Childhood

The Vet Ride to Adulthood

/ cigarman501 / 4 Comments

“Adulthood is like the vet, and we’re all the dogs that were excited for the car ride until we realized where we’re going.”  Unknown

“If someone gave you a box that contained everything you had lost in your life, what would you look for first?”

What an interesting question. A plethora of pig trails to travel and rabbit holes to fall into. A bit of self-reflection? Let’s see where this goes.

My first thoughts were of lost loved ones. Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, old friends. My first puppy dog, Caesar. Surely, I didn’t name him that. Did I? Everyone who would know is lost to the sands of time like him.

I’m not sure that was my first thought. I think just before thinking about lost loved ones I might have humorously thought, “My Mind.” Maybe not so humorously for someone who suffers from depression. I certainly haven’t lost any of “those” negative thoughts that usually come around this time of year. My thoughts can often be dark and gray…somewhat like the weather I’m experiencing presently. Yeah, I might look for my mind first.

From the sublime to the ridiculous. The Superman slingshot powered glider. Man could that thing fly. “Up, Up and Away” in my best George Reeves voice…right into the top of the persimmon tree never to be seen again.  That might be the first time I experienced a real, gut-wrenching loss. I don’t guess it was lost; I imagine it was still in the tree when Hurricane Hugo took it and the tree to planet Krypton decades later.

My Captain Midnight Decoder Ring? How much Ovaltine did I have to drink to get one of those? I lost my college ring too. Drinking Ovaltine was much more fun than all the knowledge I drank up to earn the college ring.

Further ridiculousness, my virginity? Right. Truth be known I would have liked to have lost it sooner rather than when I did. Yes, lose my virginity sooner and my hair later.

Lost opportunities. Wow, those are too numerous to list. Every time I turn around in my mind, I run smack into one. Other times they form a chorus in my head. So much discord.

Okay, I’ve figured it out. I knew my pig trails would lead somewhere. “Taaa, taaa, ta, taaa!” My childhood. The first thing I would look for would be my childhood. Those wonderful years between my first awareness that I was a living person and my teenage years when my brain function flatlined. The years when we thought we were Peter Pan before Captain Hook showed us differently. When Decoder Rings meant something…well before the college ring and the sheepskin that went with it.

Those early years when the worst thing facing me was cutting the front yard or hoeing out row centers in the garden. When an eight-ounce Coke and a bag of Lance peanuts were the nectar of the gods and cartoons were still broadcast on Saturday mornings. Along with Sky King, Roy Rogers, and The Lone Ranger of course. Those years when a Schwinn Torpedo would take you anywhere you needed to go.

Chores completed, there were late afternoon trips to the river and the ponds around us. Fresh caught fish breaded in cornbread and onion hush puppies frying in Crisco and bacon grease. A time when I had never heard the word cholesterol much less worried about it.

I mean, there were responsibilities…you didn’t grow up around a farm without responsibilities, but many of them didn’t feel like responsibilities and there was still time to play lawman and desperado using corn cobs as weapons. When it was still okay to play Cowboys and Indians or War. ..little plastic soldier giving their all to defend the American way.

Pick up baseball games in the backyard. Football games on Sunday after church in the front yard. When you didn’t know that childhood would end.

Yeah, I’d look for my childhood first thing because if I were to find my childhood, I would find all those meaningful things I have lost and lose all those nasty responsibilities and the baggage I have toted around since I recovered from my brain-dead teenage years.

Adulthood is never what you thought it would be, and Peter Pan had the right idea. “Never grow up, it is a trap.”

“Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the street and then getting hit by an airplane.” –Unknown

Don Miller’s Author’s Page – https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR3oKgS2EezOMSilHwClD1YNXUSuNkDrshhl1NqxJE3BoDwfxl_1kMtR6QU

Doodlebug, Doodlebug…

/ cigarman501 / 9 Comments

Fly away home! Yer house is on far (fire) and yer children are gone! Appalachian Rhyme

Oh, the things we did to engage ourselves and forgo boredom when we were children. Boredom?  I don’t remember being bored as a child.  The days were filled with activities, many forced upon us, but boredom is not a word I would have used. Most days we were allowed to be creative…sometimes to our own distress.

I also don’t remember being very successful chanting Doodlebug, Doodlebug, either, which considering the little insect we were attempting to vacate from his abode might have been fortuitous. Behold! The Doodlebug.

Antlion larva…a doodlebug. Looks like something out of a 50s horror flick on its way to attack Tokyo.

