During the summer we went barefooted all the time. This made one of our games especially fun. The game was called “poison” and we played it in the cow pastures and around the barns. Everyone around here had cows, so you can just imagine what the poison was.
Sometimes while walking through the pasture, we would come up on a fresh, juicy, large dark green cow pie much too tempting to pass by without playing a game of poison. Once the poison was identified, we would decide where the home base would be.
One person was “it” and all the other children had to walk side by side in a line holding hands. As they walked across the cow pie, they would pull and tug each other trying to get someone to step in it. Whoever stepped in the cow pie had to run to home base before they got caught by the person who was “it.” If you made it home, you were safe. If you were caught, then you were “it.” And if you stepped in the cow pie, well, you can guess how that was!
I heard one of the teachers when I taught school in Del Rio laughing about that game one time. She had played the same game when she was little. And here we thought we had invented it.
Letters to Lori – The Family History and Stories of Opal Corn Myers written by Barbara League
A huge cattle farm surrounds Wilson holler so there was ample opportunity to step in cow piles when I was a girl but I never had any desire to do so 🙂 Matt on the other hand thought feeling that mush go through his bare toes was fun. I’ve heard other folks tell childhood stories that are similar to Opal and Matt’s.
Today’s Thankful November giveaway is a copy of Letters to Lori The Family History and Stories of Opal Corn Myers written by Barbara League. To be entered in the giveaway leave a comment on this post. Giveaway ends December 8, 2025. You can hear me reading the book here.
Last night’s video: Preserving the Old Ways in Appalachia.
Tipper
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Letters to Lori sounds so good! How do You always know the good books!!
I also lived next to a farm growing up and also never had any desire to step in cow patties. I do remember my brother and I running from an old ornery bull through the pasture and I ran right through a big fresh one and of course since I was running it was slinging everywhere behind me. Needless to say I had to go inside take a shower and change clothes. Haven’t thought of this in years.
The game sounds like kids had fun playing it. Thank you for sharing this, Tipper.
Never heard of that game but have thrown a few back in the day whenever someone wasn’t paying attention. Was funny to see the look on someone’s face when they got a new cow pie up side the head. But not so funny when it happened to you.
I never played poison. My Grandma had a cow or two in a small field but my mother would have never allowed me, the youngest of all the grandchildren, to go play out there. I don’t remember ever hearing of that game. This book has some really good stories in it.
Oh my goodness! I can’t even imagine how much trouble my sister and I would have been in if we had come home with cow “piles“ squished between our toes. Daddy might have had to put up his army tent for us to sleep in outside that night. What fun it would’ve been, though.
I am glad I missed playing that game as a child. I think I’d rather the cool water of the creek running over my feet and through my toes then a cow pie.
Makes me cringe!! lol; If I had been asked to participate in that game, I would have said “NO Way”!! and run away as fast as I could
This sounds like a great book!
I get such a kick out of these stories. Always makes me smile.
Yucky. That’s a game I’m glad we didn’t know about. Yuck. Prayers up for Miss Barbara’s son. May God be with y’all during this time.
I believe that day I would have been sick and stayed at home…
Growing up in rural NH in the 50s my brother and I had a favorite blueberry and black raspberry batch we loved to go picking in. To get to those special places we had to cross a couple of cow pastures that
were loaded with cow patties. It was fun running through those fields praying we did not step on a vow pattie. Another wonderful story fro Opal. Have a blessed day.
All Of Us Neighborhood Kids Played Football In The Cow Pasture,I Can’t Tell You How Many Times I Ended Up In One. My Momma Sure Did Hate To See Me Coming Lol, Because She Had To Wash Me In The Round Tub,Give Me A Bath.
No cow piles for me but the book I’d gladly accept!
Everyone stay warm today!
Oooh I would pass on that game for sure!
I grew up on a farm where we had a milk cow, but me and my sisters never played poison. I had never heard of the game until this posting.
That sounds like something I would have liked playing when I was little! Super funny.
All I can say is – ickkk!!! Never played that particular game.
We received snow overnight here in Oklahoma, just beautiful. I never had the opportunity to play the cow pies game lol!
As always praying for Granny.
