God Bless Texas and Hogzilla

And God warned the Israelites that great beasts would rise from the darkness and defile the land. So what sort of great beast did the Lord beset upon Texas? Descended from Russian stock, this creature is one of the meanest, most ill tempered critters ever created. Its only enemy is man. What is this formidable beast? Armed with six to eight inch tusks and weighing in at up to 1000 pounds when fully grown, it is none other than the feral hog, and have I got a hog story for you.
These critters by the hundreds destroy prime ranch land in north Texas and they have to be controlled. So our friend, James, runs a trap line across nearly 1500 acres. The hog traps are made of wire, 4’ wide by 8’ long with corn as bait and a trapdoor that slams shut when the animals enter. Those stupid enough (as if their pea-sized brains make them intelligent) to get caught, get fattened up for market or sent to Brother Melvin, the Baptist preacher, not for saving but for sausage makin’!
We took our grandkids with us on our last visit to Texas to see our friends, James and Elizabeth. Their granddaughter, ‘Lizbeth goes hog trapping with her Pawpaw and Meemaw and she was so excited to introduce Mason and his grandparents to wild hogs.
The first two traps were empty, but as we reached the third, we could clearly see that it held eight small, 30-pound hogs. They’d get shushed into James trailer and hauled to the ranch for fattening.
“Mason,” ‘Lizbeth offered. “Y’all wanna pet a pig? Pawpaw, catch us a pig.”
Mason is our hunter and all around outdoor boy. Of course, he wanted to pet a pig. He marched beside the little girl to the hog trap. James grabbed one of the pigs by the back leg, it let out a blood-curdling squeal, and Mason’s scream matched that pig’s decibel for decibel. He lit out for the truck like he’d been peppered with buckshot. He grabbed the door handle … locked! Mason panicked. Finally, I realized what was happening so opened the door. He dove in. If that little fellow could have gotten any closer, he’d have been under my skin. So Mason decided that hogs are good for nothing except bacon.
So later that day, James had a load of hogs to deliver to a Cambodian couple that lived in Jacksboro. They said they would take all that James could supply. Those folks didn’t know what they were asking. We left the kids with ‘Lizabeth’s mom and headed for town with a load of eight, vile 300 pound hogs crammed into a trailer. They snorted, squealed, and raised a ruckus that could be heard as far away as Mexico. As we rode through town, I noticed Elizabeth sliding down in her seat. James laid on the horn and waved.
“Hey, Elizabeth,” he laughed with a Texas roar. “Ain’t that your uppity friends from the Bunco club?”
“Y’all shut up ‘n keep driving,” she spat. I have always said that Elizabeth reminded me of a pre-nipped and tucked Dolly Parton. She speaks with an even more pronounced Dolly accent. I know y’all would just love her.
Finally we arrived at the Cambodian folks’ ten-acre place. James knocked and this tiny woman barely four feet tall answered the door. Elizabeth explained that Soo does all the work because her husband, Coo Ma, is paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair.
Soo motioned James to take the hogs around back. She walked ahead of us, Coo Ma watched from his wheelchair on the back porch, and their Pit Bull snarled and tried to gnaw its way into the hog trailer. James backed the trailer up to a rickety wooden hog pen. By this time, the Pit Bull had the hogs ticked off and ready to fight. James opened the trailer gate and here’s where the story get exciting. If you know anything about hogs, you know they all follow the herd. They rushed the door at the same time but by the time the last one broke free of the trailer, the first ones hit the opposite end of the hog pen and were on a beeline back to the trailer. Two of them made it back inside, but the gate swung shut and the next two bounced off and busted through the wooden fence. James plugged the hole, trapping the rest inside the hog yard. But two fugitives were loping for freedom with the Pit Bull in hot pursuit. The dog turned them and now they were thundering straight towards us.
Walzie and James leaped onto the side of the trailer, Elizabeth and I jumped into the truck, Soo clung to the trailer hitch spouting out about 15 yards of her native dialect, and James drew his 2-shot derringer. Should he just shoot himself and let the rest of us deal with the wild hogs, shoot the Pit Bull, shoot and shut Soo’s mouth, or shoot the two hogs? He fired! The dust flew in front of the charging hogs. James never did claim to be good shot; the Hogzillas were still thundering like a missile straight at us.
Suddenly, we heard two loud rifle cracks. Just like an old cowboy, Coo Ma, sitting in his wheelchair on the porch, dropped those two hogs about 10 paces from James. Coo Ma calmly laid down his gun and shouted to Soo. The tiny woman, still ranting, scurried into the shed and returned with a wheelbarrow and a hacksaw. They’d have pork chops tonight. And the Pit Bull? When the first shot fired, it lit out across the prairie! Probably the smartest one of the bunch.
As we headed back to the ranch, we all said a prayer of thanks for that old Cambodian cowboy’s straight shooting. Elizabeth chewed on James about never selling any more wild hogs. Little did she know that James had already sold two more trailer loads. In fact he told her he was going to put a sign on the side of his truck that said, “Hogs for Sale, call Elizabeth”.
So now you know why we love to vacation in Texas. It’s always an adventure.

Gramma

Walzie’s Gramma was near 85 by time I met her. She was a feisty old gal; a very slight woman barely five feet tall and every bit of ninety pounds when soaking wet. I remember her always wearing flowered housedresses, a sweater, and fur trimmed snow boots (yes, even in the summertime). She kept her long, silver hair braided in pigtails, and if she’d donned a headband she’d have been a dead ringer for Willie Nelson. Tobacco juice dripped evenly from both sides of her mouth so we knew she was a level headed gal. She lived way up on the side of the mountain by Stover Station with Uncle Bruce and Aunt Lizzie.
Walzie was Gramma’s favorite boy. Sometimes, certain ways I look at him (especially if he has his teeth out), I can see Gramma (or is it Willie?). I think that’s where he inherited his packrat habits and hillbilly ways.
One muggy August afternoon, as Walzie and I returned from the store, we found Gramma sitting on our front porch. Now this lady lived about two miles down the road and ½ mile up the mountain from where we live. Oh yes, she was wearing her sweater and snow boots. Like a cow chewing her cud, Gramma’s puckered jaws were grinding away on a wad of chew, and in her leathered, bony hand she grasped a bottle of Paragoric (She claimed that she used it for medicinal purposes; Gramma reeked of the smell). One foot was tucked under her behind and the other rocked the porch swing back and forth.
“Leroy,” she screeched and took a swig from her bottle. “I’m tired and sick of those folks on the mountain. I’m movin’ in wit ‘ya.”
“Gramma, how did you get here?” I asked curiously.
“Walked. Got my clothes in this here Acme sack.”
“But, Gramma, do they know where you are?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. I’m runnin’ away from home. Gonna move in here, and I ain’t takin’ no fer an answer.”
Walzie and I gritted our teeth. We didn’t have room for a ninety year old lady, bless her heart. We had two sons and a bedroom full of chinchillas. (No kidding, we raised them supposedly for their fur, but when skinning time came, we couldn’t bear to do it. We had roughly 30 of the little furry critters in cages.)
“Well, Gramma, you’ll have to sleep in the chinchilla room.”
“Them little rats? Don’t care. They’s got to be better than the big rats I been living with.”
Just then our phone rang. It was Aunt Lizzie inquiring about her mother. We promised to bring her home just as soon as we could reason with her. Well, it took some coaxing and the promise of a Texas hot dog to get Gramma to agree to go home.
So we loaded our boys and Gramma into the pickup truck and headed off to the hot dog stand. (At this time, Texas Hot Dog was located in Pinecroft on old Rt. 220) Gramma insisted on riding in the back with the kids. With her pigtails flying in the wind, she looked like a Bassett Hound with its head out a speeding car window, and every time I looked back, she was sucking on her Paragoric bottle. Honestly, I’ll bet we looked like the Beverly Hillbillies. The only thing missing was Granny’s rocking chair.
At the hot dog stand, Walzie and I stood in line and then picked up our order. When we returned to the truck, Gramma was gone.
“Gramma had to go to the bathroom,” our son told us.
“Oh my gosh, there’s no public restroom here,” I said. “Walzie, you better go find Gramma.”
As I turned around, I spotted her squatting in the yard with her wrinkled grandma junk in full view. And she wasn’t just doing number one! What an embarrassing sight. Glad she belonged to Walzie, not me.
Unfazed, Gramma tidied up her housedress and shuffled back to the truck.
“Ya’ git me one wit onions?”
A red-faced Walzie lifted Gramma into the back of the truck where she settled between our giggling boys. She ate her hot dog and finished off the bottle of “medicine”. By the time we got her back to the mountain, she was feeling no pain. Gramma smiled sweetly as Aunt Lizzie put her to bed. I guess whatever had her riled got softened by the hot dog, or was it the Paragoric?
To this day, every time we go for a Texas hot dog, guess what we think of? And now you will too!

