Still Standing
MyPTSD Pro
A good chuckle or laugh can help lift a down day. So, I thought it would be fun to share a funny story on ourselves, our family, friend, or from the work place. Only rule is that it has to have really happened. Deal? I will start...
Oh for the joy of childhood memories!
It was a time when the family lived only a mile from my grandparents' home and small farm. It was a time of party-line telephones, Brill Cream ( "A little dab will do ya.") for the hair, hair nets and nylon stockings with the dark seam line up the back of the leg. It was a time when outdoorsmen carried their rifles in a gun rack inside the cab of their trucks, and their 'bagged' deer on the hood. Fish poles and tackle boxes were kept in wooden storage lockers on the bed of those trucks. Hydroplane races were the summer rage. Boxing, baseball and football were games where Olympia, Budweiser, Lucky Lager, and Miller beer were happily consumed. Poker, Pinochle, Canasta, and Bridge were the games of choice when the adults gathered. The kids were allowed to roam freely, riding bikes for miles, unsupervised or exploring the woods until sunset, which did not prompt a call for search and rescue teams to find and return the kids home. It is a good time to remember. But, I digress...
One such period of time, when I was in early grade school and my brother was about to finish such and transfer to Jr. High, found us wandering around the farm, playing. Getting bored with looking for frogs and salamanders in the field ponds and dropping pennies, and small rocks through the wooden slats covering the top of abandoned wells, and watching the field mice stuck in the metal feed barrels, going in circles trying to find an escape hole, my brother had a grand idea. "Let's go get our punks and ladyfingers!" (lighters and firecrackers for the uninformed) he says, with kiddish enthusiasm. Being in the 'country', on farm land where sounds of rifles were not uncommon due to target practice toward haystacks in back fields, lighting off firecrackers would not raise a hair on anyone's head who heard them. In fact, because gunfire and fireworks were so familiar to people then, that even as a young child, I could tell the difference from the other. They all were normal sounds; and acceptable ones.
Anyhow, brother and I grabbed our stash of leftover ladyfinger fireworks from the 4th of July celebrations (yes, we were allowed to keep whatever we did not use that day, to be used at our discretion on another day) and ran for the back field. There to our delight, was a grand supply of cow pies, deposited solely for our imaginative pleasure. Having used these rank, half-dried plops of offerings before, I knew just what he was going to do....much to my joy and amusement! He was going to put the 1 1/2" firecrackers in a pie, light the fuse, walk a safe distance away, turn back and wait in silent anticipation for it to explode. And explode it did! Wonderfully so! The fresher the dropping, the more extraordinary, in fine detail, the exploding display was! It was great fun! While he was playing 'pyrotechnic expert', I stood back, with the extra lit punk clenched securely inside three fingers of one hand and my fireworks held with four fingers on the other hand. The pointer fingers of each hand were pushed deeply into my ears, trying to lessen the sound of the firecracker and dull its jolt, which made me jump.
There was an art to this activity, we learned through practice. Fresh pies were messy, stunk badly, and blew up in messy, tiny, bits and pieces. The dry ones had too much of a strong mass to them and they would not do much more than crack in a couple of pieces. The best ones were the ones that had developed a thin crust on top and were soft on the inside...I guess this was one reason the term, 'Cow Pie' was coined. If you have ever stepped on one you would REALLY understand the nickname!
Now anyone who has fired off a lot of ladyfingers knows that there is an occasional 'dud'. Sometimes, they could be doctored on by pulling the fuse out ever, so slightly and relit. Sometimes, they would simply fizzle out and be of no further use. The latter elicited groans of disappointment with thoughts of having wasted part of a penny on something that did not work. Yup! Blowing up cow pies taught us economy, because we had to plan our strategy according to the number of firecrackers we had and it taught us that not all products worked as they were advertised. To have a dud was a tough way for a kid to know that he wasted money on something that did not work...he could have gotten a couple of gum balls with that penny!
This brings me to my wonderful memory. In it, my brother puts the firecracker in a selected cow pie. He carefully lights the fuse and runs back to where I am standing and we wait..........and wait.........and wait........ We stare intently at the little upright red firecracker. Nothing. Being the brave soul that he was, my brother told me to 'go check it out'. I didn't like him bossing me around and told him to do it himself. I stood firmly on my small plot of terra firma. He strongly insisted that I go retrieve the firecracker. I stubbornly held my ground, partly because he was always bossy with me and he didn't ask me nicely....being a girl and little sister, I was entitled to use this reasoning. Being quite exasperated with me, he stomped over to the virgin cow pie and bent over to pluck the firecracker from the muck, when, all of a sudden, the cracker blew!!!!!! Oh! My! The sight that ensued was instantly burned into my mind!!!!! That cow pie was a perfect speciman! It blew up in just the right amount of chunks. The pieces flew through the air in s--l--o--w m--o--t--i--o--n....I swear! My brother was crouched over the pie, in full "L-shaped" position, at the moment of explosion. He instantly was covered in muck.....glorious, blown-to-pieces of cow muck! Life stopped in that moment! The camera in my mind 'clicked' and the picture was forever recorded in my memory bank. To say my brother was speechless is an understatement! He gasped and spit in utter revulsion. Instantly, I was convulsed in laughter and relief that it was not I who went to check out the 'dud'. As quickly as kids' minds operate, I knew, in those first few seconds, the exploding cow pie was the best 'pay back' my brother could have ever had for being so bossy with me. Seconds later, the only other memory I have is my brother running back to the house, calling for Grandma. Anything else that may have happened as a result of this day has faded from memory. I am certain nothing could have topped what I had just seen....nor do I remember ever using our extra firecrackers in cow pies after that. Brother apparently was a poor sport. Now....had it been me, caught with cow muck on my face, I am certain that the adventure would have continued. I just know my brother.....
