Farm Cousins

(This is a true story. Honest Injun.)

When my father died suddenly, my mother and I were
left almost destitute.

With few options she moved us to her grandmother’s
farm in North Central Arkansas.

Living there was wonderful for a young boy. There
was the farm work. We had a tiny 18 head dairy herd
and a 1 auto milker operation.

The house was barely livable. The wiring for
electricity was on the outside of the walls as it
had been added years after the house had been
built.

To take a bath in the winter, you had to go to the
milk barn and take it in a wash tub. That was the
only place we had running water much less hot water.

The summer after my 4th grade of school, a 1st
cousin of my mother’s and her husband bought the
farm next door. The father of the family ran a
construction business so they were much better off
than we were.

They had 3 kids, my second cousins.

Glenda who was 12, Brenda who was also 10 like me
but a year ahead in school and a little brother who
I cannot even remember. He was much younger than we
three and did not get to do the things we did.

Glenda, Brenda and I roamed the hills and woods
from daylight to dark when I did not have chores to
do.

We looked in bird’s nest, we examined every bug
and animal we came across. Our favorite fun
adventure was to use long cane poles to knock down
wasp nests in the barns, under the eaves of houses
or sometimes in a thick bush.

We got stung just often enough to keep that air of danger to it.

We climbed trees, made play houses and early into the
hot weather discovered swimming in the creek that
ran through another neighbors much larger farm.

We found a very nice, not too deep pool that was
always shaded and over a mile from any house.

Our play started innocently enough. We would
stripe down to our underwear. Me in jockey shorts,
the girls in just their cotton panties.

I realize now that Glenda was starting to bud but Brenda was as
flat chested as I was.

We splashed and played. Ducked each other, threw
mud or sand at each other and just had fun as farm
kids do. I would sometimes become aroused when the
wrestling and playing got a little physical but did
not realize that I showed so much. I could clearly
see the girls through their wet panties but I guess
we just had an unspoken truce on the subject since
we enjoyed the swimming so much.

Hoping to avoid trouble with parents we brought an
extra pair of undies and left them hidden near our
swimming hole.