It seemed as though the entire world was at war. The Americans were fighting alongside the Allies in a face-off with the Germans. The Nazis fought to control Europe. Japan was secretly planning its attack on Peal Harbor, and the Enola Gay was just one of a fleet of B-29 bombers; unaware that it would be delegated to carry a bomb with the destructive power of twenty thousand tons of TNT. That was yet to come.
It was the early 1940s when the twins, Bob and Ab, turned seventeen. Girls and cars filled their minds; war was a demon far, far away - unless one counted the war of the sexes. That war was even fought on foreign soil – Houtzdale. What do you suppose those Polish mountain girls had over Tyrone’s valley girls? Evidently, the Tyrone girls had wised up to the twins, so Houtzdale, Ramey, Moran, and Viola was their new stomping grounds … at least until the mountain boys chased them back home.
Youth was a very short phase back in those days. By the time they turned seventeen they had already been employed at Juniata Packing for four years and smoking for nearly six. They bought themselves a real gem of a car: a 1936 Chevy. Of course, the tires were bald, it was a bear to get started, and it labored in second gear as it hauled them and their buddies up the Janesville Pike. But it was theirs, free and clear.
They got wind of a dance at the VFW, the perfect place to fish in the chick pool. The boys were handsome, strapping, mirror images of each other, and they attracted a lot of attention. The girls flirted and their mountain boyfriends stewed. Somewhere between the Polka and the kielbasa, flirting turned to fighting. Being better lovers than fighters, those valley boys went running with their tails between their legs.
As they sped down the Pike, an orange and white striped sawhorse suddenly appeared like a deer in the headlights. Too late, they plowed it over and dropped into a foot deep, ten-foot-long gouge in the highway where repair work was being done. Bob floored the gas and the Chevy leaped out of the hole, landing hard and blowing one bald tire. Do you think they had a spare? Of course … but it was flat, too. They limped all the way to Tyrone on a now worthless rim.
They made it to Park Avenue, when the car chugged to a stop. The fuel pump died, and they were almost home. Their buddy, Chalmer, found a full can of gas in the trunk. Getting home shouldn’t be a problem now. They had a plan. All they needed was to keep the gas pouring steadily into the carburetor, and the car would chug its way home. That was Ab’s job. Chalmer walked along side to guide, Bob, the driver, who was blinded by the open hood. Ab sat on the fender with the gas can, his feet propped on the motor.
As Ab dribbled the gas in, the car slowly limped quietly along. It worked! Until the engine backfired … Ab lit up like a marshmallow held too close to a campfire. Evidently, he hadn’t stayed in school long enough to learn about stop, drop, and roll, because he shot off running like a flaming arrow. Woosh! The flames blazed, and Ab screamed. Chalmer and Bob finally caught and tackled him, rolling him onto the grass, snuffing the flames. Ab’s flailing arms and legs singed one perfect burned snow-angel shape into a green Park Avenue lawn. Luckily he wasn’t burned too badly; his mom greased him down with lard and he healed fine.
And so after all that excitement, they decided that it might be safer to join the service. Yes, Bob joined the Army, and Ab went to the Navy. The sailor ended up working in a PX in New Jersey. The only time he saw water was when he took a bath. The soldier went aboard a ship destined for the Philippines and eventually Japan.
At this time, the bomb christened “Little Boy” was being loaded into the Enola Gay. Hiroshima, Japan and our soldier boy would never be the same.

At the end of every movie, Roy and Dale sang “Happy Trails” and rode off into the sunset on Trigger and Buttermilk. Remember that? The year was 1943 and the cost of those movies was five cents. Imagine that!
Bob was a seventeen-year-old scrapper full of spit and vinegar and a real smooth cookie with the ladies. Oh yes, there were several: like the twins next door who would give him a peek at their bloomers for twenty-five cents, and Evie, the preacher’s daughter who scared him off when she chanted in spiritual reverie and tried her darnedest to save his ornery soul. But he had been romancing Grace for a few months now; she was a city gal all the way from Altoona. Sometimes he picked her up in his older brother, Ken’s, car, but ever since he and Ab sideswiped a tree and tore the door off of it, Ken wouldn’t let them use his car anymore. So on this Saturday afternoon date, Grace arrived by streetcar.
Bob met her at the streetcar stop near the Grazierville Bridge. She was a heavenly vision in jodhpurs, helmet, and riding boots. If this had been twenty years into the future, he would have thought Jackie Kennedy was in those pants. Hand in hand they walked to Hunter’s for an afternoon of horseback riding ($1 per hour) and maybe some hanky-panky in the hay field (priceless), if Bob could convince Grace that he had nothing more than gentlemanly intensions.
From the way Grace was dressed, Bob was certain that she was an experienced horsewoman, so he saddled her the big Tennessee Walker named Hank. He cupped his hands, Grace stepped in, and he hoisted her into the saddle. Her leg brushed his face; her fragrance was intoxicating. Bob sighed deeply and then saddled up Fish, the white gelding, for himself.
As they walked at an easy pace down the trail from Hunter’s barn, they heard Mr. Hunter shout, “Don’t you run those animals. I don’t wanna see them come back here all lathered up and such. You hear me, boy?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bob waved as he smiled into Grace’s eyes.
As soon as they rounded the bend and were out of Mr. Hunter’s sight, Bob urged Fish into a trot. The Walker responded likewise. Grace easily posted in the stirrups. (For those not too horse savvy, posting is to bounce up and down in rhythm with a horse’s trotting gate.) Hank pulled ahead of Fish, and the view from the rear was a pretty sweet treat to Bob’s eyes; he could watch her post all day.
Suddenly, Hank broke into a lope and then even more surprising, into a full-fledged, flat-out gallop. Grace screamed, dropped the reins, and gripped the saddle. Bob knew just what to do. After all, he had seen Roy rescue many a damsel in distress from a runaway horse. He spurred Fish onward. As the two horses came side by side, Bob reached out and grasped Grace by the waist. He pulled her off of Hank, but somehow it didn’t work like in the movies. She crashed so hard into Bob that she knocked him right off his horse, too. They went tumbling head over heels into the brush alongside the road as the riderless horses galloped off into the sunset.
The two of them lay along the roadside, stunned and breathless. Bob moaned and rolled toward Grace. His heart was pounding. What if she’s hurt really bad? How come Roy Rogers did it so easily? Dale never got mad, did she? Surely Grace won’t be mad. Bob had probably just saved her life.
“Are you okay?” he asked, gingerly.
“What the #@%% were you thinking?” Grace spat. “You could’a killed me. Just look at my new riding pants, they’re all torn. My ankle hurts. I think you sprained my ankle. Is my lip bleeding? I hope you’re happy. Putting me on a wild animal like that …” She rambled on and on and on … and the tears were flowing on and on …
It was a long hike back to the stable, especially with a ranting, raving angry woman. Bob’s shoulder was brush-burned and he limped on a bruised knee, but he still thought Grace was one beautiful little filly. Her fire made her even more attractive.
Well, Grace got over her mad spell and continued to date Bob for another year or so, until he joined the Army and got shipped off to Japan. He and Grace never became and item; it would be my guess that meeting my mom had something to do with that.
A few years after my mom passed, dad told me this story and asked me if I would try to find Grace. (At 82, dad was like a backward teenager, I had to do all the matchmaking.) After a little research, I finally found her. As I told her the story, she was quiet. Finally, she took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t remember. Bob who?”
Well, that took the wind right out of his sails. Perhaps if dad would’ve sung “Happy Trails”, it may have jogged her eighty-year-old memory and things may have turned out differently.

Bob White

The summer morning mist rises as you rock on your front porch, coffee cup steaming, and listen to the mourning doves softly cooing. Joining with the song of the doves is the distinct whistle of “bob-white, bob-white”. It makes you feel comfortable, safe, and it makes you smile, sort of like a peanut butter fudge ice cream sundae. That’s what I love about life in the country.
Listening to the bobwhite quail makes me think of a story from Walzie’s younger days – way younger, like when he was ten years old. What do the quail, ice cream, and gravity have in common? You are about to find out.
Walzie and his brother escaped from the school bus on that last day of school in 1959. They moseyed up the dirt lane toward the tiny shanty they called home. The lane was dusty and overhung with thick berry bushes and tall pines. The call of the bobwhites and the flutter of their wings told the boys that they were home free for the summer.
Within the brush were several nests and lying in those nests were tiny eggs: eggs that the boys watched with anticipation. Walzie was a sucker for baby animals. He had already raised groundhogs, foxes, squirrels, rabbits, deer, and pigeons. Why not a cute little bobwhite quail?
As the late spring days melted into summer, the boys played under the bushes, hollowing tunnels and crawling all around those nests. The bobwhite parents seemed to accept the boys as just a part of the scenery. When the babies hatched, they had already been accustomed to the boys playing around those nests so they were not afraid.
Mama called for the boys to come in for a mid-afternoon snack; Dad had brought home ice cream. Now, this was a rare occasion and they rushed home. As Walzie reached the front porch he heard a tiny “bob-white” whistle behind him. Following him was a tiny quail. He scooped it into his hands and set the little fellow on the table. (He knew it was a boy by the white feathers around its eyes. Girls have golden feathers.) Immediately, it began to peck at the ice cream. Wow, this was too good to be true – a new pet without the hassle of training, and it liked ice cream! How cool is that? Oh yeah, and what did he name his new buddy? What do you think? Of course, Bob.
Just like birds-of-a-feather, Bob and Walzie flocked together. Everywhere that Walzie went, Bob was on his shoulder. They slept in the same bed, ate at the same table, and traveled to the same outhouse. Although, Bob’s business usually got done on Walzie’s shoulder. So what? Not every kid had a pet quail; Walzie felt special.
For the first few years of Walzie’s childhood, the family kept their food in an icebox. (I swear he lived like it was the Depression instead of the fifties.) Finally, they joined the modern age and got one of those “new-fangled” refrigerators with a built in freezer so ice cream could be kept as a staple not just an occasional treat. Now when Walzie and Bob wanted a snack they could help themselves. Walzie knew when Bob wanted ice cream; that quail would go to the refrigerator and peck at the door. Honest! Then he and Walzie would share a dish of whatever was the flavor of the week.
But then one day dad threw in a surprise. The Acme had a two gallon bucket of cherry vanilla on sale. One would think that two gallons of ice cream would be a pleasant surprise, but I’m afraid it wasn’t. You see, the freezer was not frost free. The two gallon pail sat precariously atop an ice mound. Bob chirped happily at Walzie’s feet and looked upward, wanting his daily ration of ice cream. Walzie opened the door; the ice cream pail slid from the freezer. I suppose one could not expect a tiny bobwhite quail to catch a two gallon pail on his little head and still live to see tomorrow. I wonder what Bob’s thoughts were as that ice cream torpedoed toward him, “Hallelujah, here comes the mother load!”
Had gravity not come between friends, they’d still be enjoying ice cream to this very day. Well, except for the fact that poor Bob would be about 200 years old in bird years and I would be sharing my bed with a dad gum old bird. Come to think of it, I guess I do share my bed with an old bird. He still loves ice cream, and if necessary, he can duck a falling pail faster than a speeding bullet!