Oh for the joy of childhood memories!
It was a time when the family lived only a mile from my grandparents' home and small farm. It was a time of party-line telephones, Brill Cream ( "A little dab will do ya.") for the hair, hair nets and nylon stockings with the dark seam line up the back of the leg. It was a time when outdoorsmen carried their rifles in a gun rack inside the cab of their trucks, and their 'bagged' deer on the hood. Fish poles and tackle boxes were kept in wooden storage lockers on the bed of those trucks. Hydroplane races were the summer rage. Boxing, baseball and football were games where Olympia, Budweiser, Lucky Lager, and Miller beer were happily consumed. Poker, Pinochle, Canasta, and Bridge were the games of choice when the adults gathered. The kids were allowed to roam freely, riding bikes for miles, unsupervised or exploring the woods until sunset, which did not prompt a call for search and rescue teams to find and return the kids home. It is a good time to remember. But, I digress...
One such period of time, when I was in early grade school and my brother was about to finish such and transfer to Jr. High, found us wandering around the farm, playing. Getting bored with looking for frogs and salamanders in the field ponds and dropping pennies, and small rocks through the wooden slats covering the top of abandoned wells, and watching the field mice stuck in the metal feed barrels, going in circles trying to find an escape hole, my brother had a grand idea. "Let's go get our punks and ladyfingers!" (lighters and firecrackers for the uninformed) he says, with kiddish enthusiasm. Being in the 'country', on farm land where sounds of rifles were not uncommon due to target practice toward haystacks in back fields, lighting off firecrackers would not raise a hair on anyone's head who heard them. In fact, because gunfire and fireworks were so familiar to people then, that even as a young child, I could tell the difference from the other. They all were normal sounds; and acceptable ones.
Anyhow, brother and I grabbed our stash of leftover ladyfinger fireworks from the 4th of July celebrations (yes, we were allowed to keep whatever we did not use that day, to be used at our discretion on another day) and ran for the back field. There to our delight, was a grand supply of cow pies, deposited solely for our imaginative pleasure. Having used these rank, half-dried plops of offerings before, I knew just what he was going to do....much to my joy and amusement! He was going to put the 1 1/2" firecrackers in a pie, light the fuse, walk a safe distance away, turn back and wait in silent anticipation for it to explode. And explode it did! Wonderfully so! The fresher the dropping, the more extraordinary, in fine detail, the exploding display was! It was great fun! While he was playing 'pyrotechnic expert', I stood back, with the extra lit punk clenched securely inside three fingers of one hand and my fireworks held with four fingers on the other hand. The pointer fingers of each hand were pushed deeply into my ears, trying to lessen the sound of the firecracker and dull its jolt, which made me jump.
There was an art to this activity, we learned through practice. Fresh pies were messy, stunk badly, and blew up in messy, tiny, bits and pieces. The dry ones had too much of a strong mass to them and they would not do much more than crack in a couple of pieces. The best ones were the ones that had developed a thin crust on top and were soft on the inside...I guess this was one reason the term, 'Cow Pie' was coined. If you have ever stepped on one you would REALLY understand the nickname!
Now anyone who has fired off a lot of ladyfingers knows that there is an occasional 'dud'. Sometimes, they could be doctored on by pulling the fuse out ever, so slightly and relit. Sometimes, they would simply fizzle out and be of no further use. The latter elicited groans of disappointment with thoughts of having wasted part of a penny on something that did not work. Yup! Blowing up cow pies taught us economy, because we had to plan our strategy according to the number of firecrackers we had and it taught us that not all products worked as they were advertised. To have a dud was a tough way for a kid to know that he wasted money on something that did not work...he could have gotten a couple of gum balls with that penny!
This brings me to my wonderful memory. In it, my brother puts the firecracker in a selected cow pie. He carefully lights the fuse and runs back to where I am standing and we wait..........and wait.........and wait........ We stare intently at the little upright red firecracker. Nothing. Being the brave soul that he was, my brother told me to 'go check it out'. I didn't like him bossing me around and told him to do it himself. I stood firmly on my small plot of terra firma. He strongly insisted that I go retrieve the firecracker. I stubbornly held my ground, partly because he was always bossy with me and he didn't ask me nicely....being a girl and little sister, I was entitled to use this reasoning. Being quite exasperated with me, he stomped over to the virgin cow pie and bent over to pluck the firecracker from the muck, when, all of a sudden, the cracker blew!!!!!! Oh! My! The sight that ensued was instantly burned into my mind!!!!! That cow pie was a perfect speciman! It blew up in just the right amount of chunks. The pieces flew through the air in s--l--o--w m--o--t--i--o--n....I swear! My brother was crouched over the pie, in full "L-shaped" position, at the moment of explosion. He instantly was covered in muck.....glorious, blown-to-pieces of cow muck! Life stopped in that moment! The camera in my mind 'clicked' and the picture was forever recorded in my memory bank. To say my brother was speechless is an understatement! He gasped and spit in utter revulsion. Instantly, I was convulsed in laughter and relief that it was not I who went to check out the 'dud'. As quickly as kids' minds operate, I knew, in those first few seconds, the exploding cow pie was the best 'pay back' my brother could have ever had for being so bossy with me. Seconds later, the only other memory I have is my brother running back to the house, calling for Grandma. Anything else that may have happened as a result of this day has faded from memory. I am certain nothing could have topped what I had just seen....nor do I remember ever using our extra firecrackers in cow pies after that. Brother apparently was a poor sport. Now....had it been me, caught with cow muck on my face, I am certain that the adventure would have continued. I just know my brother.....