This is James Kenyon for the High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Summer Reading list. My book, A Cow for College tells 22 stories of a Western Kansas farm boy’s life. There were four children in our family spaced over 16 years. Each one was given a heifer calf when we were three years old. When this heifer grew up and started having calves of her own, their offspring were sold and the money was deposited into a college savings account. My brother somehow was given two calves which may have been coincidental as he went on to medical school for an additional four years of schooling.
My adolescent times during the fifties and sixties were filled with adventures of baseball, church revivals, a first kiss, a love for a pretty new teacher, farm animals, and an egg route pulling a red racer wagon into town each Saturday morning.
It was a decade of the polio scare, the Russian Sputnik, the Cuban missile crisis, and my hospitalization for only a tonsillectomy- which to my surprise was also a circumcision. Wow-where was HIPPA in 1955.
Driving a tractor solo at the age of seven was just part of being a needed hand on the farm. No such thing as child labor laws or abuse of kids. I was needed and loved the jobs and responsibility. Raking hay with the Ford tractor and cultivating corn were just part of a routine for this boy starting at such an age.
Tony, the family horse, threw all four of us. Yet, he was our beloved cattle working horse. My dad had bought him from Pinky King who had roped this mustang colt in the Colorado Rockies in 1932. Tony lived 30 years and as a boy, I was there with him as he took his last breath laying on his side in the limestone cow barn. Though I later became a veterinarian, I cannot recall ever having a vet called for any of his illnesses or care.
Baby chicks came each February either in the mail at the post office or on the train from a hatchery in eastern Kansas. Rhode Island Reds gave us brown eggs before they were popular. And we must have been on the leading edge of the “free range” chickens fad, because these chickens roamed our farmstead eating insects, worms, and even cleaning up after the hogs and cattle in the feed yard. Seeing a chicken scratch with prospecting eyes at the dirt is a scene of wonderment.
It was fried chicken, mashed potatoes, chicken gravy, roasting ears, Jello salads, and pie ala mode were often our noon meals which was called dinner. We earned every calorie of it. The evening meal was supper. The saying, ‘there is never a successful farmer who is fat sure applied to my dad and his four brothers who all farmed and lived next to us.
The 4-H fair each August was the culmination for the summer. I showed steers, horses, pigs, displayed a garden exhibit, eight-foot-tall corn, and gallon jar of hard Red Winter wheat which had been hand selected kernel by kernel for uniformity and color of the seeds. The ‘best dressed boy contest’ sent this youth to the state fair style review.
That old revival song, “Just as I am ”still resonates in my mind and those farm boy years made this now septuagenarian ‘just as I am.’
Happy trails!
James was born and raised on a third-generation family grain and livestock farm. At the age of four, sitting on his knees, he guided the pickup truck as his father forked out the feed for the cattle. He went solo by the age of seven driving a tractor in the hay field.
James cared for cattle, pigs, chickens and horses and spent time in nature with birds, cats, dogs, frogs, and possums.
Dribbling a basketball on a dirt surface and aiming it to a rim on the side of the barn was a passion. Hitting rocks with a shovel handle developed his baseball acumen.
His unique cultural setting was near a small town of 300 population where a large extended family and colorful neighbors influenced his values and character.
Dr. Kenyon is a veterinarian in a 35-year mixed animal practice in a beautiful Iowa college town. He’s also a veterinarian for the Alaska Iditarod Dog Sled Race. His community accolades are many and include a 24-stint on the school board as well as holding positions in numerous community organizations including Rotary, his church, the library, museums, and the historical society. He chaired the Iowa Veterinary Medical Association and State Veterinary Board of Examiners. He was named Iowa Veterinarian of the Year and has been recognized as a Distinguished Alumni of the Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine.
James is married to his college sweetheart from Kansas City. They have blended the farm and city in their life together. They have three children, seven grandchildren, and numerous pets.