Chick Munk

There are a few things in life every little boy should have, namely: a dog, a tree house, and a grandpa that catches wild critters. Needless to say, our grand-boys are lucky. I’m not so sure about the grandma, though. Let me tell you about last week’s adventure.
Our three grandsons came to spend the day with us. Rhett (12) is our computer geek, Mason (8) is the hunter and inventor, and Korry (5) is our little wild man. The two younger ones took Grampy by the heart and conned him into building a tree house. Mason picked out the trees. None of them suited. Grampy explained that one lone tree doesn’t work, there had to be at least three of them together to put the platform on; and so the two little ones combed the backyard, sizing up trees while Grampy sat in his lounge chair drinking iced tea and hoping they would forget about this tree house thing.
Finally, they came running, shouting, “We found the perfect trees!”
Grampy groaned. You see, he wasn’t exactly thrilled about this construction project.
“Okay guys, now you need to find some tools,” he ordered.
They marched into the garage and came back with a handsaw, two hammers, a can of nails, and the little one bringing up the rear was dragging a spade shovel. Lord only knows what his plan was for the spade. Possibly to bury Grampy if he didn’t soon show some interest.
“Good job, guys,” Grampy praised. “Now, you have to find us some wood.”
This time they hiked to the woodshed. The hasp was too high for either of them to reach so they shouted for Grampy’s help. I laughed as he groaned and eased himself from that cozy lawn chair. He lumbered up through the yard like a grouchy old bear just coming out of hibernation.
When the hinges on the woodshed door squeaked, it was then that I heard the screams. Suddenly, the littlest one burst through the back door shouting, “Granny, I needs gloves! Quick!”
As I rifled through the glove drawer, I could hear the dog barking madly, and shouts coming from the woodshed.
“There he goes!”
“Catch him, Grampy!”
“There’s six of ‘em!”
“Ouch, the little sucker bit me!”
“Are you bleedin’, Grampy?”
“Susan, send my gloves with Korry!”
Oh boy, I knew from past experience that this was going to be a riot. I also knew what supplies to take to the woodshed: leather work gloves, a flashlight, and a cage. Korry worked his fingers into knit snow gloves. Two fingers drooped where he missed the holes.
“I’m gonna catch me a baby ‘quirrel,” Korry informed me. “I gonna name him Chick Munk.”
When we reached the woodshed, we found Grampy and Mason on all fours diving under shelves and buckets and parts from an old furnace, you know, all sorts of good junk stored in a woodshed that hadn’t been used for twenty years. Walnut shells and chewed up rags littered the floor. Mason was covered in cobwebs and walnut stain.
Suddenly, I heard loud squealing and then silence. The dog had pounced on a baby red squirrel. It quickly went to squirrel heaven. Then there was another loud squeal, a second baby squirrel got put on the doggie train to heaven.
“Cubby! Drop my Chick Munk,” Korry shouted.
It was too late, the squirrel was dead. Korry picked it up and shook it. “Wake up Chick Munk.”
“Not like that, Korry,” Mason had to get his two cents in. “Gimme it! I know how to do CPR.”
As Mason administered CPR to the squirrel, Korry paced like the anxious mother squirrel, but to no avail. We tried to explain to the boys, that once a squirrel goes to heaven, there’s no coming back. But Korry wasn’t ready to give his Chick Munk up just yet. He got a piece of twine and made a leash (actually, it looked like a noose) for his squirrel. He carried it around all afternoon slung over his shoulder like a hobo’s pack.
Finally, he brought it inside and threw it onto the kitchen counter. “Cut its tail off, Granny,” he ordered. “I want to take it to school to show my friend, Chloe. Hey, can you make me a squirrel pie?”
Luckily, I convinced him that Chick Munk should be buried out behind the woodshed where the mother squirrel could visit his grave. So we had a use for that spade shovel after all. After the funeral, Korry went home with Chick Munk’s tail in a baggie and Grampy went to the garage to make a cross for on the grave.
And what happened to the other four babies? Well, if I were them, I’d high-tail it out of that woodshed and find a new domain before those kids come back next weekend. Besides, Granny’s not in the mood for making squirrel pot pie!

Great Wolf Lodge Vacation

Rising high above the trees are massive log dormers that resemble those of Yellowstone’s Old Faithful Inn. As you drive up the winding roadway and round the last curve, the Great Wolf Lodge looms before you like a giant grizzly. Its beauty is breathtaking. Modeled after the wilderness lodges of the great northwest, the stone façade and the wolves carved into the totem poles will transport you to the majestic forests of the American west. Where are we: Wyoming, Oregon, Montana, or Washington? No. We are only a few hours from home in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.
Every year when the kids get out of school for the summer, Granny and Grampy take them on a vacation. Several years ago, I decided to take them to Niagara Falls, Canada. That’s where we first stumbled upon the Great Wolf Lodge. Grampy liked it just because it reminded him of the great outdoors. Entering the lobby is just like walking into an enchanted forest, but the best part was yet to come. Our grandkids were thrilled to learn that the Great Wolf Lodge has an indoor waterpark – and a fabulous one at that. In fact, they were so bored with Niagara Falls itself that the oldest one said, “I’m sick of standing here getting wet by this stupid falls. Let’s go to the waterpark.” And so for the past four years, vacations have been at a Great Wolf Lodge – there are about a dozen of them throughout the US, so we have plenty more of them to visit. But our favorite one is just a short jaunt across Interstate 80 to the Poconos.
Grampy Walzie is not a big fan of water. Every time he sees a body of water he has flashbacks of trudging through neck-deep mucky rivers, holding his M-16 high above his head, and being weighted down by an eighty pound backpack. But for the sake of the grandkids, he reluctantly put Vietnam aside and wriggled into a pair of flowered swimming trunks. He nervously put his toes into the toddlers’ pool and I saw a grin spread across his face. Holy cow … he actually liked it! Well, who wouldn’t? It’s a balmy 84 degrees inside and the water is soothingly tepid. So Grampy happily played with the two little guys, while Rhett and old Granny here hit the tunnels and the waterslides and the water coaster.
“Hey, Grampy,” Rhett shouted from the top of Big Bear Landing. “Come ride the “toilet bowl” with me!”
“No, I’ll stay here in the toddler’s pool,” Walzie told him.
“I double-dog dare you!”
Well, nobody can resist a double-dog dare. We switched places; I rested in the shallow pool while poor Grampy slowly climbed the four flights of stairs to the top landing of the huge waterslides. I know his heart was pounding and his knees were barking. Maybe it was the climb or maybe the fact that he’d never in his whole life ever done anything like this. I’m willing to bet it was both. He was probably wishing to be back in ‘Nam!
The tiny blonde attendant in the red t-shirt and striped bikini bottom blew her whistle and motioned for Grampy and Rhett to sit on the double tube. Walzie awkwardly squeezed his big behind into the back hole of the tube; the front lifted a foot off the platform. Rhett giggled as he straddled the front hole. Now picture this: a 250 pound grandpa doing a wheelie on an inner tube with a sixty pound twelve-year-old perched on the front. The attendant gave them a shove and they snaked through the tubes at full tilt. When they hit the “toilet bowl” at the end, Rhett was howling from his perch and Grampy squeezed his eyes shut tight as his behind dragged around and around the bowl, and then they got flushed out into the lazy river. I saw Walzie breathe a sigh of relief. The meandering current floated them easily around the three foot deep river; suddenly, Grampy found himself caught under the dumping buckets and gallons of water drenched him. As he tried to exit the lazy river, his behind stuck in the tube, it flipped and Grampy sunk like a stone. He surfaced sputtering like a cat that fell into the crapper. Enough! Grampy stumbled back to the toddlers’ pool.
After four days of splishing and splashing, we were water logged – all except five-year-old Korry.
“I needs to take a bath,” he whined.
“Kiddo,” I said. “You’ve been in water for four whole days. The car is packed. We’re going home today.”
“No, no, no! I’m going to live here forever,” he shouted as he ran for the bathroom and slammed the door. I heard the bath water running.
“Let’s go, Korry,” we coaxed in unison. “Get your little behind out of that bathtub. It’s time to go.”
For twenty minutes we coaxed and Korry adamantly insisted that he was going to live there forever. I guess he figured that as long as he was naked and in the bath, nobody could force him to go home.
Finally, the light bulb above Grampy’s head snapped on. “I’ll get him out of there. Watch this.”
“Uh oh! I have to do number two. I’m coming in, Korry,” Grampy urgently shouted. He dropped his drawers as he entered the bathroom and backed up to the bathtub instead of the throne.
Korry was giggling and shouting, “No, no, don’t poop on me!”
Suddenly, Grampy’s foot slipped, he lost his balance, and he tumbled backwards into the bathtub. Korry shot out of there like a missile. With his pants around his ankles, Walzie was stuck sideways in the tub and laughing so hard that he couldn’t budge himself free.
“Granny,” shouted the other two boys. “Get the camera!”
But I was laughing so hard that I forgot how to master the camera phone. I probably should have handed it to eight-year-old, Mason. Kids know about such technology. I need to study “Cell Phones for Dummies”.
“Camera?” shouted Grampy. “%@$$, just get me out of here!”
Well, it took all four of us (including the little guy) to wiggle him free and get him to his feet. His behind was already turning black and blue.
And so, after unpacking and re-packing the van to get Grampy some dry clothes, we finally were on our way home. For three hours we listened to the kids teasing and giggling about Grampy’s little mishap, and I listened to Grampy moan about his aches and pains.
As for Grampy, he can hardly wait ‘til next year’s venture to the Great Wolf Lodge. Only this time I’ll betcha’ my right arm that he goes armed with a bottle of pain meds!

