It was the time before Daddy's sickness and daddy's death. It was the time of romps through fields of grain, mountain climbing high to the top of the barn roof and tromps through buffalo grass pastures. It was dirt roads that led to enchanted places where old farm equipment became dinosaurs monsters. Old root cellars hidden in pastures spoke of rattlesnakes and long dead lives.
It was the hot sun that tattooed me with freckles and blistered my back. It was the heat that made me and my sisters seek out any bodies of water we could find. We would wallow in the dirt brown water and silty mud, rejoicing in the feel of the liquid gold rinsing our bodies of the dry dust of cattle trails.
It's no wonder yellow is my favorite color. It is the hot happiness of the summer heat, ripening grain, and the love of a mom, dad, sisters, grandparents, cousin, and aunt and uncles. It was a time of a radiant happiness, at least that is what my memories tell me. It was a time of adventures, of scientific discoveries, of imaginary tales...
The dirt road south of our farm started out simply as a dirt road. Muddy when wet, dusty when dry. To the left were our cattle pastures, to the right a neighbors. We would set off in the morning before the heat was too unbearable. Usually it was me and my sister Jan, sometimes all four of us: Susan, Terri, me and Jan. Our goal to escape the heat was a mile or so up the road where there was a grove of wild plum bushes. In spring we would gather the blossoms and in the summer harvest the fruit to snack on in the hot Kansas sun. Purple plums, juicy and sweet, in July.
Before the plums though was the root cellar in the ground. Just inside the fence, it teased us with it's open maw in the prairie grass. We would stare down the steps to the darkness below. I don't know if it was an old sod house or just a root cellar left of an original homestead. We were told to NEVER go down those stairs. There were rattlesnakes down those stairs! We heeded that warning. We did not always obey the directions of our parents, but we seemed to know when they were serious. (Never eat the pink wheat!) We would stare down those stairs wondering what treasures were at the bottom. We may have even dared each other to go down a couple of stairs but to my knowledge none of ever went to the bottom.
Today I wish I could go down there to look. I wish I did know the history of that original homestead and what happened to those settlers. I know my Grandpa Bentrup was not the first to settle the homestead.
What lives or deaths were lived out in that root cellar? What artifacts lay hidden in the cellar floor? And really mom and dad, were there rattlesnakes hiding in the darkening steps?
Onward we would trudge in the growing summer heat. Our skin would become slick with sweat and our crooked bangs would matt our foreheads. Just as we would think we could go no farther the grove of cottonwood trees and the wild plum bushes would come into sight.
The trees would rustle the liquid sound of water sucked up from a hidden spring. The light would dance off the leaves, first a gray green to a hot summer sun green. Just the sound could cool us off but the shade was the real thing. We'd linger until the hint of purple peeping out of the bushes would draw us to full sun and the wild plum bushes.
We never brought buckets to bring the fruit home. No, this was a feast for us, a reward for the walk in the heat.
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