My sister reminded me that there might have been another reason for my parents’ decision to move from the farm and in particular to move so precipitously.

There was, of course, the incident of my excellent adventure of traveling by foot into Womelsdorf to meet up with a school mate. As I said, I think that occurred in the fall of 1956 shortly after the start of second grade.

Is it possible that that incident helped to trigger my parents’ decision to move off the farm and into town? Perhaps.

And then there is the incident with the steers.

I have no recollection of that incident and have to rely entirely on what I’ve been told about it, but my best guess is that it must have happened in the spring of 1957 when my sister would have been about two and a half years old.

The Twin Meadows Farm had two barns. The one nearest my grandparents’ house was for the cows, and the one next to the house where we lived was for the steers.

Cows, as you probably know, are gentle creatures; steers are not. The cows were let out to graze in the meadows each day, whereas the steers were confined to their barn and their fully enclosed barnyard.

Cows are raised to be milked; steers are raised to be slaughtered.

As I’ve heard the story told, one morning, presumably a sunny weekend morning, my cousin Kathy and I were outside on the long back porch at the Great Stone House, and my mother told us to watch my sister Donna, who, as I said must have been about two and a half years old at this time.

Well, I would have just turned eight, so Kathy would have been ten, if I have the timeframe right, and Donna disappeared during the split second that we weren’t paying attention to her. You know how two and a half year olds are.

“Where’s Donna!” 

That was my mother when she came outside to check on us.

She was just here, we said. But she clearly wasn’t here now.

So we started to search. She couldn’t have gone far, she was just right here.

But she wasn’t anywhere around the house, so we looked across the dirt lane and there in the barnyard, standing not too far from the steers, was Donna. She must have crawled in under the fence.

My mother called to her, but Donna just laughed.

Fortunately, my grandmother, my father’s mother, we called her Mum, was there. Mum had a lifetime of experience dealing with farm animals, and she said to keep calm. Don’t raise your voice or you’ll spook the steers and they might trample over Donna. Just very quietly  call her to come over to the fence.

Which is what my mother did, and finally Donna came near enough to the fence for my mother to reach in and scoop her up.

Donna also remembers being told that she found her way into the corn crib on at least one occasion. There were sometimes rats in there.

If I have the timeframe right, that steer incident must have taken place in April 1957 and by May we had moved to that old house in Womelsdorf. Alternatively, the earliest it could have possibly taken place would have been in the summer of 1956 when Donna was two, in which case it may have been what caused my parents to decide to move off the farm, but I think it makes more sense in April of 1957 because then the sudden move to Womelsdorf doesn’t seem quite so odd.