Billy Goat

There’s nothing cuter than a baby goat. Well, okay, maybe a baby pig, but that’s another story. Let’s talk goats.
Maybe we don’t have a farm and maybe Walzie’s true name is not Noah, but we’ve crammed nearly every animal imaginable into our two acre ark, including several goats.
When walking through the goat barn at the Huntingdon County Fair, I first noticed how cute baby goats are. Naturally, I wanted one right away and my dear hubby, (who will do nearly anything to keep me happy, bless his little pea pickin’ heart!), quickly said, “Okay, you got it. But let’s get a miniature. It’ll stay tiny and make a really good pet. Shucks, maybe we could even make it a house goat.”
So for several weeks we perused the Bargain Sheet and finally one day, there was the following ad: For Sale, miniature kids, $15. Yahoo, assuming that they didn’t mean tiny children, we’d found our baby. Only thing was, the farm was in Cumberland, MD. Oh what the heck, it was only a four- hour drive (two down, two back), and we really wanted a mini. We sped off on a hot Saturday afternoon.
Following the farmer’s directions, we traveled back a long country lane sided by high weeds and rocky hills. Once in a while we’d see a flash of black and white darting among the weeds or hear a shrill “nnaaahhhh”. At least we knew we were in goat territory. Finally, we reached the farm.
An elderly Amish-looking man greeted us. We paid him the $15 and he instructed us to pick one. There must have been a hundred nannies, kids, and billies roaming in a weed patch. Pick one; yeah, right! Being young and knowing everything, Walzie and I dove in. From the corner of my eye, I saw that Amish man snicker.
We ran and we chased through the brier patch. Goats darted around, over, and even under us. Finally, Walzie was able to pounce on a teeny black baby. Oh, he was a cutie. As I stood there, oohing and aahing, I never heard the snort behind me. Old Billy’s rock-hard forehead connected with my buns. He sent me down the hill like a rolling donut dusted with thorns.
The Amish man asked if we’d like to have our prize catch neutered, “dey make mo’ betta pets dat vay,” he stated. We nodded. He instructed Walzie to hold the little guy by all four feet and bottom up. When I saw the pocket knife, I tightly shut my eyes, cupped my ears, and cringed.
Next thing I knew, the old man spit two grape-like things at my feet. The barn cats came running to scrap over those tiny desserts. I nearly lost my lunch.
“Don’t be squeamish, missie,” he said with a trickle of blood on his lip. “Dat’s the vay the shephard’s do it. More sanitary. Ya see, me teeth dey crimp da blood vessels. Not as messy dat vay.”
The baby goat cried and Walzie hugged him, “Calm down little Billy. That didn’t hurt too much, did it?”
“Ya vant to be next?” the old Amish man asked.
Walzie and I and our new baby got the heck out of there.
And so the little goat thrived in our back yard. You know they say that goats will eat anything – not so. This guy only ate flowers, shrubs, garden plants, and the bark off our trees. As the months flew by, Billy grew, and grew, and grew. He was no longer a mini-goat. He ended up being a full-sized goat with 6 inch horns and an attitude like a bull in a China shop. Do you think this may have had something to do with the neutering?
Billy absolutely hated our kids (the human ones, of course), our hound dogs, cows, his pen, weeds, squirrels, even Walzie and me. Billy would just as soon butt it as look at it.
On our back deck we have a glass sliding door. I’ll bet you can guess where I’m going with this. Our son, Jason, was about twelve years old; his job was to feed Billy. But Billy didn’t care if Jason was hand that fed him or not. I heard Jason scream and then the glass door slam shut. Suddenly, there was the shatter heard ‘round the world, and Billy stood in our kitchen! Jason was locked in his bedroom shouting, “shoot that sucker!”
And thus, our sweet little mini-goat that grew into a split-hoofed Tasmanian Devil went on a little trip to the Belleville Auction. I’ll bet that tough ol’ boy was like baked shoe leather on someone’s dinner table.
As time passed by, we forgot the terrible saga of that goat and bought several more goats, sheep, cows, chickens, ducks, horses, pigs … keep it up, Noah, we’ll soon need to build that ark.

Monkey Hijinks

Coaly’s little heart pounded with anxiety as he pedaled his bicycle down the alley. He hated delivering the newspaper to the Sprankle’s household. Most times, it was a family dog that chased him, barking and grabbing for his pant legs. The Johnson’s bulldog had bitten him twice, but the Sprankle place was worse than that. They had Fanny, the monkey.
Fanny was a refugee from the Wilson’s field carnival. Do you know where that was? Well, Kunzler’s and WTRN now occupy the property, but back in the 30s that empty lot was prime carnival ground.
The Sprankles lived beside the Juniata Packing Company, just across the road from Wilson’s field. The carnival with its sideshow freaks, hootchy-cootchy shows, and hurdy-gurdy monkey man was like a cotton candy magnet to the Sprankle twins, Bobby and Ab, and since it was just across the highway, they didn’t have far to go to satisfy their curiosity.
Twelve-years-old and just about to blossom into puberty, the twins stood with their friend, Coaly, and watched Fifi, the snake charmer, as she swayed her hips like a Hula dancer. The boa constrictor wrapped itself around her; she winked at the boys and they giggled shyly. The hurdy-gurdy man cranked his music and his monkey’s antics made the boys laugh.
Behind them stood old Spuds McCaulley, the dirty hobo who rode the freight trains to and from Pittsburgh. Sometimes Spuds bummed suppers at the Sprankle’s house and told the boys tall tales about riding the rails. Spuds grinned toothlessly as he watched Fifi’s dance.
Suddenly, Coaly screamed, “Git this monkey off’n me!”
The boy danced trying to shake that monkey off his leg. It scurried higher and perched on Coaly’s shoulder. Chattering loudly, it picked through Coaly’s dark, kinky hair as if looking for fleas.
“I hate this monkey,” the boy shouted. “Git it off!”
The twins rolled in the dust with laughter at their friend’s predicament. Finally, Spuds plucked the monkey off of Coaly’s head and set her on the stage. Immediately, she climbed on top of the hurdy-gurdy and chattered.
Fifi placed the snake in its cage and reached her hand out to Spuds; she pulled him onto the stage. The monkey bounced onto Spuds’ shoulder and clung to him for dear life. The boys watched curiously as Fifi, Spuds, the monkey and the hurdy-gurdy man disappeared inside the tent.
“Aw heck,” Bobby said. “The show’s over. Let’s got get some candy apples.”
“Oh, I hate monkeys,” shivered Coaly.
“Bet that monkey thought you was his mama,” teased Ab. Coaly shoved Ab, he stumbled into Bobby; they all laughed and made their way through the crowd toward the candy apple stand.
Several weeks later, Spuds showed up at the Sprankle’s door. Mrs. Sprankle invited him inside to join the family for supper. This time Spuds brought a friend - a hairy, long-tailed, big-eyed friend named Fanny. She curled between the twins and settled in like a long, lost relative.
“Well, lookee there,” Spuds said. “I believe that monkey likes you boys. You know, jumping freight trains is not much of a life for a man, let alone a man with a monkey. Would you boys like to keep Fanny?”
“Can we, mama,” they pleaded. “Please.”
Sara Sprankle never could resist the innocent doe-eyes of her tow-headed twin boys and the monkey joined their family.
So every evening, just as the paperboy pedaled down the alley, the twins and Fanny patiently waited behind the hedge. They heard the crunch of the bicycle tires on the gravel growing louder and they knew that Coaly was getting closer. Closer. Closer.
Suddenly, Fanny leaped right on Coaly’s head. He screamed. The bike wobbled. Newspapers flew in the air. Fanny hung on to the boy’s ears and rode him all the way into the ditch. Jungle cries filled the neighborhood.
“Git this monkey off’n me,” shouted Coaly.
Bobby and Ab came to their friend’s rescue, laughing all the way.
“I hate that monkey!”
Fanny jumped on Bobby and curled her tail around his neck. She howled as if still in the jungle.
“We think Fanny loves you, Coaly!”
Thus began the long-time friendship between the twins and the monkey and the daily torment of the poor paperboy. Did this torture ever deter Coaly? Never. He remained a true friend to the Sprankles until just a few years ago when his time here on earth was finished. Betcha Fanny was a’waitin’ behind a hedge of clouds to welcome Coaly.

Walzie loves Porky

Walzie loves pigs. Now, I’m sure there will be a few smart-alecks out there thinking, “Yeah, that’s why he’s still with that redheaded porker”. Well, just knock it off; that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean those porcine critters that give us sausage, bacon, ham, and pork chops.
We don’t have a farm, but Walzie thinks we do. He decided that it would be great to raise our own hog and butcher it. But, Walzie rationalized that it doesn’t cost any more to raise ten hogs than it does to raise one. So in our little ramshackle shed we call a barn, Walzie sectioned off a box stall for ten little pigs. Cute little oinkers … while they are little; but boy, do pigs ever grow fast.
We had a mixture of sows and boars (girl and boy pigs). The boys needed to be neutered. Supposedly, that would keep them even-tempered. I never could quite figure that one out. Cut my bottom and my even-temperament would skyrocket to the moon. Besides that, don’t the girls get PMS?
So neutering day came. Walzie and his buddy, Ralph disappeared inside the barn. As an unwilling witness, I stayed on the back porch. Knowing full well what was happening to those poor little boy pigs, I cringed with each squeal. Soon the faux veterinarians emerged with a plastic bag filled with country oysters. Now, I am fairly adventurous and will taste almost anything, but no, no, no, not that. I fed them to the barn cats.
Nearly all the little pigs fared well through the neutering, all except one. The poor little guy developed an infection in his behind. Have you ever wanted to rub salve on a pig’s butt? Well, neither did I, but I got elected for that daily chore. Actually, I did have a choice: hold the pig or rub the salve. Walzie has more muscle – he held; I rubbed; little pig squealed. Day in and day out the little pig got his treatment, until four days into the routine, Porky disappeared.
We searched all through the woods behind our house, around the local farmer’s fields, and combed the neighborhood shouting, “soo-eee, pig, pig, pig”. Porky didn’t answer. We figured he was a goner.
Several days later, our neighbor lady called. “There is a strange looking creature lying in the stream by my house. Maybe it’s your lost pig?”
It was.
Walzie high-tailed it to the stream. Porky saw him coming. He ran through the brush and the brambles; no way was he returning to be tortured at the Walls’ dungeon. Finally, he cornered Porky in the mud wallow where he had been holed up. Walzie pounced on him. Now, just imagine a two hundred pound guy, wrestling a fifty-pound slippery pig in a mud wallow.
When I saw Walzie carrying Porky home, I nearly split a gut. The only way I could tell them apart was because Porky squealed louder than Walzie. But at least our little pig was home safe and sound. And guess what? The mud had healed his behind.
So for eight more months, Porky and his friends lived the life of Riley. We had access to all the tainted milk the local farmers were throwing away and pigs thrive on milk mixed with corn mash. They quickly became ready to be prime whole hog sausage.
Ever try to load ten two hundred pound squealing pigs into the back of a pick-up truck? ‘Taint an easy task. Walzie pulled, I pushed, and got knocked into the pig poo half a dozen times, but finally we got them loaded. Nine went to the sale barn; Porky went to the slaughterhouse.
Macky Garner’s custom butcher shop was in Altoona near the high school. Yeah, in the city. You won’t believe what happened next. When we unloaded Porky, he took one whiff of that slaughterhouse and jumped the gate. Porky escaped again, running up the alley behind the butcher shop. I ran after the pig. Walzie ran around the street and cut him off at the end of the block. Porky spun around and charged me. I leaped atop a parked car. The butcher, armed with a rifle, ended Porky’s charge. Do that in Altoona today! You’d be handcuffed and locked up in the hoosegow before you could say “soo-ee”!
You know, I really felt bad the first time I unwrapped a package of Porky, after all, we’d been through so much. But then I tasted the sausage; it was the best ever. I’ve never looked back.
T-t-t-hats all folks!

