Remote Kontrol!

Scouting Part 1

This is a long one. I got on a roll. One of my favorite blogs. Please pass this blog to your friends if you can.
Here tis: I'm hoping to link you to the "Battle of new Orleans" Song.

SCOUTING:

I was a terrible cub scout and had no business going into boy scouts. In Cub Scouts I had to wear a little blue shirt, a yellow neckerchief with a brass doo-hicky with the face of a bear on it.  I was always surprised and dismayed when my mom told me to get my things because it was time to go. Instead of saying, “Mom, our “den” of scouts has the largest collection of misfits, special ed kids, just plain weirdoes you could find in the county, and I don’t want to go!” I just jumped into the car and endured the gluing of popsicle sticks into a log cabin and ate the cookies and warm cool-ade.

One day, I was told it was time to be a Webelow. No one could tell me what a Webelow was, just that it was what you were before you could be a Boy Scout…oh, and you have to buy another uniform for the year or two of limbo.  I probably went to two meetings.

My biggest memory of Webelows was trying to sell tickets door-to-door for a Bar-B-Q supper at the elementary school.  Now, the Bar-B-Q supper was not a rip-off for the $4

we were asking. I’m sure the scout leaders lost hard-earned money to buy the meat.  There were men and women in our town that had the secret recipe for

melt-in-your-mouth-eyes-rolled-back-in-your-head-with-delight beef and pork.  Not to mention the Baptist ladies who were trying to out do the other ladies by seeing who could make the best pastries and pies. 

Try telling all this to a sweating lady with a fat, crying kid on her hip when she opens the front door with a “What-the-hell-do-you want-kid?” look on her face.  Better yet is  the hard of hearing person who keeps saying “What?”  At most I had ten seconds to make my pitch.  It wasn’t rare for someone to open the door, and then slam it in my face without a word.

I think every teen should have a job selling to the general public, it’s the fastest way to hone your communication skills. “Yes sir, here’s your new burger because you thought we wouldn’t notice that you scarfed down  three quarters of the first one before you decided that the first one was not to the level of your finely honed culinary tastes. Have a nice day, and we know you’re a cheating scumbag.”

I stuck at the door to door selling that day because I knew I needed to hit the twenty houses assigned to me before I could enjoy the savory dinner.

I ran into some amazingly gracious people who bought a ticket for everyone in their family and smiled the whole time.  I realize now, they were probably members of the church who were putting on the BBQ, and just happy to help in any way they could.

I’m now a total push-over for kids selling anything door-to-door.  I recently bought  half-price tickets for restaurants I never go to, just to support the high school baseball player in our neighborhood.  We buy so many Girl Scout cookies we don’t have places to put them.

I’m pretty sure the eleventh commandment is “Thou Shalt Buy Anything Kids Are Selling Door to Door.”

I felt pressure to be a Boy Scout. My oldest brother, Mark nine years my senior, had been one after all. What nobody told me till later was that he was in for a couple of campouts then quit.  I thought I was upholding a grand tradition and following in his footsteps!

The Vietnam war was in it’s last two years.  We had a nearby Air force base called Perrin Field that was an advanced fighter training base.  Denison really gained from the having the Air force personnel in our town. The air-force kids had a maturity that comes from being around dedicated, focused people, and the knocks that come with constant uprooting.

As a rule, they were in the top twenty percent of the class. (which isn’t saying much since we had guys like “Stony Wood” who ran around the playground as if riding an invisible horse while slapping one leg, twirling an invisible lasso while alternately shooting his invisible Colt Peacemaker as a sixth grader) I still have a good friend who's dad was a fighter instructor at that base.  His family had been stationed in Japan before coming to lovely North Texas.  Jet’s were constantly flying overhead, and all of us boys could name them instantly. “There’s an F-105!” someone would shout and we’d squint to see it was really the correct aircraft. Not too secretly we often spoke about how cool it would be if they dropped a bomb on our school accidently. A friend of mine missed a few days of school and showed up to class tired and depressed. He told me his Dad was shot down in his Phantom jet bomber in Vietnam.  He was now fatherless.

