shading your upper baby lip and it still didn't turn out.

Disclaimer: Several animals were killed in the making of this memory.