I don’t recall anyone playing that game but I’ve accidently stepped in a few cow piles. I tried to avoid them as much as possible. I stepped on nails, thorns, broken glass and sharp rocks often enough to lead me to watch where I placed a foot.
I’ll pass on that one , lol !!!!
My landlord had a cow pasture right behind our house on the other side of the branch growing up. We never played the cow pie game but boy were we brave, or stupid one, because we would take turns jumping over the fence and enticing the bull to charge at us. He did a few times and buddy you find some running speed you didn’t know you possessed when he came at ya!
Cassie I never had a bull chase me and finding speed you didn’t know you had. I do have first hand knowledge of a stirred up yellow jacket nest making you forget about having arthritic knees. A story for another time, when my best friend was a teenager he hooked a very large white faced bull in the nose when he went to cast his rod and reel. He said the bull went one way while he running the other way. 60 years later we still laugh about that.
Never played that game, but I “cut my foot” many times growing up. I remember using dried cow patties for bases in cow-pasture baseball games. Hunting wild turkeys in cow country taught me to watch for upturned cow flops, a sure sign that birds were using that area. They had learned to flip the dried manure to feed on whatever bugs were living under there.
Just thinking about the difference in today’s young people and the ones from years past. A lot to ponder.
As a kid I don’t know why we didn’t play that game, kind of sounds fun. My brothers did however like to get in the barn loft and drop the “ cow bomb” on mine and my sisters head as we unexpectedly walked by. Those were the good ole days.
Never heard of the game, “Poison”…..but country kids have always made up their own adventures! A visiting city cousin once asked our kids why their Dad didn’t “clean up this pasture.” He was used to living in a big town, where you were required to “clean up” when you walked your dog!
Such simple times in the mountains of Appalachia! What a game built on imagination.
That sounds like a fun game, except for actually stepping in the “poison”!
I do enjoy being barefoot in the warm weather but never do I want to step in cow pies…
I grew up on a small dairy farm in sw Virginia and our family sold milk to Kraft . We played this game and more in the fields of home. Always that potential because we never wore shoes . Playing soft ball we used dried patties for ⚾ bases . It was one of my chores to go get the cows from the field during the summer and snow days from school in the winter there other jobs like bringing hay bales from the barn to feed. THANKS for reminding me of the fun memories of home and Momma!
Goodness gracious what a hoot!!
On a side note…it’s 17 degrees here this morning and we’ve had a bit of snow. hoping it comes your way Tipper so you can go sledding!!
We never played poison when I was growing up, a game mom probably knew and chose not to teach her kids for obvious reasons. We did go barefooted from May 1st until cold weather and had plenty of cow patties inviting us to play. Being “it” in a game of tag was bad enough to make me cry, much less being “it” with stuff between my toes. That game would have forced me to wash my feet before it was necessary at bedtime. Mom made sure we washed our “rusty” bodies before we went to bed.
I grew up in town so wasn’t around any cow patties while playing outside. Even if I was, I don’t think this would be a game for me, haha! Have a great day Tipper and family!
I’ll pass on stepping in cow pies too 🙂 My grandparents were farmers and they are the ones who started my love for the country ways.
Oh my goodness! I would love to call this good “clean” fun but…
I also have “stepped in it” many times, going barefoot all the time my youth, add some stickers on the sides of your ankles made it worse. Its -10 below zero up here and the dog doesn’t want to step in the snow to go this morning…
Hi Y’all. Requesting prayers for my son. Spent the night in the ER. On our way soon to a different hospital and a heart cath. TY and Love y’all.
Barbara, I’m so sorry. I’ll be praying!!
Barbara, I just said a prayer for your son, you & all your family, and will continue to pray for him.
What we did for entertainment back in the day, lol!
I’m glad I missed out on that game!
Well, that sounds like a fun and interesting game, lol.
We never played games with it but stepped in them many a time when working in the cow pasture and got a lot on our hands when we loaded walnut logs and locust posts that had been drug through the cow pies, when we stepped in one we would say we cut our foot.