The adult scout leaders were, with the exception of the grossly overweight, quasi-redneck Scoutmaster, good, hardworking Air Force personnel who wanted to help us pimply faced, booger -picking losers.

I don’t think there were any scout troops in our county that stood at attention, learned to march in step, had their uniforms scrutinized like us. I kind of liked it, and hoped we’d be issued M-16s soon.

Our scout troop is broken into smaller “packs” that were run by the senior, or highest ranking scout. Somehow mysteriously,  the pack I was assigned to was run by the son of the big-fat-redneck scoutmaster who was had his dad’s traits as well as a few of his own, most notably bully-dom. Already fat and sweaty at twelve years old, he talked down to us from his superior rank, and with the exception of one easily-impressed kid, was totally ignored by the others in our pack.

The only thing we did as a small group that had any value was to name our pack after a Black & white 60’s TV show about WWII American soldiers racing around in jeeps with thirty caliber machineguns mounted on the back, supposedly in North Africa bringing havoc to the Germans with their lightning fast attacks.  The show was “The Rat Patrol.”

We had a pack song to go with our little pack. We changed the words to “Aquarius” from the 5^th Dimension to “This is the dawning of the age of the Rat Patrol.”

We thought it was cool. We tried to sing it as a group once, but melted down quickly as each kid snickered at the others for trying to sing. It was never attempted again.

We DID have a troop song that we sang as we marched. It was a derivation of a 1959 song called "The battle of New Orleans" by Johnny Horton.  That was a famous battle of 1812 where the Red-Coats were routed by the straight-shooting Americans.

An older scout named Richard had worked out the lyrics to fit our troop.

If you know "The Battle of New Orleans" feel free to sing along…or picture a group of marching teen boys singing this as we marched in the Fourth-of July parade, flags waving.

Richard led off in a loud  voice: “We’re the boys of troop Six-Eleven, our mothers sent us here to study nature’s ways. We learn to light fires by rubbing sticks to together, but when we catch the girls we set the woods a-blaze!” Hup, two, three four, and we started again. I cannot imagine to this day, how we got away with singing that song in public…

Campouts are what “Scouting” is known for. If you don’t like bugs, smelly sleeping bags, being really hot, or possibly cold in the same day, waking up from a bad night’s sleep, eating cinders in your food from being too close to the campfire, then you are

the right person for this adventure.

My first campout was memorable, we were planning to spend a Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon in a wooded area know as Lake Randel (sp).

Since no one else in our family was a camper…except for the fifteen minutes my brother Mark supposedly was a scout, I had zero help or experience to draw on. I was given a faded mimeographed note with a list of what to bring. I thought  that I didn’t need help, so I went around the house gathering supplies. I ended up in the attic which is perennially sweltering to find a sleeping back and back pack. What I found  was my dad’s WW2 gear. The sleeping back was only 40 years old at this point.  Mice had wisely avoided it for years. The backpack looked like it was found in a dumpster behind a pawn shop.

Never mind the embarrassment of old gear, I was nervous about doing anything with these  misfits. I wasn’t sure if one of them wouldn’t try to kill me in my sleep, or worse try to climb inside my sleeping bag with me! Mom asked me if I was squared-away, and took my word for it. One of the requirements on the paper was to come in full uniform.

No problem there, my uniform, thank God, was not a hand-me-down, so I actually felt dapper.

It was early fall and weather was always unpredictable so much that the local weather man could forecast the weather correctly only if he could stick his head out the window and see it for himself. I packed for the temperature I felt at the time.

When Mom dropped me off at the little Presbyterian church where a troop met, I waved her off and boldly walked up the pickup truck where “the goobers” were gathering.