Spa Lougie

Imagine standing barefoot in the snow, the wind chill is below zero, and your teeth are chattering. The night is crystal clear and every star twinkles like rhinestones on a midnight-blue velvet dress. Orion’s belt slowly rises on the eastern horizon and shades of green brightly undulate in the northern sky. A blast of icy wind sends chills over your body as your breath dissipates in a misty cloud. You take a deep breath and sprint across the snow-covered deck. Bounding into the 102-degree water makes it feel like a boiling pot. You ease into the soup while Walzie sings “Chestnuts Roasting”. That’s a winter Saturday night in our hot tub.
For years, we thought there was something a little bit risqué about getting into a hot tub. That silly idea must have come from watching too many movies. Our first hot tub experience occurred when we visited our friends Ron and Robin who live near Lancaster. They had just built a new, lavish home, complete with a spa, and they invited us to come see it during the Christmas holiday.
The 25 feet high entryway with its crystal chandelier made my jaw drop. We wouldn’t sit in the living room for fear of soiling the white furniture and carpeting. They hustled us hillbillies into the family room where we sat on floor pillows and watched the television that was a big as a Jumbotron. Through the opposite window-wall we noticed it had started to snow.
“Hope you guys brought your bathing suits,” Robin said.
We laughed, thinking she was joking.
“Oh yeah,” Ron added. “There’s nothing like soaking in the hot tub with the snowflakes falling. It’s really beautiful.”
Walzie and I looked at each other like cornered rats. “Uh no,” we said in unison. “We don’t do hot tubs.”
Not one to take no for an answer, Robin quickly ran upstairs and brought us bathing suits. Walzie nearly panicked. I know he was praying for his jungle-rotted feet to fall off. No amount of refusing would deter Ron and Robin.
Ron snapped on the outside lights and we saw the spa on a snow-covered deck about 50 feet from the house.
“We gotta go clear out there?” Walzie balked.
“Come on you two big sissies. You’ll love it.” And Ron took off running towards the spa. Robin, carrying a tray of Margaritas, pushed us from behind.
We were freezing. They laughed at us. We eased into the water. Walzie was embarrassed and they laughed at him. But, it was really relaxing and immediately warmed us. Ron turned on the jets. It massaged Walzie’s back and feet; he actually liked it. It was unbelievable how comfortable it was. We finally relaxed and enjoyed the snow along with the hot bubbles.
“This does wonders for my arthritic knees,” Ron said.
“You think this would help with my aching back?” Walzie questioned with sincere interest.
“Absolutely! After my car accident, the doctor actually prescribed spa therapy,” Robin told us.
Suddenly, the back door of the house flew open and their twelve-year-old son (who was exceptionally large for his age) ran towards us as if he were catching a Hail Mary pass and did a cannonball into the center of the spa - so much for keeping my hairdo dry.
A few months later, we were sitting in our own hot tub spa on the deck behind our house.
And so our friends, Robbie and Brenda, came over to marvel at our new purchase. We were a little reluctant to let others into our spa, but with a little coaxing, I finally caved in. Walzie’s mind was set; there was no way he was getting into a tub of water with anyone who was not his wife or grandchild. So Robbie, Brenda, and I eased into the spa. We chatted, laughed, and enjoyed the jets that by now were sucking all the soap powder out of our friends’ clothing and creating quite a frothy head in the water.
All of a sudden, Brenda sneezed. I saw something shoot from her mouth and I thought, “Oh geez, my friend hocked a lougie in my tub!” I was horrified.
“Brenda,” I shouted. “Did you blow snot in my spa?”
“Nuh uh,” she mumbled through her fingers. “That was my false teeth.” Poor Brenda was mortified.
“No problem,” offered Robbie. “I’ll get them.” He dove like Shamu to the bottom of the frothy little ocean and water sloshed over the edges and splattered the deck. Shortly, Robbie emerged brandishing his wife’s teeth like a prized seashell.
Walzie, who had been watching the whole incident from behind the glass sliding door, was rolling on the floor with laughter.
We finally decided that our spa was not for recreational use, but only for medicinal purposes. It takes away all our aches and warms our toes on those cold winter nights.
And, oh yeah, I guess Santa will be bringing Brenda some Polygrip next Christmas.

WD-40

Bees – now there’s a real love/hate relationship. We love the honey but hate the sting. Sounds a little like life, doesn’t it? Don’t you just hate it when you pick up your soda can and a bee has slobbered all over the rim?
The other day my grandson, Rhett, asked, “Granny, why did God invent bees?”
So I gave him the old “pollination” speech and assured him that God had a good reason for inventing them. Oh yeah, I included honey, too.
“Okay,” he said. “So why did he have to give them stingers?”
Then he got the “protection” speech.
“Oh, I get it now. So that’s why they stung Grampy when he burned their nest.”
That brings us to the gist of this story.
Walzie is a bee arsonist. He got that from his dad, John. One day when our friends from Texas were visiting, their daughter Staci was playing tag with our boys. Staci brushed against one of the cedar trees in the front yard and suddenly, she began to scream. Yellow Jackets swarmed nearby and one of them got Staci on the cheek. Walzie found the nest hidden deep within the thick foliage of the tree. John quickly volunteered to dispose of those nasty bees come nightfall.
Darkness came and so did Johnny the Conqueror, armed with a can of WD40 and a cigarette lighter which when combined, makes a super duper flamethrower. He told Walzie to slowly separate the branches and expose the nest. Now I know I saw this once in a cartoon; it may have been the coyote and the road runner, but the flames shot out and all that was left was a smoldering snag.
“Holy cow, dad,” Walzie shouted. “Ya’ burned up my tree.”
“So? Got rid of them bees didn’t I?” John said proudly.
Couldn’t argue with that.
Our next encounter with bees happened a few years later as Walzie was moving some landscaping ties around the back yard. He lifted one that had been embedded in the dirt for quite some time. All at once, his sweat pants were covered in undulating black and yellow. He dropped the tie with a thud and ran for the house, screaming all the way.
“Get the WD40,” he shouted. “I’m getting stung.”
He dropped his drawers in the back yard, sprayed the WD40, and lit it – poof – no more sweat pants, no more bees. Except for those still clinging to his … ahem!
“Here,” I offered. “Gimme that flamethrower, I’ll get ‘em.”
“Are you nuts?” he cringed. “Just get the hose and squirt them off. And hurry!”
Then just last week, he came through the house carrying a can of gasoline and a long pole with a rag wrapped around the end. (He was out of WD40.) I knew he was on a bee barbeque mission. We marched across the yard to the mower storage shed. Under the metal ramp was a huge hornet’s nest. Walzie soaked the rag-wrapped pole with gas, lit it, and shoved it under the ramp. Flames shot from under it and licked the end of the shed. I thought sure he was going to burn it down. All of a sudden, Walzie threw the burning stick in the air, ripped off his shirt, and shouted, “Yeow! Gettin’ stung! Gettin’ stung!”
He swatted and I ran. No way was I going to stick around for the massacre. Uh, three weeks later there were still bees under that ramp.
A few days ago, our neighbor, Jody called and asked for the services of the “Critter Gitter”. Seems as though they’ve been hearing a strange buzzing sound coming from inside their kitchen wall, and bees have been seen crawling inside the windows.
Walzie said, “I’ll be right there. You got any WD40? If not I can use gasoline.”
“For what?” Jody asked suspiciously.
“I’m gonna burn those bees,” Walzie informed her.
Jody’s face turned pale. “What if you burn my house down?”
“Don’t worry, Jody,” I piped up. “I have a direct line to the fire department.”
The very next day we saw the exterminator parked in their driveway. I guess that was for the best, gasoline is priced to high anyway!

