Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Nanny Goat, Nanny Goat


When I was a tiny child my family lived briefly in a Ken Keseyesque converted school bus. My father used a draft horse to work in the woods, an early semiLuddite environmentalist. Love children on the lam from the rat race of California.

The entire backstory has been hiding, skeletal, in a closet until today. In fact the meager skeleton has been gaining strength in its secrecy, and is now fat and ghoulish beyond its worth.

Right now I am a little concerned that my dad will attend the coming out party. But who am I kidding? My father read this blog exactly once, and then called me to say famously, "This is your private stuff. I don't want to read about your private stuff."

Hunh. He probably doesn't want to read about his private stuff either.


So I was a little counterculture hippie child, clearly visible under a blue velvet empire-waisted wedding gown in a picture that held my beautiful teen mother and my pony-tailed father and a daisy-bedecked cake. They're not married anymore. Maybe because they didn't keep a piece of that daisy cake under their pillow for a year. I think I read you're supposed to do that. It probably shifted out of place when they had to move the bus. Anyway it all crumbled.

After the bus we had a stab at dairy goat farming with some other like-minded individuals. I do mean individuals. I must not have liked their individuality very much because family lore has me attempting to hitchhike solo into "town" to go "shopping" at a tender preschool age.

I had figured out that those weren't raisins all over the grass. I wanted to buy some proper raisins.

I can still remember goat milk. Mmm-mmm. Or, NOT.

You know what goat milk is good for? Making goat cheese. Chevre. Like Chevrolet, only more expensive per pound. Our current neighbors have a dairy goat farm. Grace Hannah loves their Nubian nanny goats. They love her too.

Grandma and Grandpa love her too. Grandpa has a very short haircut and a business that has nothing whatsoever to do with getting back to the land. Or schoolbuses. Grandma drives a Volvo and takes the girls to the Dollar Tree with alarming regularity in determined support of capitalism.

I've come full circle and flung that closet door wide open. See how that works?

5 comments:

Alexis said...

Basically I wanna know if the school bus had curtains.

Andrea said...

What a free spirited childhood! And we have one goat, but no school bus. Man.
It's funny how things turn around. The volvo is a bit of a step up from the school bus. :)

Katie said...

Hey, I like your closet better than mine!

Hmm, I always wondered what was up with the strange obsession with buses...now I know.

:D

OK, this is too funny. My word verification is tpmeeh. LOL!

Barb Matijevich said...

You know, at my now very advanced age (and weight), I realize that none of us has had a "normal" Beaver Cleaver kind of childhood. Some of us just got a little farther (further? I never get those right) away from that than television could accurately depict.

Did the bus have a name?

Did it make you want to be part of the Partridge Family?

HonuGirl said...

where i grew up, the neighbors had goats - we had rabbits. cute picture!