If you hear the words 'born free' do you picture a lion and then think of the movie based on Joy Adamson's book?
Then do you hear the music and words to the Academy Award winning theme song written for that 1966 movie? I do.
But if I just read the lyrics, I see another interpretation, one from my youth and how I was fortunate enough to be born free.
Not only in a country of freedom, but just as important, on a farm with all the freedom to explore that world. My world.
There's the house, as it looked when I was young - up until the time the front porch was enclosed and those three living room windows were replaced.
Here is the lane my sister and I walked down to the pasture to bring the cows up to that big barn for milking.
And there's the hog house roof we climbed up on and below it the stock tank we played in as often as we could get away with it - out of Mom's sight.
This is Dad's team of horses, Rex and Dolly and our pony Queenie in the field 'over east'. I remember the first time Betty and I went that far alone and explored the little ditch of water that ran between the corn field and hay field. It was like a brand new magical kingdom. One we hadn't been to but were free to visit.
I don't know at what age I learned to milk the cows, but I did my share of milking.
Mostly Dad and Ron did it or Dad and Mom. But when Dad and Ron were in the field, it was me and Mom. We had nine or ten milk cows. Mom milked much faster than I did. She would milk five or six cows and then come finish the fourth one I was on.
Some of the same cows but also some stock cows. They were the ones we didn't milk. Their calves increased the herd if they were heifers or sold if they were steers.
The large tree on the left was a Maple, one of our climbing trees, the others were a grove of Catalpa trees.
Born Free Lyrics
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