FARMER SHOCKS CHILDREN

One morning, we went out early. The fields were still damp from the night before. My sisters carefully stepped over the electric fence, Grandpa Bentley put there to keep his cows in line. I brushed my bare leg against the wire and nothing happened. I hooted at my sisters for being so careful.

"There's no electric in it, girls. It's turned off!" I grabbed the wire with my bare hands to prove my point. I was also standing in a puddle of rainwater. A valuable lesson was learned that day. Farmers use an alternating, on-off current. It wasn't my first experience with electro-shock therapy but it was certainly a "teeth chattering" one.

Growing up, I spent more time outdoors in the summer than most kids today do. Maybe the absence of TV helped, but I like to think it was my Indian heritage, my one-ness with nature. In any case the fields and woods and the streams were my favorite places. Later in life, I would write about that feeling.