When I was a kid, my cousins were my first playmates. We swam in grandma's muddy pond, tried to see if we could bring down our uncle's rope swing, and for some weird reason one of us always felt the need to get naked. There was never any hanky-panky going on mind you, there was just one particular cousin I had that had an affliction for taking his clothes off, although nobody really seemed to know why. I of course, will be changing the names to protect the innocent and I will omit the "the streakers" name altogether.
My cousin "S" and I would stand under the mulberry tree in the front yard and eat berries until we were ill, and the bottoms of our feet were permanently stained purple. She and I would also crawl in the grain bin with a bottle of 7-UP and pick out and eat the corn. We would gleefully catch bull heads out of grandma's pond when we both knew they were good for nothing more than feeding cats. But our favorite pastime was to take turns rolling each other off the top of the chicken house in an old tractor tire and (while inside) rolling it off the top. It was risky behavior, but the payoff was well worth the risk. It was the equivalent to a Six Flags ride. It was the equivalent to riding in the back seat of an old Buick without any seat belts, we were essentially taking our life in our hands. Nothing was more fun than laying under the back glass of a 70's car that weighed better than 4,000 lbs. and wait for dad to throw on the breaks. Kids in NYC take turns riding in dryers at the laundry mat, this is basically the same thing, we were just being resourceful and using what God had given us. You gotta play the cards you are delt you know?
I have nothing but the fondest memories of "S" she was the sister I never had. Not so long ago after my dad passed away, she called me out of the goodness of her heart. We spent quite a bit of time catching up and she laid out the details of where her life had gone both right and sometimes wrong. But for some reason it seems the parts that have gone wrong are the ones that are the most entertaining. I'm not picking at her mind you, same goes for mine. The curvy S in the road and the impromptu hills are always more memorable than the straight aways. She has imparted to me more than once that her life had become (and I quote) "a movie of the week and she was Joanna Kerns." Life can sometimes be cruel, yet at the same time comical. Of course, at that point if you don't laugh you will probably just cry. To this day I love S and I think about her almost every day.
One day grandma got new horse water tank in the middle of the summer and "the streaker" and I had decided to go out there after lunch to try it out. Little did we know that my little brother had been playing in it first and when he came in to eat lunch, he left an old coffee can submerged in the water, you know the kind with the jagged edge on top. Once my cousin and I had finished lunch we ran out to the tank, my cousin jumped off the top rung of the wooden fence and yelled "the last one in is a rotten egg." As fate would have it, he was the first one in because I was lagging behind trying to dig a sand burr out of the bottom of my foot. Once he landed in the tank the water instantly turned red and his face as white as a sheet because when he landed his right big toe caught the side of the coffee can. And this time it was clear that grandmas well known magic she usually performed with butterfly band aides and bacon fat just were not going to cut the mustard. This particular incident was going to require a real doctor. His whole toe was barely hanging on by one small piece of skin. And even though I'm usually faint at the site of blood I got the pleasure of holding his foot all eighteen miles to town. Grandma always did have a way of pushing us out of our comfort zones. Way to go Floydia!
My cousin "D" for some reason always wore cut off blue jeans and a sweat stained tee shirt that looked as though someone had used it as cleanup rag while changing the oil in their Massy Ferguson. He wore thick (pop-bottle looking) glasses that were so smeared I don't see how was able to see anything. It always appeared as if someone had covered them with a thin film of Vaseline. He always talked quickly with a decided lisp and often tended to drool slightly once he became excited like a panting bulldog. One night he decided we should go out into the woods to play (and I quote) "Hardy Boys Mysteries." Whatever in the hell that meant! So, we found an old metal fence post, wrapped some old shop rags around the end of it we had soaked in kerosene and lit it on fire to use as a mock torch. But on the way to woods we got sidetracked and ended up in the chicken house instead where D proceeded to accidently drop the torch in chicken manure and started a mini blaze. Those of you who are familiar with that particular substance know how lethal it can be. And in the infamous words of grandpa, "that white stuff on top of chicken shit is also chicken shit." We were lucky enough to get grandma's garden house close enough to the chicken house to put out the fire, thank God for that! Otherwise, I wouldn't be setting here writing today, I'd just be another sad farm statistic. I give grandma a lot of credit for never telling on us for that, we would have no doubt gotten our hides tanned over such an offence.
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