Those who milked 30 cows by hand can tell us about it, but we can’t fully understand.

Most of us will never experience the exhilaration of opening a feedbox and confronting a big, yellow cat with a coal oil lantern (the farmer has the lantern). Doing chores in the dark was just part of living, but that didn’t make it any easier.

My dad used to tell about a young man who walked down the road past Grandpa’s farm to visit a neighbor before cars were common. This fellow was afraid of the dark, but would return after dusk some nights, carrying an old lantern and whistling to take his mind off the darkness.

Dad said the young fellow would be whistling softly and walking at a leisurely pace when he left the neighbor’s; but by the time he traveled a mile or so, he would be jogging along briskly and whistling at a much higher pitch. One night, the lantern went out, and folks heard the young man pass in the darkness, whistling like a teakettle and running at 20 miles an hour.

I’m too young for coal oil lanterns, but I can remember when farms weren’t lighted like they are today. We had lights, but they were all inside buildings and there weren’t that many.

Adults didn’t seem to mind the darkness between the house and the farm buildings, but the kids did. My brothers and I learned to scope out the path to the house before flipping any lights. One kid would hold the barn door open while the other flipped the switch. Then we would run like mad so nothing could catch us.

My scariest moments in the dark were when friends from town came to visit. Fear is contagious, and the town kids seemed afraid of everything. Of all the things they feared, being bitten was probably the worst.

Town kids would see a cow and ask, “Does she bite?” This seemed ridiculous to us. A person might get bitten by a dog, cat or even a pig – but nobody gets bitten by a cow.

The combination of cows and darkness really put these kids on edge. If we wanted to play basketball in the barn, we had to assure our guests there weren’t any cows around or, if there were, that they didn’t have any teeth.

One dark and scary night, my friend Willy and I decided to play some basketball in the hay mow. We got to the barn all right, but I could see Willy was getting nervous when I opened the door to the milking barn.

Then, just as I reached for the light, something in the corner said “Baa!” Willy leaped through the barn door and was gone before I could even turn around. I wanted to tease my friend for being scared by a harmless little calf.

I would have, too, if I hadn’t passed him three times between the barn and the house.

Readers with questions or comments for Roger Pond may write to him in care of this publication.