When I was a kid, my family lived on a big farm in Indiana. We didn't stay more than a couple of years, but if I had to pick a place in the universe that felt like 'home' to me, it would be that farm. Of course part of the reason for that is that even though we moved off the farm, my father's family still owned it and we visited it frequently over the years. But I digress.

When we first moved out to the farm, there was no electricity, no mechanical heat (we used a coal stove), and no indoor plumbing (I know what you're thinking, but we didn't even have an outhouse - we had a POT). Dad was, and still is, a very handy kind of guy so he got all that remedied pretty quickly...although now that I think of it, I'm not sure if he ever installed central heating. I remember very clearly that in the winter, we all moved out of our bedrooms and slept in the living room to be near the coal stove.

We were smack in the middle of six hundred acres of farm and woods, and over an hour away from any of our relatives or friends. I had to either hike a mile uphill to catch the school bus or Mom had to drive me across a creek (sort of a smallish river) on the tractor to catch the bus at another location. We were very isolated and I'm sure it was hard on my mother. But we had all the pets we could have wanted--lots of dogs and cats and horses and ponies and pigs and cows and chickens and a duck. Just the one duck. It was also the first and only time I can ever remember feeling particularly close to my father.

Maybe it was because we were so far away from other human beings and because he was lacking his other activities (which largely consisted of womanizing), that he seemed to have time to spend talking to me. I was about six years old. He'd go for a walk in the yard, or hang out on the big porch that went all the way around the house and just talk to me. He'd say things to me like, "Girl," (I think he knew my name, but I'm not sure), "if you keep your ears open and your mouth shut, you'll learn something new every day." He was right, and that little gem has stuck with me ever since then.

It was during one such conversation while we were strolling through the yard together that I made a grievous error. I was feeling particularly close to him and I threw my arm around his waist and said affectionately, "Dad, you old son of a bitch." See...I knew there were two "sons of" that you could call somebody. I'd heard Dad and his brothers saying things like that to each other. I just didn't realize that while "son of a gun" was basically harmless and might be used affectionately, "son of a bitch" was another thing altogether.

Needless to say, the whipping I got with a switch pretty well broke the affectionate mood I'd been in. Afterwards, Mom (realizing that I was just not the kind of kid that went around cussing at her parents) asked me when I knew I'd said a bad word. I told her, "When he said 'What'd you say, girl?!?'" In retrospect, I think it was probably at the moment when I saw his head come swiveling around at a high rate of speed. But you live and learn, right? I haven't called him a son of a bitch since then.

Not to his face, anyhow.