My dad’s youngest sister was born when he was twenty-one. That made Aunt Carol Ann only four years older than me.

​I spent many summer days and nights with her at Grandpa Mosel’s. Their house was the grandest I was exposed to in my early years—two-story, with a front porch as wide as the house.

Hydrangea bushes bookended the front steps. One giant snowball flower was a perfect bride’s bouquet in the hand of a young girl.

Inside, the floors and the woodwork were made of wide pieces of oak. The master bedroom had gigantic built-in cedar drawers and cupboards from floor to ceiling.

I loved to go upstairs and see all the beds lined up under the eaves. (Dad was one of seven.) There was a bathroom in the home with green tile.

Their barn was a giant red one that housed the usual varmints, dry smells, cattle manure hay, and tools. Close to the cattle tank stood a crumbling block pump house shaped like a silo that dripped cool refreshing water on the hottest summer days.

My aunt and I often walked out to the pasture and watched the stock cattle. One of my uncles had a couple horses. The aged sandy cattle trails were deep trenches to small girls.

Coming back to stand inside the pump house walls was better than imagining ourselves in a desert oasis, a welcome respite before we headed back to the house.

A cactus filled a tattered five-gallon bucket and rested near the yard gate that led to the back porch. The cactus was there for years and I think finally bit the dust in the seventies.

At that time, my brother was farming Grandpa’s place and the hogs got out. Those hogs rooted under the fence and demolished the whole lawn looking for grubs. The grandeur of Grandpa’s front yard faded into memory.

As a child, were you blessed to play on a farm?

Tomboys that we were, Renée and I drove yellow Tonka trucks through the dirt, right along with our brothers. We graded roads and set up farmsteads. Used sticks for fences and stones for corner posts. Also in the dirt, we raced alone or with one another, dragging along a stick that left snake trails behind.

​For clean play I dressed kittens in doll clothes and pulled them in our little red Radio Flyer wagon, or pushed them in a vintage stroller. That cedar windbreak smelled good and the trees weren’t as giant as those in the shelterbelts, so we set up play kitchens.

We owned no actual dress-up clothes, so I metamorphosed into a bride with a white towel or pillowcase veil, gliding down the aisle between the mulberries and cedar trees.

Most of the time, imagination was the game we played, be it cowboys and Indians, making mud pies dotted with oozing purple mulberries or clumps of leaves.

Hide-and-seek and tag consumed endless hours. When I was “it” I held my eyes so tight that I saw white stars, which made me a bit slower on the start-up with my call of “Ready or not, here I come.”

We hid in the corn and got lost a time or two. Cornfields were different back then. It seemed like a foot of ground to grow weeds spanned the space between stalks.

Confidence overrode the fear, knowing that if we followed the rows, we’d either end up in the shelterbelt way north of the house, or back near the old cedar windbreak.

The four of us stuffed ourselves with mulberries until we couldn’t handle another bite. A tall old tree grew next to the corner of the chicken coop and we climbed on the roof to feast. Gorged ourselves on giant white and purple mulberries, and smaller tasty black ones.

At mealtime the creamy milk turned deep violet. Twigs, leaf bits, and bugs floated to the surface. Without the milk to show them off in a bowl, I imagine we ate quite a few winged and legged creatures along with the succulent berries.

One time we visited a neighboring family late into the night. I was having so much fun that when it was time to go, I ran and hid. Mom and Dad called and called. Did I actually think they’d leave me?

It was just so much better, running with someone other than my siblings, I didn’t want to go home.

Do you have carefree summertime memories of childhood?