Even more of the same
Finally after a long absence I've returned to oldduggy.com. I'm grateful to everyone that took time to read oldduggy and leave a comment. I've decided to add a few more farm boy tales before continuing about my life in Michigan.
I guess that most of us today are pretty much still influenced by lessons we learned as a kid. We've all heard the phrase "rights of passage". I reckon some of my experiences as a youngster could fit into that category.
Almost every kid needs a mentor to help him or her through life's mysteries. For me it was my cousin Hubert. Hubert was five years my senior. A real man of the world, at least in my minds eye. It was Hubert that first introduced the birds and bee's into my young innocent life. Although there weren't no bee's and it was chickens instead of little birds.
It all started on a Saturday. It was spring time as I recall. My mom and my aunt Nell, Hubert's mom, were working on a quilt. Us kids were sent outside to play. The house we lived in was rented from my uncle Jim. His grand paw had built it in 1897. The old house was so big that we used only three of the large rooms. The rest we kept sealed off during the winter in an effort to keep the heat in our living area. Now with arrival of spring and warm weather my mom was using yet another room for quilting and sewing.
My family had moved into the place during the winter of 1945. Now here we were in the spring of 1946. What little grass we had was all green and pretty. There was hundreds of what we called butter cups. Pretty yellow flowers that grew in bunches all over the yard. Uncle Jim's chickens were scattered out around the old house just scratching and looking for food. Every so often the old red rooster would jump one of the hens. After a certain amount of scuffling and carrying on, the old rooster would turn the hen loose and she'd run off and hide. That damned old rooster would jump another hen and it would be the same carrying on all over again. I didn't know or for that matter care what them chickens was up to. The whole thing was sort of nerve racking. They'd been carrying on like that for as long as I could remember.
And so it was on this pretty spring day that I'd be introduced into far reaching new phase of human understanding. Sounds pretty scary don't it?
I grabbed me a rock and beaned that old rooster. What did you do that for Hubert asked? I'm making that old rooster leave them hens alone was my reply.
You need to understand that this conversation was taking place between fourth grader Hubert and me a six year old preschooler.
Hubert kind of gives me a know it all smile while looking down his nose at me. Old know it all Hubie says don't you know that rooster and them hens are making baby chicks. It was about at that point that Hubie introduced me to the "F" word. A new and interesting addition to my vocabulary. His explanation was a heck of lot more graphic than I'm using here. However, our rooster and hen exchange was short lived and we were soon talking about something else.
Fast forward to the following Monday. Me and my little brother Lowell were playing in the yard. It was a perfect spring day. As always that damned rooster started jumping the hens. Little brother had been watching the rooster and hens as they went through their noisy ritual.
Being a big brother kind of dictates that you pass on knowledge to your younger siblings. The rooster and hen thing was in my mind a "perfect" example. I launched right into as good an explanation as I could. I was trying to remember all that Hubert had told me including frequent use of the "F" word. Little brother seemed satisfied and impressed with my explanation. I thought I'd done a good job of telling him what was going on with the chickens. It was about this time that my mom came out to check on me and Lowell. As fate would have it that damned rooster picked that exact moment to jump another hen. Lowell with his recently acquired knowledge assured our mother that the rooster wasn't hurting the hen, he was just (F word) her. Well, everything just stopped right then and there. It got so quite I could hear my own hair growing. Ma ask little brother in her best southern baptist voice, what did you just say? Like any good son, he answered by repeating his earlier assurance about the nature of that damned roosters business with the young hen. Me? I was gettin ready to head for the creek. Never made it. Ma reached out and grabbed me in a grip that put an end to any notion of running. Boy was you the cause of all this filthy talk? I owned up to it all. It wouldn't of been fair to Lowell to have done otherwise. Ms. Irene picked up a near by brush broom and set my butt on fire. Irene was an avid believer in Biblical warning about sparing the rod.
Needless to say, I survived the confrontation with the brush broom. It's also needless to say that the "F" word remains in my vocabulary but never used if Irene is within earshot.
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