Arvid Huisman.

Those of us who grew up in the rural Midwest seven decades ago understand the world a little differently than our friends who were raised in the big city.

As a country kid, for instance, I must have been nine or 10-years-old before I understood that those things dangling beneath a cow were called teats. What we called them would be considered improper in polite company today.

Mom kept a can of Watkins-brand salve under the kitchen sink. It was originally made for cow teats, but it worked great on kids’ burns and scrapes, too. I have no idea what the official name of that salve was.

We simply called it “cow-(teat) salve.”

We thoroughly understood the sources of our food. The Huisman boys knew that milk came from those dangly things under the cows, regardless of what you called them.

Our family got our milk directly from our uncle’s farm. One of our neighbor kids wouldn’t drink milk at our house, because it came from cows and not from the store.

We knew that eggs came from chickens and weren’t bothered by the hen’s method of delivery. We also knew that chicken soup resulted when those hens quit laying eggs.

We also understood that bacon, ham and pork chops came from pigs which had to be killed and cut up before we could enjoy it.

On a number of occasions, I helped my mother butcher chickens and cut up and wrap the pork from a fresh butcher project.

Growing up in the country, we were comfortable sharing drinking water with family and visitors from the water bucket with a dipper that was shared by all. Out under the windmill, we all drank from the same tin cup hanging near the pump.

Boys had BB guns back then, and our parents didn’t worry too much about it. I doubt that Mom knew that we shot each other with our BB guns, but usually did so from a distance to reduce the danger (and the pain, to which none of us would admit.)

Boys with BB guns also shot sparrows. I feel bad about that now, but at the time, sparrows were the biggest game available to us and no one told us we were doing wrong.

Of course, we didn’t tell adults that we were shooting sparrows. We also tried shooting rabbits and squirrels, but they jumped away and were quickly out of range.

For boys on the farm, the world was our toilet. It wasn’t as easy for city boys to have a contest to determine who could generate the greatest stream. Of course, those farm boys had not yet heard of the prostate gland.

Little girls on the farm had wonderful places for playhouses. A play house could be set up in an empty cookhouse, an empty corn crib, even the corner of an empty hay mow.

Little boys weren’t eager to play in those playhouses, but even then, we understood the value of keeping a woman happy.

Some of those little playhouses could easily become a doctor’s office, but that’s another story.

It was more fun to find a girl who enjoyed digging in the dirt. If I had a dollar for every cubic foot of dirt I shoveled pointlessly as a child I’d have… a lot of dollars.

A young friend and I actually believed we could build a swimming pool and dug a lot of dirt to do so.

At times, we worried about digging all the way to hell or China, whichever came first.

The fanciest jungle gym (we called them “monkey bars”) in the city could not compare to the excitement of grabbing the rope connected to an open haymow door and gliding down to the floor of the haymow with the door as a counterweight.

Of course, when you let go of the rope and the haymow door slammed against the side of the barn, the farmer might come in and yell at you. But the ride was worth it!

My city friends grew up with swimming pools and air-conditioned movie theaters. They had soda fountains and ice cream stores to boot.

Frankly, as a senior citizen, I enjoy life in the city though I seldom make use of those city amenities I once longed for.

Looking back, however, growing up in rural Iowa gave me a perspective on life that I wouldn’t trade for all the ice cream stores or swimming pools in the city.