TPD
the poor dad
As I was sitting on the combine yesterday shelling corn, instead of worrying about the trade wars, gas prices, and interest rate cuts, I recalled the simpler days.
And something that popped into my feeble mind were the days of my youth when the outside bell was our messaging app. We had one of those cast iron bells along with one of our neighbors about a half mile away. As kids roaming the farm and the neighborhood, we knew when it was time to go home for dinner - my mother would ring the bell. If we were down at the creek and my mother hadn't seen us in awhile, the bell would ring, signaling us to come to the house to check in and assure her we hadn't drowned yet. If the trash needed to be burned in the middle of the day or the scraps taken out, the bell got rung. If there was an important phone call that my father needed to return, we rung the bell to signal him from the barn or the field.
We never ignored the bell because we knew there were consequences. We had 10-15 minutes to get our butts home after the bell was rung. And there was a difference in the sound of our bell to our neighbor's bell so we always knew which of us kids were being called home. The battery never died on this messaging app and there was never a lost signal. If we didn't arrive after 2 different ringings of the bell, my mother called the neighbor to ring her bell. If still no answer, then she got in the car to come find us. Our only excuse could be that we were inside another neighbor's house playing Atari. Otherwise, our hind parts got red. Ahh yes - the good ole days!
Who else had a dinner bell in their backyard?
And something that popped into my feeble mind were the days of my youth when the outside bell was our messaging app. We had one of those cast iron bells along with one of our neighbors about a half mile away. As kids roaming the farm and the neighborhood, we knew when it was time to go home for dinner - my mother would ring the bell. If we were down at the creek and my mother hadn't seen us in awhile, the bell would ring, signaling us to come to the house to check in and assure her we hadn't drowned yet. If the trash needed to be burned in the middle of the day or the scraps taken out, the bell got rung. If there was an important phone call that my father needed to return, we rung the bell to signal him from the barn or the field.
We never ignored the bell because we knew there were consequences. We had 10-15 minutes to get our butts home after the bell was rung. And there was a difference in the sound of our bell to our neighbor's bell so we always knew which of us kids were being called home. The battery never died on this messaging app and there was never a lost signal. If we didn't arrive after 2 different ringings of the bell, my mother called the neighbor to ring her bell. If still no answer, then she got in the car to come find us. Our only excuse could be that we were inside another neighbor's house playing Atari. Otherwise, our hind parts got red. Ahh yes - the good ole days!
Who else had a dinner bell in their backyard?
