Scars

My Teenage Years

Chap. 6, (The Auvil Family)

I was loaded into the car again with all my belongings for a long trip to Valley Furnace, WV. Outside of Philippi WV to be exact. It was a rural farming community which I was used to.

The Auvil's, Wayne and Katherine were their names. They owned a 200-acre cattle farm, raising Herford cows to send to market. Their herd was 150 head large. They were nice enough to me, but I never quite felt at home there. Wayne was overly duplicitous, Kate usually acted as though I wasn't even there most of the time. Unless she needed me to do something, which meant to wash dishes, scrub floors or feed the animals.

They also had pigs that they kept to butcher. I would slop them every day, which I thought was gross. I felt pigs were the dirtiest animal that God ever created. On this Saturday afternoon, Kate got up early grabbed her shotgun and went to the pig barn. Suddenly I heard a shot, ten minutes or so later she came back into the house informed me that two men were coming to take the pig to be butchered and that I needed to take the hose out and hose down the pig barn. Dressing in my dirty clothes I headed out to the barn, opening the door there was blood and bits and pieces of bone all over the back wall of the barn. It made me physically sick at my stomach; I hosed it down quickly and ran back into the house, heading to the bathroom to throw up.

My first year of High School was very scary, I wasn't a little girl anymore. Now a teenager, all the new things seemed even more scary. New family, new school, and all the news over again. I made friends surprisingly quickly, but my very best friend was Mary Zirkle; we were close as two girls could be.

They called us frick and frack. When you saw one of us the other was not far behind. She was my sister in all aspects of the word. We were both blondes, both the same height and we both had a passion for horses. Her parents had a horse farm outside of Philippi and I sent a lot of time at her house.

I secretly was in love with her older brother Danny, who was a couple of years ahead of me in school.

One snowy evening in January, Mary called me and asked if I wanted to go sled riding. Mary told me that she and Danny would come and get me if I could come spend the night at her house.

Kate said I could go and soon after they arrived at the house to pick me up. It was a teenager dream night, the fire barrels were burning, and her parents made hot chocolate for all of us, approximately twenty kids were there.

Danny and I went down the inner tube together and I held on tight. We ended up at the bottom of the hill in a big heap as he touched my cheek with his cold snowy gloves and moved in to kiss me. My first kiss was awkward and dreamy at the same time. He dove in and kissed me quickly. I wasn't given a warning. It was so fast that I didn't have time to feel it, and I was left trying to figure out what I just felt. A minute later he hugged me and then kissed me a bit more slowly. It felt so strange because it was the first time I had ever felt that feeling of someone's lips being on mine. I almost felt gross since I realized how dirty lips could be. At the same time, it felt warm and nice. I remember thinking that kissing wasn't as perfect as everyone else thought it was and I thought hugs felt better, but then I went back to thinking about how nice it was. It was very conflicting. We dated for a while unsuccessfully then became more like best friends than a couple. I liked it that way.

That same month, one of the Herford's had gotten out of the barn, and she was ready to have her calf. I searched the farm for her for hours remembering, that my hands had gotten so cold I could not feel them. After three hours of searching, I spotted the cow, lying down in the thicket close to some deer. Her baby was tucked in beside her and they were both covered with snow. Marking my way back to the house, Wayne got the tractor and the wagon. Heading back to the thicket we went as far as we could. Wayne and I heading the rest of the way on foot so as not to spook the cow and calf. The snow was heavy, the sky was filled with snowflakes, I remember the snowflakes on my eyelashes and my cheeks were freezing. Taking the calf from her mother and loading her on the hay wagon for the trip back to the barn. Mom bellowed and snorted but she finally got up and followed the tractor back to the barn, where she got grain, water and a warm place to sleep for her and her baby.