Walking To School

The school busses are beginning to roll thru my neighborhood on trial runs. School starts in a day or so and they will be stopping to pick up the children that live further down my street. The middle school is only three blocks, four if you count the football field, from the end of our street, but the children ride the bus.

What a difference between my school days and today. My brothers, sisters and I walked to school. Our town didn’t have busses. Even when my family had a car, we walked to school. When the family moved from town to the asparagus farm on the outskirts of town, we still walked to school.

Adeline and I attended school in town, but my younger siblings went to a small country school with all the grades in one room. The distances to both schools were about equal; walking times approximately the same. We left the house in the mornings at the same time, and returned home in the afternoons around the same time.

We dressed for the weather. In the winter we wore snow suits and boots. The boy’s boots always had a jack knife in the side pocket of one boot. The girl’s boots were ankle high, either white or black. When it rained we had a choice of goulashes or rubbers to wear over our shoes when the dirt road we walked was muddy, or slushy with ice and snow.

Adeline and I had a shortcut we used on our way to and from school. By cutting thru a pasture that was almost opposite our house, we avoided having to walk the road which would have added at least a mile to our walk. Coming from school, we climbed under a barbed wire fence, and then walked along the top of a broad hill which gradually sloped to a running creek at the bottom. On the other side of the creek the pasture duplicated, in reverse, the side of the hill we walked.

There was always a large herd of cows, sometimes at the top of the hill, but usually scattered across the lower side of the hill nearer the creek. The pastoral scene of cows browsing the lush, green grass was a visual delight, but if cows meandered too close to me, I was afraid of them. Adeline, a year and a half younger, and brave to the max, was my defense and rescuer.

If the cows ignored us and went on with their grass munching, our walk across the slope was uneventful, but if any one cow took notice and began walking in our direction, all the cows began moseying our way. It then became a matter of judging whether or not I could run past the cows before they reached us. If I didn’t think I could make it, Adeline would run ahead and wave the cows off while I ran.

Sometimes our running started the cows running, in which case, their running started my screaming. Adeline would yell, “They won’t hurt you!” as she faced the cows and shooed them off, but what did she know? They didn’t chase her! Of course I always reached the safer side of the hill when Adeline was with me. She was my protector, but if I was alone, and the cows were too close for comfort, I was in trouble. If they were in the way of my running past them, I tried circling and yelling at the same time. I must confess I never had a confrontation with a cow, but then again, there was always that possibility!