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Show 10. My father could never quite believe the expense of things, the inflation of everything. When he was in high school he would ride a horse in from the ranch to town to see his friends or maybe a girl, and later on he would ride in a buggy to a neighboring farm to see my mother, and none of it cost a cent. But first Henry and then me had to have 50£ for a high school dance, 50<t for hamburgers and cokes afterwards, a gallon or two of gas at 18<£ per-the cost was outrageous. And next it would be Davy's turn. Poor Dad, every time I hit him up for a dollar he looked as if I was ripping him off. And yet, one spring he himself traded a perfectly good Jersey heifer for a pony, a useless Shetland pony. Maybe it was the weather. We'd been going around with the mud and the manure frozen into iron, and then early warm spells turned the iron to ooze, and so finally when spring was really on its way, the ooze drying into dust, when we looked up and there were buds, more buds and then leaves, I can only suppose it was the lift the greening world gave which caused my father's flare of improvidence. I was nine and I can remember clearly Arvid Jensen's rusted Ford pickup rattle onto our place and Dad and Arvid unloading this |
