Raised Country!

By Grant Langston

“The Country” means a hundred different things to a hundred different people. To me, it has always meant freedom.

There’s something about the lack of people and the open space that gives you an opportunity to stretch out and have an adventure. As a teenager that meant the ability to get into trouble without having someone on your back. Blow something up. Build a potato gun and shoot it at cars that whizzed by on Hwy 36. Build a tree house in the woods and use it as a base of operations for pine cone battles, runs to the bootlegger, or a place to stash our Playboy or OUI Magazines (which we pronounced as “O-U-I”, having no idea that it was French).

The country meant that in the summer you said goodbye to your mom at 7am and you got home when the streetlights came on. What you did in the intervening 13 hours was between you, your little brother, and whatever gang of boys you were running with that day.  You were 12-years-old.  You solved your own problems.  You made your own fun.
Read the rest of this entry »

This post was submitted by Grant Langston.

Getting through a barbed wire fence was always easier for Robin than it was for Mike. Rob deftly lifted or squeezed the wires just right and slipped through without a hitch.

Even though Mike and Robin were only 9 or 10 at the time, Mike’s navigation through a barbed wire fence resembled a 90 year old doing the limbo. In spite of the extra caution and time he took, invariably, Mike snagged his pants or shirt on one of the barbs.

Robin lived on a farm, but Mike was a “city boy”. Didn’t matter that the “city” only had about 5,000 people in it, Mike lived “in town,” which made him “city.” Things that seemed ordinary to Robin were often either great adventures or daunting trials for Mike.

As always, with a snicker or two, Rob waited for Mike. He could have been cruel, given the disparity in their skills, and, of course, he had to give Mike a hard time now and then. But Rob had a sweet patience beyond his years.
Read the rest of this entry »

This post was submitted by Mike Strong.