Amy, Alane, Daddy(Ernest), Anita, Mother(Anna Mae), Andrea
A long time ago, in the midst of the Great Plains, where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play, (I don’t know about antelope but the deer sure do play hiding in the ditches, and jumping out to play chicken with cars on the road.) Oh, dear. I digress. That’s another story.
Anyway, in the midst of these Great Plains, in a very small house, lived 4 girls with their hard working parents. The fact that they were sisters may or may not be important. Because, you see, they are all very different, (Hence the age-old question: “Which has more influence, the environment or genetics?”) These girls were very blessed to be able to live in the country with friendly neighbors, a country school and lots of chores to do.
The oldest was the only one to be promoted to the chore of helping with the milking. Jobs were given out based on experience, height, strength, age or who happened to be close by when something needed to be done. Of course, the oldest learned how to do the most since she had been around the longest. From these chores, they all learned valuable life skills, such as:
Management skills: Herding cows in from the pasture, managing younger siblings
Janitorial skills: Cleaning house, Cleaning the chicken house, hauling cow manure from the milk barn.
Group skills: Herding cows, herding sheep, moving the play house from site to site, playing duets with sisters on the piano, hauling wood with sisters to the house before some imagined disaster struck, helping Mother prepare meals.
Bookkeeping skills: 4-H record books for sewing, cooking, having a HUGE garden
Technical skills: Running a sweeper, running a mixer,(while standing on a chair, some of us were pretty short), using a sewing machine, using an electric milking machine (the oldest only), not too much technology then.
Culinary skills: Cooking meals, baking, canning all the produce from the HUGE garden.
Parental skills: Pretending the youngest sister was the doll and pushing her around in the doll buggy (OH YES THEY DID!!) dressing the dolls and farm cats in doll clothes.
All the sisters learned to play the piano, some with more skill and patience than others. All the sisters learned to sew, some with more skill and patience than others. All the sisters learned to cook,….Good Grief! How could they learn to be individuals if they all did the same things? Oh yea, the level of skill and patience must have been the individual part.
These 4 sisters were fortunate to have two parents who loved music and actually had rhythm (which is why there are 4 of us:) the mother was a good dancer but the father only danced with his fingers on the accordion. Many evenings were spent with the father playing the accordion and everyone singing. The oldest would play the piano along with him. Some of the favorite songs were “Beautiful Brown Eyes”, “Beer Barrel Polka”, “A Simple Melody”, and “Scatterbrain”. What would a psychologist say about that particular collection of favorites?
These 4 privileged (disillusioned?) girls often did things in the course of play that they did not know was actually work. For instance, they would ask their mom for permission to clean out the brooder house (where the little chicks were placed to get them started) so they could use it as a play house. Of course permission was given and much fervor went into the job. This mostly entailed sweeping out the straw, chicken poop and feathers left after moving the young chickens into the main chicken house. This is where they learned about “white things in the air”..(Sister Anita’s obsession)
This was also experienced from cleaning the barn loft (for a play house, of course.)
Some chores were just plain work. There was gathering the eggs from 2000 laying hens. (Try that while trying to hold your breath trying NOT to breath the white things in the air!) At the same time they had to be careful there wasn’t an old hen on the nest to peck their hand or a snake in the nest; this we called multi-tasking.
The sheep they had to feed were not your playful, skipping lambs that Mary had. Neither was their fleece white as snow. They knew what was in the feed buckets and they wanted it NOW! This is where problem-solving came in. The question of how to get from the fence, (which they had to step over), to the feed troughs without getting knocked down, and then dump the feed in the troughs which were full of hungry sheep’s heads. Getting to the troughs was to simply push and shove their way through. These sheep did not meekly and quietly follow the shepherd! But, ta-da! problem solved! Simply stand in the troughs and dump the feed while backing up. Then the sheep were so busy eating, the girls were able to get out of the pen unmolested. This skill the 4 girls were able to apply numerous times when having large groups of people to feed in their homes. However, they were able to be more gracious and not walk backwards down the middle of the table while serving the food.
Those 4 girls, who all had the same initials of A.M.H., grew up healthy and happy in the Great Plains of Kansas. Two still reside there. One is on the farm where they grew up. Another lives in Michigan and another lives in Washington. They would not trade their lives in the coutry or the lessons learned for anything. As for the answer to the age old question: Environment or genetics?, who knows?
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