At this point, unless you are of a certain age, you may be asking, “What in the heck is a doodlebug?” I doubt kids today have a clue about doodlebugs.

So, what’s a doodlebug? It depends kiddies and I’m going to further confuse the issue.  A doodlebug is, according to www.merriam-webster.com 1: the larva of an antlion also: any of several other insects. 2: a device (such as a divining rod) used in attempting to locate underground gas, water, oil, or ores. 3: a buzz bomb.

You might still be confused.  Let me clarify.  The doodlebug of rhyme is the larva of the antlion, an insect that primarily subsists on ants.  Divining, also called dowsing, or water witching uses a forked tree branch, called a doodlebug, from a witch-hazel bush, or metal rods to find water or certain minerals.  Finally, a buzz bomb was a World War Two unguided flying bomb used by Nazi Germany to bomb London.  The British called it a doodlebug because of the sound it made. Still, confused? Me too! I’ve never heard a doodlebug make a sound.

The adult antlion: It eats ants.

An adult antlion https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/galveston/beneficials/beneficial-32_ant_lion.htm

The divining rod, dowser, or water witch. It finds water…maybe. I’m a bit doubtful of the science behind it…there is none, but the site of our well was found using one.

https://www.humanism.scot/what-we-do/news/scottish-water-distance-dowsing-humanist-society-contact/

And finally the Buzz Bomb or the doodlebug as the British called it because of the sound it made. Over ten thousand were launched toward England, six thousand or so landed in London. It goes boom.

https://military.wikia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb

Enough! Back to the rhyme.  As a child, I was instructed to find a moon crater-looking depression in dry sandy soil.  Sitting next to it I, along with my brother and cousins, would all chant, “Doodlebug, doodlebug, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children are gone.”  Because of my Southern Appalachian accent, it might have come out of my mouth differently and there are many other variations of the chant, some not very cheery. 

“Doodlebug doodlebug, come out of your house; it’s burning up with your wife and all your children, except Mary-she’s under the dishpan.” What are we teaching our children? It has no rhyme and the rhythm is awful.

The chant, along with dropping grains of sands down its hole, supposedly caused the critter to come out.  If that didn’t work a small twig was inserted for the larva to latch onto.  That didn’t work either.  I have a lifetime batting average of zero enticing doodlebugs.  My guess is it was a ploy to keep the young ’uns occupied while the adults kept busy with their chores.

A Doodlebug crater https://www.mysoutex.com/beeville_bee_picayune/news/features/what-does-a-doodlebug-doodlebug-do-all-day/article_6988b656-7628-11e8-b13b-5b83b660c7ad.html

My friends and I did a good job of keeping ourselves busy without assistance from a doodlebug…or our parents. We played other childhood games, mostly made up games played from TV shows we had seen or books we had read. We fought and refought battles with corncobs, created pirate ships from a treehouse thrown together with scrap lumber, used my grandmother’s front porch as Fort Apache, although Trixie looked nothing like Rin Tin Tin, and swung from “vine” ropes screaming our best Tarzan yells.

There was one little issue when a friend tried to jump off the hayloft imitating Roy Rogers jumping out of a second story window onto Trigger’s back. Problem was, my friend’s steed was his Schwinn bicycle. He missed the first time and only tried once more. It was a success…maybe. Don’t know if he was ever able to “go forth and multiply.”

We also learned we could fling a Chinese orange a country mile by stobbing (stabbing) it onto the end of a slender sapling and whipping it through the air. We inadvertently on purpose bounced one off the top of Mr. Jimmy’s ’49 Chevy as it motored down the highway. Didn’t hurt anything but gave the old man a bit of a start. Also got our hides tanned.

I know, I know. Some of you of a certain age are wondering, “Did you tie thread around the legs of a June bug and fly it in circles?” No but I know some who did. Always felt it was cruel treatment even for a bug.

Speaking of cruel treatment. The only deed I am truly embarrassed about was strapping a tin can to several large bottle rockets taped together and putting a frog in it. Honestly, it was Mickey Morris’ idea and I really thought the rocket would reach escape velocity. First Frog on the Moon! It may have been the first, we never found the frog.

Further writings can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR1vjrkVD5tHLACNvQM7kjc3RUUE2PROcwIT_xxvLhagMX_376LxmGSM_I0

How Did We Survive?

/ cigarman501 / 3 Comments

 

My downstairs air conditioner is out…specifically the air handler.  I felt it when I came downstairs first thing this morning.  For some reason, air-conditioned air at seventy-one degrees feels different than non-air-conditioned air at the same temperature.  Am I crazy? Oh yes but not because of that last statement.  I knew immediately something was amiss.

