I am someone who is from the nowhere state of Indiana. My high school is just down the road from the elementary school and both are surrounded by cornfields. My hometown is named Westpot, but no one knows where that is and to get to any sort of store that isn’t our gas station you have to drive roughly twenty to thirty minutes in any direction. There really is not much in my town and because of all the fields, a lot of us kids are farmers.
I was raised on the inside of my small town until I was seven and then we moved to the outskirts where we had our own pastures and fields to bale. Yes, bale. The extreme workout of the summer. We have had all sorts of livestock on our farm. Horses, pigs, rabbits, cattle, and what we are known for, goats. Our place was called Miller Meadows and I loved growing up where I could run outside all day and not worrying if a car would be flying down my road. I have this as past tense because we recently moved to combine our goat farm with our family’s cattle farm over in Sunman.
Up till I graduated high school, my sister and I showed our goats, my cattle, and her rabbits in the 4H county fair. It was usually just for fun and I honestly loved working with my animals and being able to showcase them.
As I said before, I graduated and now I go to Xavier University which happens to be a huge change from my cornfields and backroads. I cannot take my truck up here for it would not make the trip, I am out of state (the only one from my school who did so), and I am in a city. Cincinnati is a lot different than what I imagined. Of course, Xavier is a private school and honestly, the small campus is very open compared to what I thought it would be. There is space to get away if need be and I’m closer to home than most students so that’s a nice bonus.
Being a farmer or owning any sort of livestock is kind of a culture shock to some folks around here. People get excited when I say I raise goats and then they ask for pictures (my lockscreen is of one and my homescreen is my cow).
I also speak with an accent when I get excited. It doesn’t happen often, as I was tormented for years at a younger age and I am from not so southern Indiana. One wouldn’t think I have an accent, but it happens with certain words or phrases. Apparently, I say crayon wrong (pronounced crown, like the whiskey). My own mother says it this way as do a lot of people from Westport so I think I am right and will continue to fight my case on the matter.
I wear my cowboy boots a lot. I have yet to see anyone on campus wear boots so that’s a funny outlook. Honestly, it was a rough awakening when I noticed no one else wore boots because that’s all kids wore back home. Even with sweats or prom dresses. It was something we did.
No one seriously owns a flannel. Flannels are now used as a trendy thing and I’m not sure if I like it or not. I own a lot of flannel, but that’s because of where I lived and how I was raised. If I do see any flannel on campus, and that is a rare site, then it is only because it is trendy. The sad fact is that I also brought some of my show shirts that are less flashy. All my show shirts are western-styled because that’s what was required of us, but sometimes we would wear ones with some bling so we could catch the judge’s eye behind our monster of a cow.
All this along with my belt with its horse buckle, I am very country looking on my campus. I have had people (that I know) point it out to me, saying that I was very “cowboy-ish” that day. Honey, that’s every day for me. I’m not sure what to say to that simply due to the fact that that is what I am comfortable wearing. A lot of times, if I’m not wearing sweats, I do wear my “cowboy” clothes because it calms my anxiety and I feel more at home with myself.
Here’s a recent photo of my cute puppy, Zara. She is roughly seven years old and is a blue heeler.