Living at Rural Oaks was quite different for this city girl but I quickly adapted to country life. I opened my little antique business in the finished basement and spent my days refinishing furniture, polishing silver, washing crystal and cleaning and mending the antique linens and laces that were my specialty. Life was good.
Sol had a workshop out back and a “lean-to” of sorts where he kept his prize 1965 Mustang that he was restoring in his “spare time.” He guarded that whole area with his life. It was entombed in a huge blue plastic tarp – out of sight – and NOBODY messed with his stuff in his shroud. This is where things got a little nasty at the farm.
I always refinished my furniture outside where I could hose off the furniture with the toxic chemicals and let it air dry. I kept five-gallon buckets of water where I could wash my rags, brushes and sponges. I had put together sawhorses with a large piece of plywood between to make a table for working. I usually left everything in place so I could pick up right where I left off the next day. The farm owner raised sheep and had quite a large flock. It was interesting to see the sheep go through the shearing process, especially when their wool was dragging the ground and the wool looked like dread locks dragging the ground sometimes. Sheep are kind of dumb animals and not the kind you picture in the nativity scene. They just roam around eating grass and don’t care whose grass it is or where it is. One sheep in a flock is usually smart enough to find a tiny place in a fence that is exactly the size for the flock to escape. You’ve heard that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence? Well, there is merit to that phrase for sure. One day, sure enough, the smart head sheep found such a spot across the road from our home. They were eating their way up our yard to the front door when I heard a commotion. Sol was on the lawn mower cutting grass. He looked like a commuter with road rage chasing those sheep around and around the pine trees. They would come to a dead stop and Sol would charge. They would run and stop again as if to tease him. When I heard the shouting, I ran to the window thinking the worst. Then as I watched, I could see Sollie’s face get redder and the sheep outdoing him on every count. The fiasco moved to the back yard where Sol has his Mustang stored in the tarp. The sheep dug in his heels in our garden which was just coming up and sat down. Then, somehow that head sheep got inside the tarp and had diarrhea as he circled the car. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Sol runs into the house looking for the farm manager’s phone number but got no answer. He left a message for him to come right away, or we might have lamb chops for supper. Shortly after that, the manager shows up in his pickup truck with a rope and chases the buck until he finally was able to rope him. Poor buck’s tongue was hanging out, and the manager is yelling “I hope you die!” “I hope you die!” Apparently, the buck had been in somebody else’s shed before.
We didn’t see any sheep for a long time after that, so Sol asked the manager what happened to the buck. He said, “he died.” We were never sure, but we think the big ole black sheep got thirsty and took a drink from one of my buckets of furniture stripper. That would have done it for sure. Of course, the rest of the sheep herd won in the long run. It wasn’t long before they were meandering down the road looking for greener pastures, stopping cars as if nothing had happened.