Oh cow pies!!! Growing up in rural west central Illinois, as a teenager in the fabulous 70s, we had to make our own fun. Enter cow pies. I’m not certain where the idea of tossing cow pies came from, but it was a staple of fundraising during my teen years. The high school boys were in charge of procuring and delivering a substantial amount of pies(that had dried enough to transport) to whatever location was being used for the event. It caused endless amounts of laughter from start to finish. Another popular cow pie related fundraiser was bovine bingo. A generous farmer would allow a large section of pasture ground to be marked off in a square grid(field chalk, spray paint, twine, etc) to resemble a bingo card. Then several cows were released into the area and the game began. It usually took several hours for anyone to get a bingo but since there were other activities or a rousing high school football game going on, nobody seemed to care. It was all good “clean” fun and made for great memories.
How funny that brought back memories of my cousin and I playing the same game. I was blessed growing up with all my first cousins we all lived next to each other. We all talk about how we were so blessed. We all went to the same schools and the same church. And we all wish we could have raised our children the same way. But we ran out of land before we ran out of family.
Oh my, sounds interesting! God bless!
Never stepped in a cow pie.
No way would I play that game!
When my kids were in school, we lived near Statesville. For a fund raiser schools paint the football field in grids about 5 foot square. Number the squares and sell them. Then they would let a cow loose and wherever the cow left a deposit would determine who was the winner. Don’t think I ever went to one. I didn’t even want to see it.
That’s gonna’ be a pass for me on stepping in the cow patties — but I did always enjoy living around cattle! They can be very entertaining and some of the cows even sweet! Just the one thing…to quote that 90s Tim McGraw song, “don’t mess with the bull, he can get get real mean…” which reminds me of that old saying, “mess with the bull, get the horns.” 🙂
Thanks for the story! I’m glad I stuck to mud pies as a kid. lol.
loved the story. Never played that game but lived in an area where I could have !
Kid’s have the craziest games! I played lots of different games, but poison wasn’t one of them, thank goodness. I hope you are all staying warm!
I agree with L. I think I will pass on this game too!
I went barefoot all summer as a kid but I would never have stepped in a cow pile on purpose. lol.
I grew up on a farm with lots of cows, but never heard of the “poison ” game. I enjoyed stepping in mud, though.
Inventing your own fun is the one thing that our children today is lacking. It robs our kids of the fun to imagine and create. We never had bought board games and only one toy a year for Christmas, so we made up our own games. Did you ever play scotch wheel? Dad would find a strong piece of wire and bend the end in a shape that would fit around an old SMALL tire. We would take turns running and pushing that tire as fast as we could go. We would take wood and build a bougie wagon with scraps we found around our house and riding in it. Lots of made up games that were popular then. What fun we seven kids had playing together. God bless all.
Even though there was a slight chance of “frozen precipitation” last night/today for our area of NW Alabama, it was mid-thirties with overcast skies when I arose before daylight. The temps would would have to drop during the day to see any frozen stuff and I don’t think that is going to happen. We haven’t even reached “SNO-CON Level 1 yet and won’t (when one tears out to the store for bread and milk, etc.). I am ready for a “warm-up” and sunshine already and I realize it’s only December.
I’ve never played POISION, but as country kids we did play outside and did “work with what we had” a lot of the times. I received the CD yesterday. Thanks again.
Jeffery
I grew up with several cousins that were about my age. We spent a lot of time together at our grandparents farm. The barn was a favorite place to play and the barn loft always had lots of hay bales for making hay forts. One day I accidentally fell out of the loft right into the middle of a fresh cow pile. My cousins ran to get our grandma thinking I was hurt badly or dead. Fortunately, I was unharmed by the experience but I was quite a mess. Grandma came and stripped me down right there to check me out and hose me off. My cousins, who watched the whole episode, thought it was hilarious. I had a different opinion about it.
Growing up, we kids always had shoes or flip flops on because of all the goat heads “stickers” growing in the pastures. Nasty things really hurt if you stepped on one barefooted! Only place we went barefoot was down by the creek or the cow pond. Stepping in a cow patty was inevitable there.
If “poo” was poison, I’d say we would ALL be goners by now! As a mother, nurse and caretaker of small animals, I’ve seen and been exposed to a lot of “poison.” If it was money, I’d be absolutely loaded. Lol In the military, you had a small shovel to travel with and I think you know what it was for-a place to bury “poison.” Oh my, I will be looking for “cow pie” this spring or “chicken pie” for my garden and I seem to be in the middle of such a wonderful place to find “black gold!” It’s a beautiful thing REALLY!!!