The Crazy Naked Kid Set The Woods On Fire

Another  boring, hot day in North Texas. Almost no breeze is stirring.  The loud cicadas sing unmindful of heat, so many thousands of them that their mating calls come in waves. It’s fascinating for a while, then you want to hold your ears after a while.

I went outside to get away from the model airplane glue that I’d smeared all over the place trying to build another P-51D “Mustang” model airplane. I wasn’t  that great as a model builder and ended up with some pretty ugly planes….which I would blow up with fire-crackers within weeks.  It was fairly common in our neighborhood to hang a wire from a tree limb which was connected to the doomed airplane. Pour a little lighter fluid on it, give it a shove with a stick and you have a spiraling, flaming copy of the old WWII movie dogfights. We eventually learned to build the firecrackers into the model while it was being built. Picture this, a swirling, flaming airplane that explodes at some unexpected moment sending flaming pieces of melted plastic in all directions! Yep, we were safe. Nobody ever got hurt, but the grass caught on fire a few times, and not wanting to admit that the grass fire might spread beyond our control, we all learned to quickly stomp them out…before we got caught by Mom who might not think a wild grass fire was funny, having grown up in Oklahoma where a grass fire can wipe out a farmer’s livelihood .  We had a couple of fires run through our back field and neighbors would come running to stomp, hose, and beat the flames.

So, the day I met the crazy naked  boy, I wasn't confused at all when I smelled the burning grass and saw the blue-gray smoke moving up the hill from the lake into my back yard.

A normal person would have run back into the house, called the fire department, alerted the parents, and stood ready with a water hose. Not me, I went directly into the smoke. I imagined it  could have been a meteorite, or an airplane part from one of the fighters from the from the air base, or just mean spirited butthead who like to build fires where they’ll spread.

As I headed through the smoke, eyes watering, I heard something.  I thought I saw someone behind a tree that was only about fifty feet from our house. There was the head and shoulders of a freckle-faced red-headed kid about my age hiding behind the tree. This was very curious, so I took a couple of steps toward the boy and the tree. I slight breeze parted the smoke to reveal the boy was butt-naked and speaking right to me. ‘Hey kid”, he said.  Mouth open I said, “Yes?” he said “Do you have any clothes?” Again, I said, “yes”. “Well can I borrow some?”  Now I’d been skinny dipping in the lake at night with my friends, but I never really seen them naked since it was always night. This kid seemed really comfortable standing stitch-less by the tree. This time, I said, “Ok, but what happened to your clothes?”  He said, “A motorcycle gang grabbed me and beat me up, then burned my clothes.” “Holy Cow!” I replied. I sprinted for my house, knowing that I was on to something BIG! Roving, evil motorcycle gangs at Waterloo Lake, what else!  In literally one minute I was back with an old pair of tennis shoes, a T-shirt, and my best blue jeans for the poor kid. I was already fantasizing about being on the front page of the Herald. “Local boy saves boy from motorcycle hooligans!”

He quickly pulled the clothes on. I said, where did they beat you up? He pointed toward the woods and the still drifting smoke. Of course I followed him.

We worked our way down the slope toward the trail that led to “the cave.”

As dumb as I was to follow the kid, my overwhelming curiosity shoved me forward.

I also knew that I could run, as my father would say, “like a scalded dog” if in danger, and nobody knew the trails and hiding places like me.

Soon we were standing on the middle of the winding foot path where the “attack” happened. The leaf fire had mostly burned out but the smoke refused to leave the muggy air. I naturally assumed the hooligans had made a hasty departure after their wicked deed. We weren’t standing there thirty seconds before a portly man in a cheap, brown polyester a suit and tie, wearing cowboys boots came walking down the trail.

To me, the grown man in a suit, one hundred yards from the road in cowboy boots was weirder than the weird recently naked kid in my clothing..