I am anxiously awaiting my rescue from the remnants of the lingering summer.  It’s not too bad…yet.  We are well shaded but I’m expecting temps in the mid-nineties by week’s end…it could be bad by Friday if my problem hasn’t been rectified by then…it could be bad tonight as inside temperatures approach a balmy seventy-five.  I don’t sleep well above seventy-two…who am I kidding?  I don’t sleep well.

I should warn you; I sweat in Biblical proportions.  Noah’s forty days and nights look like a clearing off shower.

My predicament once again has me scurrying down a pig trail that leads to those thrilling days of yesteryear.  How did we survive in the days when air-conditioning was not the norm?

I know.  You get used to what you get used to and I have become acclimated to air-conditioned air.  There was a time….

I remember an unairconditioned school building.  We never called off school because of extreme temperatures, hot or cold…but I forget we were built of sterner stuff.  As first graders, we walked ten miles to and from school, uphill in both directions, wind, rain, snow or asteroid strike be damned.

A brick building with wide and high windows.  Ceilings twenty-five feet high if they were an inch, not really but twelve at least…may be.  Unscreened, high and wide windows, I  remember the panic caused by red wasps visiting our eighth-grade history class and trying to take notes around the droplets of perspiration dripping onto my notebook.

During those wonderful years of junior high school, one young lady decided shucking her underwear might help with heat transfer…in the middle of class.   Much in the same way my wife can change clothes using her tee-shirt as her dressing room, this girl squirmed out of her slip.  Our teacher, a somewhat flustered Mister Gunter cautioned us that we should reframe from removing foundation garments due to the heat.  Somehow, we survived with most of our clothing on.

Church Sundays were the same…except for the removing of our underwear.  Tall windows open to catch whatever breeze was available.  No screens and plenty of wasps visiting, dispensing their own version of hellfire and brimstone.

Handheld funeral fans causing us to sweat more with the effort needed to keep the hot and humid air moving.  Sweat soaked dress shirts ruined when the varnish on the pews stuck to them.  I survived even if my shirts didn’t.

At home, it was ceiling box fans and window fans, sitting on the front porch until the bedroom had cooled sufficiently enough for the sandman to visit…sleeping on the front porch when it was miserably hot.  Hmm…decisions, decisions.  Sweat yourself to sleep in the bedroom from Dante’s Inferno or risk getting sucked dry by mosquitos.  I believe I’ll just lay here with a window fan installed backwards in the window at the foot off my bed.  I actually slept that way…with my head at the foot of my bed with chicken wire covering the backside of the fan so I didn’t accidentally stick a body part in it.  Somehow, we did survive…body parts and all.

I know we spent our awake time outdoors.  No matter how hot it was outside, it was cooler than inside.  A lot of the time was spent in my grandmother’s garden, playing cowboys and Indians in and around the barn or recreating World War Two in the woods or on the clay bank behind my house.  For some reason, it didn’t seem as hot then.

It’s persimmon season despite the heat and I remember running barefoot under the persimmon tree in my grandmother’s backyard.  Rotting persimmons caking on the bottom of my feet, oozing between my toes, sticking to the brown, dusty, dry dirt.  Hearing, “You chaps clean your feet before you come into this house!”  Heading to the stream that ran through the pasture trying to pry the mud off our feet.  Getting distracted with the crawfish and minnows…forgetting it was time to do my chores.  “Go out there and pick me a keen hickory!  I’m gonna switch them legs.”  No physical marks remain and eventually my feet came clean.

When my bride and I first moved to our little piece of heaven in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, we had no air conditioning and were surprised at the low ceilings our little farmhouse had…until winter hit, and we understood.  It gets cold in them thar hills.  The original owners were required to feed five fireplaces to heat their home.  Low ceilings make for a warmer house.

In the summer we never ventured onto the second floor, it was just too hot.  For seven years we survived with the help of the hemlocks, poplars and black walnuts surrounding the house along with ceiling and window fans.   Late nights sitting on the front porch waiting for the bedroom to cool down.  Just talking and rocking or swinging, holding hands, the smell of a cigar mixing with the forest smells and citronella.  Good times.  Maybe we did more than survive.

My guess is we will survive this little blip on our radar.  Still, I hope it is a short little blip.

The image is of Robert Hays sweating it out as Ted Striker in Airplane! (1980)

Further musings may be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM