I grew up in the country, where life moves a little slower and our gardens grow a bit greener. Three things move fast where I’m from; the volunteer fire department, our high school football team, and race cars on Saturday nights. We have fridges stocked with local grass fed steak and deer meat and the beer is always cold. We sit in truck beds around campfires and listen to George Straight. We sleep peacefully, without traffic or streetlights. We open our windows in the summer to let in the breeze of fresh air and the sound of peepers and sometimes coyotes howling in the back yard or an owl. When I was a kid I would listen closely to the owl and hear how it seems to say “who cooks for you” like my father told me it did.

I grew up in the same woods as these creatures, knew every inch of every acre we own and yet always found something new and fascinating hidden inside of it. My father didn’t just teach me about owls he taught me about pine needles and the little British Red Coats that marched through the moss. I played trucks with my brother and could hit a baseball harder than any of those boys.

My dad built us a clubhouse but we always preferred the lean-to fort we built ourselves with sticks and twine. We spent many weeks collecting sticks and logs to craft the walls and pine branches to cover the roof; we thought it would last forever. The fort was a result of our own labor and hard work.

My mom could never keep my hands clean when I was little and now she can’t keep my brother’s clean from engine grease. Girls here can’t keep the dirt from under guys’ fingernails and I’ve never held a hand that isn’t rough with callouses.

They’re proud of these; as if they are trophies, the result of many long hours of hard work at jobs that offer very few days off. They have earned these callouses just the same as they have earned everything else they have in life.

Someday these hands will be held by children, the next generation of all American girls and good ole boys. They will be taught “please”, “thank you”, “yes sir” and “yes ma’am”. They too will be taught about the forest around them and the creatures they share it with. Then they will be set off to go play outside in the dirt and grass and wildflowers.

When they come in at dusk mom will wash them off and drain the very dirty bath water. When mom and dad put them to bed they will listen to the peepers hum them to sleep, and they will sleep very deeply because they are pumping honest, hardworking country blood in their veins.