He looked at the kid and said, “Hi, Jimmy.” Jimmy, dropped his eyes. I recognized the man as a local police officer as soon as I saw his badge. Since Jimmy was looking at my ash covered high-tops  and not talking, I immediately I took it as my duty to explain to the officer what had happed to poor Jimmy, thus anchoring my importance in this obvious travesty.

“Officer, a motorcycle gang beat him up and burned his clothes!” The officer, with a bead of sweat dripping off his nose said, “What’s yur name, son?” I answered, “Eric.”

“Where do you live, Eric?” “I pointed up the hill, “My house is right up there.” He nodded tiredly and said, “Do you see any motorcycle tracks?” Jimmy’s eyes were still averted,.  and I quickly looking  around I realized Detective Sweaty was right and I was confused.

Looking back at the detective, I watched as  he turned Jimmy around on the trail that led to the nearest road. He looked back over his shoulder at me, and twirled his finger around the side of his head…the universal sign of “crazy.”  I just stood mouth agape, and watched them disappear into the gray smoke.

The Rock Fight

The rock fight

There are some lessons in life that can only be learned the hard way.  No matter how many times we are told are shown, our hard-headed, stiff necked nature will not allow us to fully comprehend the concept. 

Case in point.  I lived on a dirt road that had a sloping hill covered with gravel that led to a small lake named Waterloo.  There were around a dozen kids living on our block at any one time, and like most kids, we fought on a daily basis.  One day best friends, the next sworn enemies till death. 

Of course there were levels of fighting, each kid knew that. Strictly on the non-verbal level (we all know the verbal levels of fighting which can easily lead to physical fighting) you had the push or shoving match.  Usually between friends the shoving match did not have to have a winner, but if you did not participate, you lost the argument.  Next came "the swing".  "Larry took a swing at me!" 

This meant you probably tackled Larry a little too hard, said a remark that cut too deep, or some other infraction.  If Larry did not connect with his "swing" or punch, you could choose to ignore it, torture Larry more, or "swing back."  A lot of these options had to do with who was watching, how much "egging on" occurred etc. 

Next came the wrestling fight.  This could start as a contest of strengths and escalate into a bloody mess, or merely one person would "give," thus surrendering.  Having two older, stronger brothers helped me be the neighborhood wrestling champ.  I wasn't worth a darn boxing, but if I got some goober on the ground he was soon seeing things my way. 

The bona fide "fist fight" came next.  Swinging arms, childhood obscenities, occasionally a split lip, black eye, or bloody nose was the sum total.  I lost as many of these as I won.  The hardest part was to keep from crying from anger as you fought.  It’s not manly to whip someone with snot and tears running down your face.

 But the worst, most evil, vile, and dangerous fight you could be in was the rock fight.  On most of the occasions I saw this happen, the combatants had an argument of some time that led one of them to storm away, hurling insults over their shoulder.  The person left standing in the middle of the road would reach down, pick up a pebble and hurl it at the other party.  If the pebble hit (which it usually did not), the rock fight would begin in earnest. 

The only thing that kept a rock fight from being lethal was that most of the kids on my block were either terrible shots, or too little to throw a rock that could do much damage.

A rock fight would end when one person would flee, threatening to tell the other person's parents, or if a parent saw what was happening.  As a general rule, you had to be pretty dumb to get into a rock fight in the first place.  Here's where I fit in.

 Two neighbor boys about ten or eleven had an argument that escalated into a rock fight.  What the argument was over, no one knows.  It could have easily been over the way one dropped the others bike too hard after riding.  It may have been over scaring fish away from a favorite fishing hole on Waterloo by throwing rocks.  Whatever the case, the two boys began hurling rocks at each other from about fifty feet. 

Seeing it happen, and not having an interest in the argument, I thought it was neat.  So neat, that I wanted a ring side view.  I had a friend with me, Roland, who was easily convinced (Roland had the IQ of a St. Bernard) to go with me to get a closer look at the fight. 

