Asked 'what do you do in a town this size'?

[Hillman]

Oh yea Cut Wood.

I remember one time I was splitting wood.The Sheriffs Daughter come by to watch.Well a piece of metal off the Wedge stuck in her Leg.I was picking it out when who drives up but her Daddy Yes I explained very fast.

hillman

[plowman]

Oh, I missed out on the sugar beets. My mother told horror stories about hoeing beets but the beet business petered out in our neighborhood about the time I was still in diapers.

My mother hoed sugar beets to get the money to buy her wedding dress.

I know another big thing for us to do was walk across the railroad bridge. Was always kind of scary looking down between the ties to the creek below, wondering if you misstepped if you'd get caught up by the ties or fall straight through. We lived about a half mile from the railroad and another favorite thing I would do is when I'd hear the train coming, my dog and I would head real fast (I on my bike) for the railroad crossing down the road and wave at the engineer and the brakeman in the caboose. Oh, and we made snow forts and went sledding down the sides of the gravel pit in the winter because where we lived it was so flat that was the biggest hill we could find.
Except the winter of 68 69 when it drifted clear to the peak of the hoghouse roof and then we'd sled down the drift on a "flying saucer" sled. Some of the kids had real store bought flying saucer sleds but ours was a lid off a SpeedQueen wringer washing machine. We were recycling before anyone even knew what it was.

[skinem]

This reminds me of the differences in rural areas...

I grew up mostly in the PNW in an area that needed irrigating to grow much. My wife is a southern girl who grew up on a farm that often contended with too much water.

When dating I spent one of my last summers at home and she at her home--roughly 2400 miles apart from each other. While talking on the phone (pre-cell phone days) I told her "I gotta go. I have to go move water." We hung up.

The next time we talked she said "I have to ask you...were you being tacky the other day when you said you had to go move water? Because if you were I didn't appreciate it!" I had to laugh, and still do today.

I got to explain to her the joys of moving irrigation pipe.
(She learned later about the necessity of watering your lawn so you can have a lawn. She'd never seen that either.)

I, too, missed on on the joys of hoeing beets...I think "joy" may be a stretch. But, I did know the joy of digging potatoes!