The Back Forty
By Roger Pond

It’s amazing how much our society has changed in the last generation. It doesn’t seem that long since I was a kid, but I guess it was.

A few years ago I dragged our old basketball goal out of the barn for the grandkids to use. We bought the goal and the pole it rested on for their father many years ago. Their dad and I used to play “one-on-one” and “horse” on the graveled area next to the barn.

That won’t work for the new generation, though. They need a concrete pad that is nice and smooth. I once told the grandkids about the days when my friends and I played basketball in the haymow, in the gravel or in the mud. We played wherever there was a flat spot and a goal.

The kids gave me that funny look that says Come on Grandpa, you don’t expect us to believe that, do you? That’s the hardest thing about being a grandpa: We tell them such outrageous tales much of the time, the truth sounds just as crazy as everything else.

My son’s old goal stayed in the barn for quite a while, but a little dusting-off made it as good as new. That’s what I thought, anyway.
Everything was “good as new” when I was a kid. We had a saying in those days: “Use it up, wear it out, make it work, or do without.”

I’m afraid doing without has pretty much gone out of fashion. My family didn’t just go out and buy a new basketball or a net like folks do today. We got a basketball each Christmas and a net every year or two.

Things are different now. Soon after I cleaned up my son’s goal, Grandma went out and bought the grandkids a brand new basketball and a net!

I looked at the kids’ new leather ball and told them it would work fine on the concrete, but it might get slippery and hard to shoot with cow manure on it. I told them about the days when we played in the haymow – and described the hazards of having cows below the court. (There’s that look, again.)

I described how our ball would go down the hay chute or through the manger and wind up with the cows below. Then, someone had to go down and get it. Quite often the ball had been licked several times before we got there, and the cow manure made it kind of sticky.

We would carry the ball back upstairs on our fingertips and try to wipe it off with some loose hay or straw. I explained that we couldn’t send just anyone after the ball, either. Many of our games included town kids, and they were deathly afraid of cows. The town kids always thought the cows would bite them.

“A cow won’t bite you,” we told them. “She might kick you, or she might run over you, but she won’t bite you!”

Basketball was a different game in those days. The big guys playing today wouldn’t have lasted two hours on our court. Most of our friends were town kids – and the cows would have got them for sure.

Readers with questions or comments for Roger Pond may write to him in care of this publication.