At this point there were several other spectators including sisters of the combatants who were taunting the opposing boy.  Roland and I proceeded to move through the woods that ran along side the road where the fight was taking place.  "This is great fun!  Lets get closer," I thought.  We proceeded to crawl along a clay embankment that kept us "protected" from projectiles while giving us a great view of the action VERY close up.

While I was maneuvering for a better spot, the world exploded.  It felt as though someone had hit me in the head with a sharp rock.  And that is exactly what happened!  I reached up to the part of my head that now was feeling warm and tingly and it was wet!  Blood!  I was bleeding!  Hey, this isn't fair!  I was only watching; now I'm dying!

As anyone who has ever had a cut in the scalp will know, there are thousands of capillaries running just under our hair.  That's how we loose our heat in the winter, overheat in the summer sun.  So when you get beaned there by a pointed object traveling two hundred feet per second, blood goes everywhere! 

Being extremely squeamish (lots of other stories), I knew it was only a matter of time before I expired.  So with the help of a sympathetic Roland, and oh, by the way, the sight of my injury caused the combatants to cease their hostilities and eventually make up, I hobbled to my dear sweet Mom. 

In my mind, I just knew she would turn into Florence Nightingale and with glassy- eyed love, sweep me into her arms as she kissed me and examined my wound, telling me how sorry she was, and  asking how could anyone do this to her poor baby.

 Now, if there are any moms reading this you will know the real picture.  In comes your son who is always getting cuts and scrapes, covered with Texas red clay, dripping blood from a wound in his head which you have seen before on your older sons and neighbor's sons.  And if in all the world you could find the two hardest elements there is to get out of clothing, furniture, and carpet, and placed them on a human tornado for maximum distribution, you would have blood and red clay on a blubbering twelve year old boy.

My mom isn't a mean lady, far from it, but as soon as I said "rock fight" in any context she had her doubts about the mental competence of her youngest son.  Instead of saying "Oh, poor baby." she said, "What happened to you!?"  She promptly marched me into the bathroom, examined my head, peeled off my shirt, sent Roland home, and made the hottest possible wash cloth she could make to clean me up (I think more for punishment than for cleaning).

Instead of being gently rocked, I found myself getting a lecture.  Soon I was on my way to the emergency room with a grumpy mom, to get stitches.  Five to be exact.  She was concerned about my head, but not the injury.  I think the most painful part of the process was not the tug of each stitch, or even the rock itself, it was disappointing Mom.  Each time she said "Stupid," as in "watching a rock fight is a stupid thing to do", it hurt more than anything.  And I had that "slap upside the head" that implanted the wisdom to "mind my own business."

As a side note, I learned it was not one of the combatants who hurled the rock. No, it was the sister of one of them who, seeing Roland and I sneaking through the weeds assumed we were going to ambush her brother.  She promptly found a rock, charged and threw.  I know there is a moral about women in there somewhere, but I haven't found it.  Oh well, mind your own business, it hurts less than a thump in the head.

Fireworks

Fireworks

I don't really know how I became interested in things that make noise and fire.  I think like most addictions it starts subtly, little by little, then builds up to a full scale unadulterated need.  Whatever the case, the fourth of July was my absolute favorite time of the year.  Greater than my birthday, greater than even the big one. . .Christmas! 

Why?  Well, Christmas for me has always held spiritual significance, and even occasionally a decent gift or two, but, living in North Texas, I can only remember one slushy white Christmas.  We lived in a modest ranch style house which seemed to get smaller as the weather turned colder.  And, if THE BIG DAY turned out not to yield the desired toys, I was completely bummed out.  A lot of build-up that rarely met my expectations, though my parents did what they could.

On the other hand, The Fourth of July, and Fireworks in particular, were something I had a little greater control over.  I would begin on December 26th to collect every penny and dime around the house.  If it was loose, it went into my fund.  My neighbor, David, and I went so far as to learn to pull the seats out of our families' cars in search of lost coinage.  When I was old enough to mow lawns for money (another story) I always put some away for fireworks. 

