Another Day in the Country
Along for the ride
© Another Day in the Country
When I was having coffee with friends in Abilene, I spied a flyer advertising a special event at the Dickinson County Heritage Center.
Always on the lookout for some interesting weekend activity, I picked up the flyer and took it home.
“Farm Toy Museum,” said the headline, and who doesn’t like looking at farm toys?
Twenty years ago, while my sister and I maintained a little museum we started in the old bank building in Ramona, we had an exhibit of farm toys and asked the Ramona community for pictures of kids in the area playing with their toys back in the day.
I recall photographs with names like Deines, Hanschu, Fike, and Brunner playing with prize wagons, brand-new bikes, toy tractors, or favorite ponies.
I included a photo of my own daughter playing on a bouncy ball. Her picture is still hanging by the desk where the computer lives, and I grin at the sight of her broad smile as she flies up into the air, riding that silly, oversized, inflatable ball on our dirt driveway in the hills of northern California.
Was that picture really taken 50 years ago?
All of us still have a kid somewhere inside this grownup body of ours, and mine was excited about going to see farm toys.
It’s good I’ve always loved tractors because toy tractors are what I saw in this newly constructed building on the Heritage Center grounds.
John Deere tractors in every size, style, and era were predominant. While other toy tractors were on display, green was the favored color.
We were visiting the displays with friends who are longtime Abilene residents.
Jane pointed out a little food store on the grounds.
“That store building used to be across the street from where my grandmother lived,” she said, “and the minute I’d arrive at her house, she’d have an errand for me to run across the street and get something she needed, like a pint of cream from the grocer.”
“How fun,” I said, “that here this little community building was preserved, and you can still walk in the door.”
Commodities on the shelves from long ago were familiar to us. We recalled the color and shape of spice cans, and we remembered a “bluing” jar that grandma used when she was doing the washing.
She’d add some of that beautiful blue liquid to her last rinse to keep her “whites looking white.”
My sister remembered seeing a telephone exhibit when we first visited the museum 25 years ago.
Jess loves old telephones and still has an old wooden ones with a crank hanging in her house.
Of course, the telephone exhibit had been expanded since our first visit, but it still included a dial telephone that let you watch electric impulses and relay switches being activated to put through your call.
We sighed, realizing that even that miracle of communication is now old hat, with most of us carrying in our pocket a phone that’s completely wireless.
A grand old carousel turned out to be the biggest attraction for me. On this occasion, they had pulled out an old, meticulously maintained steam engine that originally ran it.
“Is there still room?” my sister called out to the carousel engineer.
He assured us there were several empty steeds on the other side. So, we went around and climbed onto beautiful wooden horses on brass poles with real bridles and real horsehair tails — feeling like kids again, excited for this circular adventure.
Anticipating the ride, I secretly worried that I might have trouble getting up on the horse at my octogenarian age. I haven’t been on a real horse in years.
Then I worried that while going round and round I might get sick, as I’d been known to do on carnival rides as a kid.
None of the above! It was a glorious ride, beginning with the steam engine firing up and toot-tooting, giving the signal that we soon would be moving.
Steam whirled up into the air, almost surrounding the man running the engine that powered this wonderful work of art, and we were off.
This particular carousel did not have a top, so the horses did not go up and down; they rocked back and forth, and my sister and I laughed and squealed with delight. It actually felt as if we were galloping across the prairie on our fancy steeds.
We rode the wheel through two songs playing from a delightful steam calliope — which had to be tuned up between performances.
The second song had a faster tempo, and the merry-go-round was moving faster, too. This was exciting and so much fun!
A little later, Jess rode the carousel a second time while I whipped out my fancy iPhone and tried to get a movie of the event.
But nothing could really capture the excitement and beauty of remembering when — on another day in the country.