We won’t forgot that night.
The story begins when my aunt and uncle invited us to their farm for a campout. Uncle Norman’s farm had a shady pasture with a flat, secluded spot to set up tents. My parents, my younger brother, and I, plus my aunt and uncle and three of their children would all sleep out together.
I was thirteen and very excited about camping.
What wasn’t quite as exciting was realizing that Uncle Norman kept his cows in the same pasture we would be sleeping in.
“It will be no problem,” Uncle Norman and Dad assured us, “The cows will leave us alone.”
Not being a farm girl, I was a little leery, but as the evening wore on, I decided Dad and Uncle Norman were right. The cows kept their distance as we munched campfire goodies and enjoyed the summer evening.
When it got dark, our little brothers crawled into their own tent, our parents went into their respective tents, and my cousin Marilyn and I settled into the small tent we were sharing.
We were cozy in our sleeping bags and fast asleep when the shouting started.
“GET OUT OF HERE!” the voice yelled in PA Dutch. “LEAVE!”
It was my mother’s voice. “QUIT PESTERING OUR GIRLS! GET OUT OF HERE!”
She must be chasing away the cows, I decided, snuggling deeper into my sleeping bag. But my, she sounds grouchy. It’s just cows.
Marilyn woke up too, and we sleepily exchanged a few words. “Do you hear that music?” she asked.
In the distance, we could hear country music playing. “The neighbor boys must be having a sleepover, too. Their pasture isn’t far away.” Marilyn explained.
The cows chased off, we peacefully drifted back to sleep.
Early the next morning, I woke up, crawled out of the tent, and said good morning to Mom and Dad who were making breakfast.
“I heard you chase away the cows last night.” I said.
“What! No, that wasn’t the cows!” said Mom, “Those neighbor boys— I caught them outside your tent with a flashlight, shining it into you and Marilyn’s tent, saying, ‘It’s time to wake up!'”.
“Wait— what happened? Marilyn and I didn’t know that was happening! We didn’t wake up until we heard you yelling.” I burst out laughing, and so did Marilyn. “Their flashlight didn’t even wake us up!”
“The little ones had just gone to sleep! I didn’t want those boys to wake up the sleeping children!”
Most likely the teenage boys haven’t had any sinister intentions, but they had gotten a big surprise when my no-nonsense, salt-and-pepper-haired mama had stuck her head out of the nearby tent!
We were all still chuckling about the incident when Uncle Norman emerged from his tent. “Wow” he commented, “That must’ve have been some wild party those neighbor boys had. They even had girls with ’em. I heard one— and, boy, she sounded grouchy!”
This story still makes me laugh! By the way, the picture I used with this blog post is my oldest brother, Tim, making faces at a cow— not the same cows as the ones in Uncle Norman’s pasture, but it’s the funniest cow picture I could find!
Did Uncle Norman for real think the voice he heard was a girl and not a mama bear ?😂. I remember bits of this story .
Yes, Uncle Norman really did think it was a girl! He didn’t know it was Mom.