Part of my addiction was war movies.  I became a connoisseur of special effects, especially explosions.  I dreamed about charging up a hill, bullets whistling by my head, reeling from near miss motor fire,  as I sprayed the enemy with my never emptying machine gun, knocking out the pillbox with a hand grenade, then carrying a wounded comrade to safety!

 I also became a connoisseur of fireworks.  I knew EXACTLY what each rocket, firecracker, missile, flying saucer, and roman candle would do.  I knew which were fun during the day, and which must be saved for night. To this day, I occasionally catch an unwary firework salesman making a mistake while expounding on the attributes of a particular pyrotechnic.

Anyway, I spent the entire summer hoarding money and allocating it into different piles in my mind for the different types of fireworks.  I wanted the most explosive power for the buck.  I knew how to make firecracker cannons from a lead pipe that would shoot a marble 100 yards.  I learned to throw firecrackers so they would explode just as they touched the surface of lake causing a big splash. 

My only regret was I was born too late for the cherry bomb.  Now that was some horse power!  I saw my big brother Mark stick one in a frog's mouth once.  After the gory debris settled all that was left was two  twitching drumsticks!  I even altered fireworks to make them more potent, or do things they were not supposed to do. 

One thing I did was to build model airplanes pre-loaded with bottle rockets and firecrackers inside so that when I tired of the model I could hang it by a wire from a tree, throw some lighter fluid (or gasoline) on it, light it, and give it a push!  Tora! Tora! Tora!  Many a Mustang, Zero, and Messerschmitt met a fiery, explosive demise.  Some of mine (I thought) looked better than their movie counterparts.

My parents pretty much ignored my mania.  Mom would always say, "The police are going to come and arrest you.  You know fireworks are illegal in the City limits."  I would nod dutifully then resolve to shoot something off further from the house next time.  She would also tell me stories of little Johnny Snotnose and how he blew three fingers off his hand, blinded a neighbor kid, paralyzed his cat, burned down his house and gave his mother a twitch by blowing himself up with firecrackers. 

I would sadly listen, shake my head and think, "That Johnny's an idiot" as I walked off to build my "Super-Cracker."  Truthfully, I did make a few bombs that "had a little more poop" than I expected, but when I got burned, hit with shrapnel, or deafened, I NEVER told my mom.  Gees, that would be IT.

There was a small-muddy lake called Loy Lake about three miles from my house. Before they built THE lake (Lake Texoma, a bazillion -acre Corp of Engineers job), Loy Park was the place families from the county went to swim, picnic and shoot fireworks.  My siblings and I had many pre-pubescent giggling fits over reading the Loy Park sign, which was letters welded to wire mesh, backward as we left the park.  One of us would say, "Look, that sign says Krap Yol,"  which in Texas slang is a perfectly good sentence.  My Dad would ignore it, while my mom would silently giggle herself and try to keep a straight face.

Most of the time the Loy Park of my childhood was a mosquito-infested, almost fishless, run-down, beer-bottle-strewn, void-of-human-visitors, graphiti-sprayed disaster.  Just the perfect place for a 11 year-old kid, a shoe box full of fireworks, and a warm Dr. Pepper.  To my chagrin, every other family in Grayson County had the same idea, and one day a year the park was wall to wall firework maniacs, small grass fires, small camp fires, loud radios, and noise. 

Nevertheless, we always found a place near the slimy water where my sister and I could ignite our pyrotechnics.  It was as close to a combat zone and heaven a bony, freckle-faced kid could be. 

Idiots would fire rockets in every direction, paying no heed to where they might go.  Some good ol’ boys would fire black powder rifles without lead ‘till I thought my ears would burst.  There were always dozens of surplus highway flares burning, some even in the water! 