One-legged Deer Hunter

On the first day of buck season there was a steady, miserable drizzle. The fog hung so heavily over the valley that from the tree stand placed high on the bluff, it looked like gray cotton balls soft enough to leap into. Don shrugged his collar higher around his neck and shook the rain from his orange cap. Nobody in their right mind (human or deer) should be out wandering in this nasty weather. This was one lousy opening day.
Boredom set in. Don lit a cigarette and shifted back and forth from his real leg to his prosthetic leg. Who the heck cared? He could smoke and dance all he wanted to, there were no doggone deer to be seen for miles anyway. He wondered how many deer his brother, Walzie, was seeing across the adjacent field – probably none. No shots fired.
Whatever made him glance up, he didn’t know; but the slightest glimpse of movement sent his heart to pounding. With its head down low, the biggest rack buck Don had ever seen was silently sneaking through the brush about 75 yards in front of him. Slowly, he shouldered his rifle. Unnoticed, the rifle butt crushed the cigarette dangling from his mouth. He watched the buck through the scope. It was a beauty. Don drew a deep breath; the buck’s shoulder entered the crosshairs; BAM! The deer dropped in its tracks.
Every experienced hunter knows to sit tight for a few minutes and let the animal lay before approaching it. Don shivered. Was that the excitement of the kill or just plain cold wetness? Whichever, didn’t matter, his “real” foot was falling asleep; he needed to move. Leaving his rifle and fanny pack in the tree stand, he carefully picked his way down the ladder, slipping now and then on his “wooden” leg. Finally, he shuffled toward the downed deer. He couldn’t see the bullet’s entry wound, but the deer looked dead alright. He picked up its head, proudly counted each of the ten points, and whistled at the rack on that bad boy. Old Walzie’s gonna eat his heart out with jealousy!
He dropped the deer’s head with a thud and went back to the tree stand to get his gun and fanny pack that had the gutting knife. That’s when he heard a snort. Quickly he turned. The ten-point was trotting away like nobody’s business.
At the top of the rise that dropped into the fog-shrouded valley below, Don saw the deer disappear over the edge. That rotten bugger knew where he was going – down the side of the mountain into the fog. Well, yes sir, two can play this game.
Don grabbed his rifle, leaped over the rise, and bounded down the mountainside chasing after the deer. He could see it meandering along the trail just ahead of him. Suddenly, his boot caught on a root and he fell forward. With a pop, the suction let loose that held the wooden leg onto his thigh. Ever heard the saying, “busy as a one legged man in a butt kicking contest”? That’s exactly how busy Don was trying to keep upright on that steep Billy-goat trail. He hobbled, wobbled, and then tumbled down the mountainside like a tractor tire with a lopsided blow-out. The entire road that skirts the Little Juniata is usually a dry cinder path, except for one sloppy mud hole that Don found to be mighty cold and deep.
As he wiped the mud from his eyes, he realized the buck was standing just fifty yards ahead of him on the road. (Probably laughing like a Tickle-me Elmo.) He leaped to his one leg, stood stork-like, and aimed. Ever try to balance on one leg and shoot a rifle? Not a good idea. The crosshairs seemed to be weaving in wide circles. Don shot.
When he picked himself back up out of the puddle, the deer was gone and so was what little adrenalin he had left. Now he had to crawl like a drenched, one-legged mountain goat back up that ungodly steep hill to retrieve his leg.
Suddenly, Don heard a whistle. At the top of the hill stood Walzie waving his brother’s long lost leg.
“Hey, brother,” he shouted. “Lose something?”
“Shoot! Bring my leg here, would ya’?”
Walzie joined his brother on the side of the mountain. As Don put himself back together he told Walzie the big buck story.
“Yeah, right,” Walzie chided. “Sounds like a redneck story to me. Let’s go home for supper. Venison steak was going to be my choice … hope you like fried grease, dead-eye!”

We Love Camping, uh huh!

The lightening flashed. It looked eerie through the tent, and my heart pounded. Lying on my cot, I reached across to Walzie who seemed restless. Our kids were safe inside mom and dad’s camper, but we had chosen to brave this camping trip in our own cozy tent. It was cozy all right, only five feet square and barely big enough for two aluminum cots to fit side by side. I fit fine; I’m only five feet tall, but poor Mr. Six-footer had problems. As he flipped from side to side with his knees to his chest, he groaned something about rainy camping trips with tiny tents really sucked.
He vowed that after spending a year in the mud and muck of monsoon season in Vietnam, he would never spend another night camping in the rain. Well, heck, I’m no meteorologist; how was I to know that a rainstorm would hit Lewisburg, PA the night we decided to use that new tent.
So he rolled and tossed, I listened to the buzzing of mosquitoes that the rain had driven inside our little romantic abode. With each lightening flash, I zeroed in on ‘skeeters the size of Manhattan, smashing them against the side of the tent.
Walzie mumbled something about not touching the tent walls. Too late, it began to leak like a sieve. The steady plink, plink right on Walzie’s head brought him up like a bad weed.
“What the heck did you do?” he shouted at me. “Did you touch the tent?”
“Uh, sort of,” I tried to explain. “I was killing ‘skeeters. Maybe we should go sleep in mom and dad’s camper.”
“No way, little missey. This was your idea. We are staying right here. Maybe if you get your butt good and soaked, you’ll think before you decide that we need to go tenting. I told you we needed a camper of our own – but, noooo. We can’t afford one you said. Let’s buy a tent. It’ll be fun. Yeah, right. Now, roll over and go to sleep and don’t bug me! ”
So we weathered the storm inside that leaking tent. Next morning we were sopping wet and up to our knees in mud. Oh, yeah – that was fun.
So we didn’t do anymore camping, at least until a few years later. We finally bought a brand new Ford pickup and I talked Walzie into buying a camper to haul in the bed. Now, this will be so cool.
We followed mom and dad back to Lewisburg where we camped along the Susquehanna. We did some fishing and the boys swam and the day was winding down into a nice cool summer evening. Dad built a campfire and mom readied the weenies. Walzie whittled points on some sticks, and we were nearly ready for the big weenie roast.
I thought it was getting a little too cool, so I went inside our camper to get a sweatshirt. It felt a little chilly inside, so I lit the gas heater and adjusted it just high enough to take the chill away.
As we sat around the campfire, toasting weenies and telling stories, my mom said, “Look how nice the fire reflects on the side of your camper. It makes it look like such a pretty orange color.”
Walzie glanced up and horror filled his eyes. “Refection, my @$$. Our camper’s on fire!”
He ripped the back door open and black smoke billowed like a thunderstorm cloud. Flames singed his eyelashes. Mom rushed into their camper and literally tore their fire extinguisher from the wall (brackets and paneling, too). She tossed it to Walzie and he sprayed it inside our camper. The fire was out.
The worst of the fire was contained to the area of the gas heater. It looked as though when I stepped from the camper earlier, it jostled the plastic paper towel rack and it fell against the heater that ignited the paper towels. The fire climbed up the wall and devoured the mattress in the cab over bunk. Walzie was a little miffed … okay, a lot miffed.
Mom and dad took the boys to sleep in their camper and offered us the tent they keep folded up in the closet just in case of emergencies. I thought this constituted an emergency, but Walzie refused. Guess he and tents don’t fare too well. He insisted that we sleep in the burned out camper.
We put down the table and arranged the soot-covered cushions into a bed. It smelled like the charred remains of the city dump and every place you touched, made you look as if you were bathed in charcoal. We scrunched ourselves into the tiny space that would have been the kid’s bed. Mrs. Five-foot was comfortable; Mr. Six-footer was knees to chest and frowning – again.
Next morning we emerged looking like coalminers. Walzie looked me in the eye and said sarcastically, “Isn’t camping fun?”
So we got camping out of our systems back in the mid-seventies. Although, just last week, I saw the fright creep back into Walzie’s eyes when I asked him if he wanted to go to the RV show in Harrisburg.
Shucks, camping has changed since the seventies – hasn’t it?

The Cowpuncher

Walzie is a true-blue cowpuncher. Not only because as a kid he idolized Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, but also because he could throw a punch like Mike Tyson and knockout a cow. No, I am not kidding. She wasn’t just a teeny-weeny heifer either – a big twelve hundred pound milking cow. Let me elaborate.
He spent a few years working on a dairy farm in Warriors Mark. Walzie was a young scrapper full of spit and vinegar, and he spent many long hard hours baling hay, tossing hundred pound feed sacks, pulling calves (for you city-folks, that’s when the mother cow cannot birth the calf and someone has to go in and pull the calf out), and all those miscellaneous heavy-duty farming jobs. He was as strong as an ox and proud of it. (All that strength has since gone to his butt. It comes in handy now for holding down his wild bucking-bronco of a Lazy Boy.)
I hate to point out this fact to you animal activists, but when a cow has outlived her usefulness as a milker, she’s sent off to become hamburger. Walzie’s job was to round up old Bessie and herd her into the holding pen to wait for the slaughter truck. (The holding pen is an area where the herd of cows stands as they wait to enter the parlor at milking time.) Do you know what is left on the concrete floor after a hundred cows stand there for two hours? Well, it ain’t pretty, its ankle deep, and smells pretty funky.
So Walzie and Bessie sloshed through the muck and he closed the gate behind her. He left the cow to mill around the pen until the truck came, and then he went inside the milk house to wash up the dairy equipment.
Finally, the truck from Louie Kline’s Meat Shop pulled in and backed up to the loading ramp. Walzie began to shush Bessie toward the truck. Bessie must have known where this little bon voyage party was heading because she balked and ran to the back of the holding pen. Walzie ran behind her, slipping and sliding in the “you know what”, waving his arms to guide her in the right direction. Bessie ran from him, but suddenly she skidded to a stop. Bessie spun around and stared straight at Walzie. He was standing in the opening to the manure pit. (That’s where the farmer scrapes the “you know what” from the floor and stores it for use as fertilizer later.) Bessie dropped her head and charged Walzie like a bull. She was coming fast. Walzie didn’t have time to think. If they both tumbled into the pit, neither one would come out smelling like a rose, if indeed they came out at all. He let his fist fly and caught her flat on the cheek. It cracked like a 30.06 rifle shot. Bessie went down as if hit by a ten pound sledgehammer – knocked out cold.
Walzie shook out his fist, stretched his fingers, and went for the tractor. They pushed poor old unconscious Bessie onto the truck and away she finally went.
Later Walzie went to unload a tandem truckload of hay into the barn. He noticed his fingers tingling, but didn’t think much about it. Later that night he awoke to a throbbing hand that looked like it belonged to a Sasquatch. His middle knuckle was shoved two inches closer to his wrist and twice the size as normal. Mr. Tough Guy never did get it fixed; he’s still got a nasty-looking knuckle, but he learned not to go around punching cows anymore.
Twenty years later, we were at a picnic in Claysburg with some friends. We were introduced to our friend’s uncle. She told him that we were from Warriors Mark.
“Oh I used to haul cows from down that way,” Uncle Jim said. “I remember a fellow from there that punched a cow. Really! Knocked her out flat. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve been telling that story all over the county for the past twenty years or so. I’ll never forget it.”
Walzie and I looked at each other and laughed.
“Yep,” Walzie said proudly showing his nasty knuckle to Uncle Jim. “That fellow was me.”
One never knows what strange tales may follow you forever. Watch your step, it’s a small, small world, and I wouldn’t go around punching any cows if I were you.

