My sister and I are certain that our profound love of animals was passed down to us from our father. Dad was a handsome, brilliant, funny, and complicated soul. He had his difficult sides, but he was also loving and tender and had a huge soft spot for animals.
In his final years he enjoyed living in his apartment in the barn on my sister’s ranch with his dog Rocky. Being close to the horses and mucking out stalls took him back to his childhood.
For this Father’s Day, I wanted to share one of the wonderful stories my father wrote and sent to me many years ago. Enjoy “Behind the Barn” by Kenneth Allison.
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Behind the Barn
My dog, Buck, banged up against my leg and caused me to stagger slightly. I straightened up as quickly as I could and kept going, feeling as if I was in some other world. The back of the barn seemed foreign somehow and I was more aware of the feedlot to my right and the few cows we had moving in to the freshly filled trough. Everything seemed unreal.
“Open up now. Don’t be a sissy,” he said as he loomed over me shutting out most of the bright sunlight. I shut my eyes tight, blocking out everything that I could and opened my mouth as wide as my fear would allow, for I knew there was no escape and I did not want to be a dreaded sissy.
I felt the cold hard pliers against my cheek, then pushing against the side of my mouth to force it open wider. Then the pliers were inside my mouth, the nasty scrape of iron on the tooth as Father worked them to be certain of the grip. I felt my head being pulled upward and back and then it was over. The tooth was out.
“I got it here,” my father said. “Now there was nothing to it, was there?”
I opened my eyes to see him turn his head and squirt a healthy stream of tobacco juice against the back wall of the barn. I could see his hand with the pliers and the disappointingly small tooth still in its great nasty maw. There was only a small suggestion of blood on the roots of the tooth. I was keenly aware of the other men watching me.
I braced up and squeezed my eyes shut hard to hold a rebellious tear back.
“There now, did that hurt?” asked my grandfather, as if there was only one acceptable answer.
“No, sir,” I mumbled.
Uncle Jake grunted and walked away to lean on the fence. He acted as if he was bored, though I knew that he had objected to the whole affair and had told my father so under his breath before we had come behind the barn and out of my mother’s sight.
My father handed the tooth to me and told me to put it under my pillow and to not mention the thing to my mother.
Then we all heard my mother’s voice calling us to dinner. I had been so occupied with the fear of the tooth pulling that I had temporarily suspended thought of all else in the world. But now the sound of my mother’s voice awakened my stomach to the hunger which I found had miraculously returned. My father worked his mouth as if his entire face was rubber, gathering the chaw of tobacco into a neat ball and then spitting it on the ground. I stood fast, still in a slight daze, until the men started around the barn and in toward the house. Then I put the tooth in my pocket and followed at a respectable distance, fingering the tooth.
We stopped at the small table outside the back door and washed, one by one, in the basin. I was last, as usual, and it was all I could do to reach the basin. My attempt at washing was a token and I knew it was a waste. My mother only glanced at me as I entered the house through the back door into the large kitchen but I was convicted without a trial and sent back to repeat the washing exercise. It really was no use doing it right the first time. I always had to repeat it anyway.
Through the back door I heard my mother’s voice as she queried the men, “What were you all doing out behind the barn? Something you were ashamed of, I imagine?”
Father just grunted and Mother said nothing but she studied him suspiciously as she wiped her hands on her apron. She was surely the most suspicious person on the face of the Earth. It was difficult to get away with anything. Coming back in the room, I sneaked around the table and got behind my grandfather. I thought I had done the thing well but I felt my mother’s sharp eye on me nevertheless.
Grandmother was setting the table and seemed to pay no attention to anything but the food she was putting out. The roast turkey smell filled the house with a glory you could almost feel and the steaming homemade noodles and rich gravy filled a large bowl to overflowing. The mashed potatoes had a wonderfully sculpted valley filled to the brim with golden butter. All the trimmings were there too, though at that point in my life it was the real stomach-fillers which interested me the most. I would make some room for the cranberry sauce and the yams and a little of the stuffing, but the cottage cheese and the greens were to be avoided. I looked forward to filling my plate with turkey and mashed potatoes and noodles and gravy; mixing the potatoes and noodles and gravy into a great pile of good taste that I would remember to my dying day.
The wood stove was still hot but the fall air was cold in spite of the clear sky and the bright afternoon sun, and the heat from the stove felt good. Mother left the back door open for a time to cool the kitchen but she closed it after just a few minutes. The warmth and the smells and the good food brought a feeling of extreme wellbeing to the entire household.
My mother caught me absently rummaging around my mouth, my tongue constantly returning to the newly created cavern which was just recently occupied by the last of the “baby” teeth, a cavern in which I could already feel the incoming tooth.
“Let me see your mouth,” Mother said authoritatively. She inspected my mouth and asked, “Where is that tooth?”
“Oh, Mother, it was practically falling out,” Father said. “I just gave it some help. Gas pliers are good for more than one thing. Let’s eat.”
“Men are cruel,” my mother said as she gently patted me on the head. “Did they hurt you?”
I shook my head no and looked up at my father.
“He’ll be a good boy, if I can keep him away from you women,” Father said, chuckling. “Let’s eat before it gets cold.”
We all took our places, all except my grandmother. She would never sit down until it was certain that everything was in place and then she watched everyone closely throughout the meal to be doubly certain that it was all right for the men. Mother was more liberated but she too made certain that the men did not want for anything during the meal.
“God, we thank you for your blessings this day. Let this food strengthen our bodies to your service,” Father intoned briefly and we all turned to the food.
I was feeling rather expansive now. I had shown myself to be acceptably brave. The ordeal was over and Father had said that I would be a good boy if I kept away from women. I wasn’t certain what he meant, but I knew that he did not approve of my mother’s treating me as if I were a little boy and I vowed silently to be more like him in the future.
I would, of course, need to learn how to chew tobacco, even if Grandfather did not chew anymore and even if Mother and Grandmother thought it was a filthy habit. Father said that the women had beaten Grandfather down to get him to stop chewing.
Grandfather would say nothing on the subject.