Within one hour of sunset, the smoke hung about four feet off the ground in the humid air.  The constant detonations of various fireworks was a pulsating roar.  The guys with the deep pockets were igniting the big howitzer class star shells, and I was ready to go home.  All my stuff was gone, used up and I was bored.

July fifth was a bad dream.  Just another hot day in Texas.  Not even one firecracker left.  Dang.  Then one fourth evening my buddy David had an idea.  Why not get up early on the fifth, ride our bikes to Loy Park, and look around for fireworks and stuff people might have spilled in the dark?  What an idea!  What an awesome plan! 

Even as a kid I knew the effect of a six-pack on a hot, over-worked middle-aged man on a sticky summer evening.  Let's go!  I could hardly sleep that night, waking up to meet David by 7:00.  We "peeled out" as we pushed our Stingray bikes to the sound barrier.

Arriving at the park, we discovered that a couple of other people had the same idea.  Bummer.  But it just made our resolve stronger to cover more ground faster than "the competition."  It was a virtual smorgasbord of explosives!  We filled up a shopping bag each with un-expended fireworks.  I grabbed anything I thought I could salvage.  Short fuse, no problem.  No fuse?  Grab it.  There was no problem I could not overcome.  I was building huge firework monstrosities in my head as we peddled back in the now mid-morning, mid-nineties heat. 

But there was one small problem.  Dew.  During the night a heavy dew had fallen on the park, and since fireworks are mostly paper, they were damp.  Normally you would throw wet fireworks away.  Not me.  No, I knew that if you carefully dried them they might, and I do mean might, work.  Well I searched around frantically for just the right surface to dry my prizes on. 

I found it in our old Bar B Q grill.  You know - the cheap tin ones with the flimsy tripod legs, that usually last one summer, and never work right.  I moved the grill to the west side of the house into the blistering sun.  I carefully laid out each explosive for optimum baking and waited.

At this point I have to make a philosophical statement entitled, "Why did God allow there to be big brothers?"  My new fireworks were completely covering the grill two inches deep. They had dried nicely in the blistering sun under my constant sweaty supervision.  And like a fine cut of meat, I tenderly rotated each one for the optimum drying effect.  David and I were congratulating ourselves and making plans when Mark walked up.

Now Mark turned out to be a nice, hard working family man, much to my surprise.  But on this day the look on his face made him more closely resemble Charles Manson's evil twin brother separated at birth.  I knew I was in trouble when he pulled out the Genuine, Diamond Brand, "Strike Anywhere" wooden matches.  "No!" I screamed. 

Brothers can read each others minds.  He snickered as he lit and threw the first match toward the grill.  "I'll kill you!" as he threw another at the grill.  (At this point David is wide eyed and taking giant steps backward.)

It was his third match that I see in slow motion in my mind.  It did a full gainer as it ignited in mid air and spun menacingly in an arc right toward my beauties.  I can still hear his evil chuckle.  What happened next surprised even me.  Within three seconds, every one, I mean every one of those fireworks was ignited. 

It only took a nanosecond for Mark, David, and me to realize that they were pointed in EVERY direction, and that this was not a safe place to be. Boom! Overlapping explosions echoed for miles. Had it been night it my actually been pretty. Being as it was daylight, all we had was singe-ing, flying, blasting smoke.  By the time the last rocket whistled, and the last firecracker burst I was in a wall-eyed rage.  Mark had a saintly Mother Theresa "OOops did I do something wrong?" look on his face as I started screaming and swinging my fists at him with tears streaming down my face. 

He said "Sorry" about fifty times before he had the good sense to get his wallet out.  I'm sure no court in the land would have convicted me had I offed him over his heinous crime.  He gave me a five dollar bill then fled about the time my mom opened the door and said, "Don't you boys know it's illegal to shoot fireworks in the City limits?  The police are going to arrest you!" 

I nodded dutifully as I sniffed, picked up the litter and thought about what wonderful fireworks five dollars would buy.