Walzie & the Squirrel

What does a hammer, a squirrel, and Walzie have in common? That’s easy: new floor tiles. I know what you are thinking, “she really has lost her mind,” right? Not so. Just listen to this one.
While sitting in “my” TV room last fall, watching the Steelers fumble once and get intercepted twice, I could hear a chewing sound coming from somewhere in the house that was louder than the groans of the Steelers’ fans (including myself).
So I shouted to Walzie who was sitting in “his” TV room, “Hey, what the heck are you eating? Quit chewing so loud, I can’t even hear the referee’s calls.”
He shouted back, “You’re nuts, I’m not even eating anything.”
“Yeah right,” I thought. He who sits in his recliner beside a whole stash of junk food that he claims is for the grandkids. “Well, then come here to my room. Listen to this crazy noise.”
Walzie grumbled and sauntered into my TV room. He flopped on the couch and started to shout coaching instructions to Mike Tomlin, when suddenly, he stopped mid-sentence. “What was that? Turn your TV down. Listen.”
It sounded as if a beaver was gnawing the floor joists under the house. Walzie kneeled and put his ear to the floor like he was scouting for buffalo. The sound was coming from right under the living room floor. He pounded his fist on the carpeting and the chewing stopped. “Ha, that scared the little varmint away,” he announced proudly.
No sooner had Walzie settled back on the couch, the chewing started again. This time, Walzie stomped with his heels. I swear he looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy doing the River Dance. I just wanted to poke his belly and see if he’d giggle.
“I guess this is going to take some heavy artillery,” he informed me as he went to the garage. He returned with a hammer. Hope the critter under the house had ear-plugs. Walzie dropped to his knees and began pounding the floor. Every few minutes, he’d give it a break and listen quietly. Only Walzie’s heavy breathing filled the room.
“Hey, I think it moved to the kitchen,” I shouted.
Yep, the little bugger moved away from the pounding noise and began to chew our kitchen floor joists. Walzie shuffled on hands and knees onto the kitchen floor. Pound, pound, pound! The critter moved left, Walzie pounded left. The critter moved right, Walzie pounded right. Sweat formed a “V” on the back of his shirt and his carpenter’s crack grew more exposed as his shuffling pulled at his sweatpants. “Don’t worry, Hon, I’ll chase him outta here,” he informed me.
I finally turned on the overhead lights. Do you realize what my kitchen floor looked like? Yep, like an elephant on stilts had danced the Rumba on the linoleum. There were a million 1” round hammer divots in it. But know what? The chewing sound had stopped.
A week or so later, as we were laying our new kitchen floor, I was cutting a tile to fit around the heat register when suddenly, the odor hit me like a ten-pound hammer. Ever smelled road-kill on a hot summer’s day? Yep, I mean like hot, exploded groundhog stinky.
“Walzie, you’ve got to crawl under the house and find that critter,” I gagged.
Reluctantly, Walzie shrugged on his coveralls, grabbed his flashlight, and slithered into the crawl space. I could hear him bumping and banging and muttering. Finally, he emerged dragging the remains of our little chewer. Heck, there wasn’t even enough meat left for a good squirrel potpie.
So as Walzie and I sit at our breakfast table with our bare feet enjoying the smoothness of that new kitchen floor, we watch the cute little squirrels scamper around the back yard. But if they know what’s good for them, they’ll keep their distance from the house. A .22 has replaced Walzie’s hammer and after all, squirrel potpie is yummy.

Grace & the Horse

At the end of every movie, Roy and Dale sang “Happy Trails to you” and rode off into the sunset on Trigger and Buttermilk. Remember that? The year was 1943 and the cost of those movies was five cents. Imagine that!
Bob was a seventeen-year-old scrapper full of spit and vinegar and a real smooth cookie with the ladies. Oh yes, there were several: like the twins next door who would give him a peek at their bloomers for twenty-five cents, and Evie, the preacher’s daughter who scared him off when she chanted in spiritual reverie and tried her darnedest to save his ornery soul. But he had been romancing Grace for a few months now; she was a city gal all the way from Altoona. Sometimes he picked her up in his older brother, Ken’s, car, but ever since he and Ab sideswiped a tree and tore the door off of it, Ken wouldn’t let them use his car anymore. So on this Saturday afternoon date, Grace arrived by streetcar.
Bob met her at the streetcar stop near the Grazierville bridge. She was a heavenly vision in jodhpurs, helmet, and riding boots. If this had been twenty years into the future, he would have thought Jackie Kennedy was in those pants. Hand in hand they walked to Hunter’s for an afternoon of horseback riding ($1 per hour) and maybe some hanky-panky in the hay field (priceless), if Bob could convince Grace that he had nothing more than gentlemanly intensions.
From the way Grace was dressed, Bob was certain that she was an experienced horsewoman, so he saddled her the big Tennessee Walker named Hank. He cupped his hands, Grace stepped in, and he hoisted her into the saddle. Her leg brushed his face; her fragrance was intoxicating. Bob sighed deeply and then saddled up Fish, the white gelding, for himself.
As they walked at an easy pace down the trail from Hunter’s barn, they heard Mr. Hunter shout, “Don’t you run those animals. I don’t wanna see them come back here all lathered up and such. You hear me, boy?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bob waved as he smiled into Grace’s eyes.
As soon as they rounded the bend and were out of Mr. Hunter’s sight, Bob urged Fish into a trot. The Walker responded likewise. Grace easily posted in the stirrups. (For those not too horse savvy, posting is to bounce up and down in rhythm with a horse’s trotting gate.) Hank pulled ahead of Fish, and the view from the rear was a pretty sweet treat to Bob’s eyes; he could watch her post all day.
Suddenly, Hank broke into a lope and then even more surprising, into a full-fledged, flat-out gallop. Grace screamed, dropped the reins, and gripped the saddle. Bob knew just what to do. After all, he had seen Roy rescue many a damsel in distress from a runaway horse. He spurred Fish onward. As the two horses came side by side, Bob reached out and grasped Grace by the waist. He pulled her off of Hank, but somehow it didn’t work like in the movies. She crashed so hard into Bob that she knocked him right off his horse, too. They went tumbling head over heels into the brush alongside the road as the riderless horses galloped off into the sunset.
The two of them lay along the roadside, stunned and breathless. Bob moaned and rolled toward Grace. His heart was pounding. What if she’s hurt really bad? How come Roy Rogers did it so easily? Dale never got mad, did she? Surely Grace won’t be mad. Bob had probably just saved her life.
“Are you okay?” he asked, gingerly.
“What the #@%% were you thinking?” Grace spat. “You could’a killed me. Just look at my new riding pants, they’re all torn. My ankle hurts. I think you sprained my ankle. Is my lip bleeding? I hope you’re happy. Putting me on a wild animal like that …” She rambled on and on and on … and the tears were flowing on and on …
It was a long hike back to the stable, especially with a ranting, raving angry woman. Bob’s shoulder was brush-burned and he limped on a bruised knee, but he still thought Grace was one beautiful little filly. Her fire made her even more attractive.
Well, Grace got over her mad spell and continued to date Bob for another year or so, until he joined the Army and got shipped off to Japan. He and Grace never became and item; it would be my guess that meeting my mom had something to do with that.
A few years after my mom passed, dad told me this story and asked me if I would try to find Grace. (At 82, dad is like a backward teenager, I have to do all the matchmaking.) After a little research, I finally found her. As I told her the story, she was quiet. Finally, she took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t remember. Bob who?”
Well, that took the wind right out of his sails. Perhaps if dad would’ve sung “Happy trails to you”, it may have jogged her eighty-year-old memory and things may have turned out differently.

