Sweet Grannies

I have been thinking about a lot of things lately.  The other day when I was visiting my grandfather, he told me and my sister about when he was married to our grandmother.  You see, my family tree has many branches because of divorce.  My grandfather and grandmother divorced when my father was 7 years old.  My grandfather is now 96 years old.  I saw him when I was little but when my parents divorced when I was 8 years old, I no longer saw him until a few years ago after his second wife passed away.
He mentioned his first wife, Madeline and we said that we knew her.  He told us that we were too young to be alive when he was married to her.  We had to explain that yes, we didn't know her when he was married to her but we knew her when we were kids - she was grandma!  I didn't know her well, but I did know her!
After that got straightened out he told us about how wonderful of a woman she was but she had a temper.  She was told that he had a girlfriend and she got so mad at him that she chased in through the neighborhood with a butcher knife.  After that incident and a few other instances of violence, her parents came to him and asked him to divorce her and he agreed. 
I don't know if he actually had a girlfriend but thinking about your grandmother chasing your grandfather with a butcher knife is quite a head trip.  I immediately thought that everyone's point of view made their own circumstances look better.  I talked to my mother and my father about it and they confirmed that she did have a terrible temper and she had thrown a gravy boat at my father's face when he was a young married man and she wouldn't speak to her son for several years after that.  What ever happened to sweet grandmas?  Is there such a thing?

Who Are The Cit'iots (city idiots)?

My husband and I have been considering buying a farm upstate while the real estate prices are low.  When my husband was reading the "Country Folks" (a weekly farmer newspaper that contains classifieds - we call it the farmer bible) he saw some farms up for auction.  We checked them out online and didn't like the area and I decided to check out farm auctions from the USDA.  There was one in Schoharie that was coming up for auction soon.  We checked it out using Google Maps and the found the property boundaries on the tax assessor's site.  We decided to take a ride and check it out.

As we drove north we started to notice more and more pickup trucks instead of cars.  We noticed junk in people's yards instead of pristine landscapes and we commented on it that we could never get away with that in our town anymore.  We felt as though we were driving through our town 30 years ago.  We found the road that the farm was on and we headed up the dirt road.  We were really excited because the road on our old dairy farm was dirt.  We were driving slow and a pick up truck came up behind us, so I pulled over the best that I could.  He went by us and gave us a dirty look.  We started driving the roads that surrounded the farm to get an idea of the area.   We saw a few Mc Mansions with pristine landscaping but overall there were mainly working farms. We were pleased to see real people with kids riding old bicycles in the driveways. At the same time though, we were pleased to see a few Mc Mansions because that meant that if you needed to sell off a lot, there was demand. We took pictures of neighboring farms and streams by the roads.  Several times we had pickup trucks go by us and again we got dirty looks. 

It took us awhile to realize that they had identified us as 'cit'iots' and we fit the profile.  We wished that we had put a bumper sticker on the car that said "My other vehicle is a Tractor".  We  realized that if we bought a farm up here we would have to put up with the local's dirty looks.  Maybe we would fit in our with our cows and older tractors but I think it would take quite awhile to be accepted because the truth is, we have become cit'iots.  We were looking at the farm with an eye for future subdivision, just like the cit'iots did in our neighborhood.  We were looking down at the locals wondering how they could make a living from just farming.  I guess it is a matter of your perspective. 

The Bull's Adventure

I think that the worst time that any of the cows ever got lose was when a bull a got loose.  We got a phone call that there was a couple of cows loose from the summer pasture at we rented at another farm.  When we went to look at the place of the last reported sighting, we ran into several police cars.
We were informed that the bull was running into cars on the highway.  Yes - running into cars, not the other way around.  They said that prior to this he had attacked a person and the person had called the police from his garage.  The bull had gored him and had attacked his car.  The man that had gotten hurt came over to us talking the police.  He said that it was the strangest thing!  He had been petting him and when he realized that it was a bull, he jumped back.  He also said he grabbed a pipe and that is when the bull went nuts.  That is when he got jabbed in the ribs by the bull.
The police were waiting for a tranquillizer gun to come from the county seat.  They were prepared though in case the vicious animal returned.  We were waiting and after another 1/2 hour or so passed, the police got a call and left.  We drove over to the farm and found the animal trying to get back in the fence.  He got shipped the next day and we ended up paying the man's medical bills.  We never heard anything about the cars that he supposedly attacked.