The Mad Pooper

The Mad Pooper

 Then there's the story of THE MAD POOPER. 

It was just another crazy busy Saturday afternoon at the store.  The manager on duty this day had no real love for me.  I wanted to go to college and get a degree, he apparently did not have one, or maybe was having marital problems or bowel problems, or something else.  Anyway, I was on the clean up duty as well as my usual chore of sacking and making small talk with customers.

I was close enough to the office that when I saw him shaking his head while talking with a man, then look at me, I knew I had a sticky chore to do.  What would it be this time?  Maybe something simple like spilled vegetables, Nah, couldn't be so lucky.  It's probably an entire gallon of milk, that would be more like it. 

 The manager said, "Rice, come here."  He had a strange look on his face as he told me to clean up a mess by the magazine rack. "Well, he's got a strange looking face anyway," I thought as I rounded the corner to the magazine rack. 

At first I didn't see it.  My mind had made this pattern that said "look for spills and broken containers."  I was not looking for a semi-solid.  No, this couldn't be.  I shook my head as I cautiously approached the object, disbelief being my primary emotion.  NO, NOT IN A GROCERY STORE! 

There before me was a single, lets say "log" of excrement.  This joker was BIG!  I quickly looked around for the Great Dane that did this, and boy was I going to tell that owner off and glare as He cleaned this up!  But then it hit me.  The smell.  You know, the human smell.  This was not the work of an animal.  Well, an animal for sure, but not a four legged one. 

SOMEONE DROPPED A LOG BY THE MAGAZINE RACK IN A GROCERY STORE!  And by the looks of the object, it was not transported there by any other means that a human lower intestine.  Yuck!  "This is really funny, who would do this?  There must be a Mad Pooper on the loose.", I thought.  Then I remembered why I was there.  "This isn't funny!" I said as I went to get something to clean up the mess. 

Returning with rubber gloves I confiscated from the soap isle and a roll of paper towels I took from the paper isle (I figured, "let them complain, and I'll get hepatitis suddenly and have to go home), I proceeded to make the largest wad of paper towels one roll would make.  Holding the basketball size wad of paper in one hand, and my nose with the other, I cautiously approached the loathsome object.  Nearer and nearer I crept, eyes glued on the refuse as if it were going to strike me like a snake. 

Because my eyes were glued to the target, I did not notice the large lady with the blue hair as she barreled around the corner with her shopping cart.   Just as I was about to do my chore, the rear wheel of her cart hit the dreaded poop dead center.  I wish she had plowed into me!  Instead, to my utter horror, her wheel had picked up the cigar shaped evil and was flapping it down with every revolution as she plodded along. 

"Stop!"  "Lady stop!"  But the lady was too preoccupied with her mission to hear my words, on she went Plop, Plop, plop.  When the fecal matter finally let go (I know now it was indeed an animate object of evil intent, out to destroy me), it had multiplied itself into a twenty-five foot brownish, stinking line.  I wanted to cry.  I wanted to curse.  I definitely wanted to kill some low life person out there who I would forever call THE MAD POOPER. 

 Did he ever "strike" (or should I say "plop") again?  Probably.  But not in my store on my shift.  There is probably no possible way of knowing what an irate, hormone driven teenager  can do with (or place) an industrial size mop.  Do I have an idea who did it?  Well, come to think about it, the man who told my manager about the mess DID have a smirk on his face.  I hope he's proud.  I would like to  tell his mother.

 What did an eighteen year old man learn from all this?  Sometimes you have to do the dirty work, watch out for fingers when you close car doors, and there are some pretty weird people running loose out there.  Also, a dozen years later I would have many, many cleaning opportunities with my not-so-mad pooping baby daughters & son, so I guess every experience has some value.

Jeepers, this is slow.

Ok, I just read this grocery store stuff...and it's pretty lame.  I promise that it will get more interesting.  I have a lot of stories.  Hang in there with me.
Thanks,
e.