Hooky Bob

I got away at my normal time this morning; the traffic was light and much safer. I was bundled in my redcoats, glove and cap and my new highway construction safety vest. I was warm, pretty safe as I trundled, down Third West, South to the train station. It’s ghastly cold and over caste this morning I am lost in my thoughts, much of the street is still snow packed, traffic has beaten the snow down to a fine layer of black and white ice. As I pass the bakery a semi pulls into to the bakery’s loading bay. I have a great view of the rear of the truck as I pass a large back bumper, with a step carved into the middle f the bumper and two large hook on each side of the step and a large towing ball under the step—“perfect” I thought to myself, “just perfect”. ( if this were a TV show you would see the image go all wavy and hear a harp strum from low to high notes on the musical scale. I would be eight or nine years old again and I would be staring at the Back of the Meridian Dairy truck as it rumbled away from our small red milking barn.

Each day twice a day we, my brothers, dad and myself would milk our five cows. Actually the time I am mostly writing of it was usually just my older brother Ross and me. We called the cattle into the barn in the morning, washed their bags and utter and strapped milking machine on each beast in their time, stripped them and pushed out of the barn as quick as we could. We would pour the milk straight from the milking machine into a strainer on top of the milk cans. When we were through we would tap the caps on the cans and roll cans out into the yard for the dairy truck.

The road which served our farm was not paved. The road was just dirt filled with ruts and holes. The county ran a grader down it a couple times a summer and called it smooth but it was passable. This road turned onto a much longer undeveloped road which ran up to the main road leading to the city about a quarter of a mile from our farm. In the winter following a snow fall, a substantial snow fall the snow on the road would be pressed down to ice as the vehicles drove back and forth day in and day out. The vehicle would proceed slowly down the roads trying to drive as safely as possible.

Each day about 7:30 a.m. we would leave the house for the long walk up to the bus stop. Fortunately for us this was also the same time the huge. Slow moving Meridian Milk would swing by and pick up our milk. On those dark, cold winter mornings following a snow fall it was great fun to wait for the truck to pass us then run from the passenger’s side of the truck, so the driver would not see grab on to the back bumper and ‘hooky bob’ up to the bus stop. Even though the truck was huge and lumbering it could eventually gain enough speed to make the ride up to the bus stop challenging enough to be dangerous.

But dangerous or not hooky bobbing was fun and I miss not hooky bobbing today, I miss not being able to physically do it even if I could find a truck or car to hang on to. But I have the memories and that sometimes is enough.