This book sounds like a treasure!!
A much simpler life in those days and not the hectic chaos found today, I miss it so much.
Blessings to y’all!!
How many have heard of the mean and dangerous prank of putting fresh cow pies in a paper/poke sack, putting it on someone’s porch, setting the sack on fire just before knocking or ringing the doorbell. When the person comes to the door they will stomp the fire out getting fresh cow pie on themselves? No I never did anything like this, if I had and my parents found out, it would have been Lord have mercy on my soul and especially my hind end, my parents wouldn’t have had mercy on either one!
I never played that game but accidentally stepped in a few cow pies as a child! Yuck!
Growing up in the country was wonderful.
Going barefoot was so much fun. Even now, I don’t like wearing shoes.
Enjoy this chilly morning!
I’ve never played the game, but have had one or two maybe thrown at me a time or two! (Don’t enter me in the contest, I already won a copy of the book that I am reading now.)
Love your stories.
Tipper, I avoided the cow piles as a child, but my cousins and I did lick the salt block that Pap had put out for the cows. The block had “cow tongue marks” licked smoothly into it. One cousin wouldn’t lick it because of “germs” but she would repeatedly lick her finger, rub it on the block and then lick the salt off her finger! That was so much cleaner!
Never heard of this game before.
Stepping in fresh cow manure was not something my sister and I did willingly, but the old dried out cow piles were great spots to use a stick and flip it up to find fishing worms, which I did a lot when I was a kid and needed worms for our pond.
I grew up on a NC dairy farm in the 60s! I know all about “cow pies” but we never played any games like that. I do know that in the barn, we stepped in a lot of fresh manure bare footed. My brother and I had knee high black rubber boots we milked in but in the summer, we liked au natural! Shorts, tshirt, milk apron, and no milk boots. Our friends thought this was gross! Thanks for the memories Tipper!
Though your story is told in a way that is CHARMING, . . .”EWWwww!” (…and I consider myself a good “country girl”) — with all due respect(and love), didn’t you have MUD to walk & play in??
“More power to ya'”, to a lot of the farm-girls and boys out there . . .I guess I’m “the weak one”!
That’s so funny! Sounds like something we would do, but ours would have been out of meanness/silliness not a game.
I grew up on a farm with cattle, hogs, chickens, etc. We would have to walk the back pastures to gather the cattle because they liked to go to the woods. If we stepped in a pie we called it
“cutting our foot”. Most always we would cut our foot and it would ooze up tween our toes. We never wore shoes. This made for some good memories. I’m gonna have to remind my siblings of this. It will bring about many laughs.
Debbie, I like to joke and say chickens running loose (nowadays called free range) and going barefoot is one of the reasons I grew so big. I was well fertilized when I was a kid.
I don’t think I would enjoy playing poison very much, but I would watch people play it (ha ha). Continuing prayers for all, Jane
I think I’ll pass on that game!
I’ve always tried to avoid them cowpies, not something I favor, God bless you and have a great day, not even as a child, God bless Granny
oh my goodness…i cannot imagine WANTING to step in a cow pile.
“Nope!” . . .but I guess I’d meet it HALFWAY, cuz I’d probably play it if it were HORSE poop — “NO WAY, cow pie”!!!
I have never played the game of poison. In the country where I live and grew up, there was never more than one or two of us kids together at a time. I have played baseball in a cow pasture with my best friend, it was not really a baseball game, it was just us hitting or pitching a ball to one another but the danger of a fresh cow pie was there.
Ed, I read your reply about snow late yesterday, I was not even thinking of you when I wrote that, I was just teasing or picking at Tipper about how much she loves snow. Like you, I don’t need snow to stay inside, fact is, I have been staying inside since the weather has turned cold, cloudy and rainy over the last week. These old bones can’t take the cold like I use too. For many years, I never would wear a coat when outside, I would only wear a thick flannel shirt for a coat or jacket.
They’ve changed the forecast anyway. Now it’s for no snow at all. All rain.