Glass Doors and Goats

There’s nothing cuter than a baby goat. Well, okay, maybe a baby pig, but that’s another story. Let’s talk goats.
Maybe we don’t have a farm and maybe Walzie’s true name is not Noah, but we’ve crammed nearly every animal imaginable into our two acre ark, including several goats.
When walking through the goat barn at the Huntingdon County Fair, I first noticed how cute baby goats are. Naturally, I wanted one right away and my dear hubby, (who will do nearly anything to keep me happy, bless his little pea pickin’ heart!), quickly said, “Okay, you got it. But let’s get a miniature. It’ll stay tiny and make a really good pet. Shucks, maybe we could even make it a house goat.”
So for several weeks we perused the Bargain Sheet and finally one day, there was the following ad: For Sale, miniature kids, $15. Yahoo, assuming that they didn’t mean tiny children, we’d found our baby. Only thing was, the farm was in Cumberland, MD. Oh what the heck, it was only a four- hour drive (two down, two back), and we really wanted a mini. We sped off on a hot Saturday afternoon.
Following the farmer’s directions, we traveled back a long country lane sided by high weeds and rocky hills. Once in a while we’d see a flash of black and white darting among the weeds or hear a shrill “nnaaahhhh”. At least we knew we were in goat territory. Finally, we reached the farm.
An elderly Amish-looking man greeted us. We paid him the $15 and he instructed us to pick one. There must have been a hundred nannies, kids, and billies roaming in a weed patch. Pick one; yeah, right! Being young and knowing everything, Walzie and I dove in. From the corner of my eye, I saw that Amish man snicker.
We ran and we chased through the brier patch. Goats darted around, over, and even under us. Finally, Walzie was able to pounce on a teeny black baby. Oh, he was a cutie. As I stood there, oohing and aahing, I never heard the snort behind me. Old Billy’s rock-hard forehead connected with my buns. He sent me down the hill like a rolling donut dusted with thorns.
The Amish man asked if we’d like to have our prize catch neutered, “dey make mo’ betta pets dat vay,” he stated. We nodded. He instructed Walzie to hold the little guy by all four feet and bottom up. When I saw the pocket knife, I tightly shut my eyes, cupped my ears, and cringed.
Next thing I knew, the old man spit two grape-like things at my feet. The barn cats came running to scrap over those tiny desserts. I nearly lost my lunch.
“Don’t be squeamish, missie,” he said with a trickle of blood on his lip. “Dat’s the vay the shephard’s do it. More sanitary. Ya see, me teeth dey crimp da blood vessels. Not as messy dat vay.”
The baby goat cried and Walzie hugged him, “Calm down little Billy. That didn’t hurt too much, did it?”
“Ya vant to be next?” the old Amish man asked.
Walzie and I and our new baby got the heck out of there.
And so the little goat thrived in our back yard. You know they say that goats will eat anything – not so. This guy only ate flowers, shrubs, garden plants, and the bark off our trees. As the months flew by, Billy grew, and grew, and grew. He was no longer a mini-goat. He ended up being a full-sized goat with 6 inch horns and an attitude like a bull in a China shop. Do you think this may have had something to do with the neutering?
Billy absolutely hated our kids (the human ones, of course), our hound dogs, cows, his pen, weeds, squirrels, even Walzie and me. Billy would just as soon butt it as look at it.
On our back deck we have a glass sliding door. I’ll bet you can guess where I’m going with this. Our son, Jason, was about twelve years old; his job was to feed Billy. But Billy didn’t care if Jason was hand that fed him or not. I heard Jason scream and then the glass door slam shut. Suddenly, there was the shatter heard ‘round the world, and Billy stood in our kitchen! Jason was locked in his bedroom shouting, “shoot that sucker!”
And thus, our sweet little mini-goat that grew into a split-hoofed Tasmanian Devil went on a little trip to the Belleville Auction. I’ll bet that tough ol’ boy was like baked shoe leather on someone’s dinner table.
As time passed by, we forgot the terrible saga of that goat and bought several more goats, sheep, cows, chickens, ducks, horses, pigs … keep it up, Noah, we’ll soon need to build that ark.

Double Trouble

Bob was nearly frozen. It was still dark on this January morning in 1949 and even the thermometer’s mercury was frozen way below zero. He lit a cigarette and tried to inhale, but the bitter air stung his throat; even his nostril hairs were iced. Why the heck was he lying in a snow bank outside his twin brother’s house at four in the morning? What could be so critical and secretive that he‘d be willing to risk freezing off his talleywacker? Well … that’s what got him into trouble in the first place so he may as well just let that sucker freeze off. He was certain that at this point in time, that would make the wife very happy. Oh yeah, she was angry … very, very angry. He and his brother had to get their stories straight; after all, the newspaper didn’t fully explain. Explain what? Read on, you’ll understand.
Both men were good men, but still baaaad little boys. Somewhere deep within (probably below their waists) grew a few wild seeds that still begged to be sewn and they knew just where to plant the seeds – on an unnamed avenue in Altoona. Nobody would ever know … or would they?
“Hey, Bobby,” said his twin. “How would you like to go have some fun Friday night?”
“What do you have in mind, Abby?”
“Sammy told me about this house in Altoona where we can … well you know … sow a few oats. Whaddya think?”
“Sure, why not. Let’s get Sammy and check it out.”
So on that cold January night, Bob, Ab, and Sammy motored to Altoona in Bob’s 1938 Dodge coupe. These men were all well versed in romancing the ladies, but to pay a lady, now that was a different thing, not to mention being illegal as all get out. All three were very nervous.
The red light on the porch reflected off of their anxious faces as they knocked on the door. They were greeted by a huge woman who looked like Mike Tyson in drag.
“Yo, boys, you done come to de right place. Dat will be $8 each, please. Now, got to da top o’de stairs,” Miz Tyson told them. “Da ladies will take it from there.”
Awkwardly, they climbed each step. Their hearts thumped. Was it anticipation or fright? Had they known what was to happen … fright would have won! No sooner had each man closed the door with his lady, they heard the whistles. It felt as if the entire house had exploded! Shouting, stumbling, doors slamming, loud shrill whistles blowing … oh no … the Cops!
How cold do you think a holding cell is in January? Especially cold when they figured out that among the three of them they only had enough money left to bail one out. Sammy had a mother with money to burn so Sammy was the chosen one. His job was to go borrow enough money from his mother to bail out the twins. The two left behind could only pray for Sammy’s speedy return. Sammy held the future (and Bob’s car keys) in his hands.
The hands on the clock ticked past: one hour … no Sammy; two hours … no Sammy. Oh why did they depend on that rotten little snake of a Sammy? After all, it was that little snake that conned them into this fiasco. Three hours … Sammy’s here! That little Sammy was the best friend a fellow could have. Not to mention his very understanding mother with money to loan! Finally, they were all freed with bail paid and a long lecture from Altoona’s police chief; homeward bound and nobody would be the wiser.
Oh yeah? That following Monday, as Bob and his wife sat at the breakfast table each reading his and her section of the newspaper, she suddenly dropped the paper.
“Your name is in here … what the heck?” she frowned. “You were in a what? You rotten, little lying … “
“Now, now, honey,” Bob tried to soothe. “It wasn’t like that at all.”
“Oh, really? You’ve got some explaining to do, mister. In fact, I think when you get home from work tonight, we’re going to go ask your brother just what happened. He’ll set this story straight.”
And that brings us back to the snow bank on that icy January morning. One twin could tell a lie and the other would swear that it was the truth; all they had to do was coordinate their stories. Finally, through his misted breath, Bob saw Ab leaving for work. He leaped from the snow bank with his arms waving.
“Abby, we’re in trouble. Our names are in print. What can we do?”
“It was just a poker game that got raided,” Ab suggested. “Sound good?”
“Sounds good to me.”
Although, it’s been many, many years since they went to “play poker” in Altoona, I’d be willing to bet that one twin could tell a story and the other would cooperate it. Yep, they’ve been a team for nearly 84 years and when it comes time to stand before the Pearly Gates … well, I sure hope that God blesses them. After all, aren’t we taught forgiveness?

Bob White

The summer morning mist rises as you rock on your front porch, coffee cup steaming, and listen to the mourning doves softly cooing. Joining with the song of the doves is the distinct whistle of “bob-white, bob-white”. It makes you feel comfortable, safe, and it makes you smile, sort of like a peanut butter fudge ice cream sundae. That’s what I love about life in the country.
Listening to the bobwhite quail makes me think of a story from Walzie’s younger days – way younger, like when he was ten years old. What do the quail, ice cream, and gravity have in common? You are about to find out.
Walzie and his brother escaped from the school bus on that last day of school in 1959. They moseyed up the dirt lane toward the tiny shanty they called home. The lane was dusty and overhung with thick berry bushes and tall pines. The call of the bobwhites and the flutter of their wings told the boys that they were home free for the summer.
Within the brush were several nests and lying in those nests were tiny eggs: eggs that the boys watched with anticipation. Walzie was a sucker for baby animals. He had already raised groundhogs, foxes, squirrels, rabbits, deer, and pigeons. Why not a cute little bobwhite quail?
As the late spring days melted into summer, the boys played under the bushes, hollowing tunnels and crawling all around those nests. The bobwhite parents seemed to accept the boys as just a part of the scenery. When the babies hatched, they had already been accustomed to the boys playing around those nests so they were not afraid.
Mama called for the boys to come in for a mid-afternoon snack; Dad had brought home ice cream. Now, this was a rare occasion and they rushed home. As Walzie reached the front porch he heard a tiny “bob-white” whistle behind him. Following him was a tiny quail. He scooped it into his hands and set the little fellow on the table. (He knew it was a boy by the white feathers around its eyes. Girls have golden feathers.) Immediately, it began to peck at the ice cream. Wow, this was too good to be true – a new pet without the hassle of training, and it liked ice cream! How cool is that? Oh yeah, and what did he name his new buddy? What do you think? Of course, Bob.
Just like birds-of-a-feather, Bob and Walzie flocked together. Everywhere that Walzie went, Bob was on his shoulder. They slept in the same bed, ate at the same table, and traveled to the same outhouse. Although, Bob’s business usually got done on Walzie’s shoulder. So what? Not every kid had a pet quail; Walzie felt special.
For the first few years of Walzie’s childhood, the family kept their food in an icebox. (I swear he lived like it was the Depression instead of the fifties.) Finally, they joined the modern age and got one of those “new-fangled” refrigerators with a built in freezer so ice cream could be kept as a staple not just an occasional treat. Now when Walzie and Bob wanted a snack they could help themselves. Walzie knew when Bob wanted ice cream; that quail would go to the refrigerator and peck at the door. Honest! Then he and Walzie would share a dish of whatever was the flavor of the week.
But then one day dad threw in a surprise. The Acme had a two gallon bucket of cherry vanilla on sale. One would think that two gallons of ice cream would be a pleasant surprise, but I’m afraid it wasn’t. You see, the freezer was not frost free. The two gallon pail sat precariously atop an ice mound. Bob chirped happily at Walzie’s feet and looked upward, wanting his daily ration of ice cream. Walzie opened the door; the ice cream pail slid from the freezer. I suppose one could not expect a tiny bobwhite quail to catch a two gallon pail on his little head and still live to see tomorrow. I wonder what Bob’s thoughts were as that ice cream torpedoed toward him, “Hallelujah, here comes the mother load!”
Had gravity not come between friends, they’d still be enjoying ice cream to this very day. Well, except for the fact that poor Bob would be about 200 years old in bird years and I would be sharing my bed with a dad gum old bird. Come to think of it, I guess I do share my bed with an old bird. He still loves ice cream, and if necessary, he can duck a falling pail faster than a speeding bullet!