I have mentioned that my dad was a scuba diver and I became a scuba
diver when I was 12 and there is a lot of funny stuff that happened
with that but when I was too young to certify I wanted in on the
magic of the under water world and I knew how to do it. I knew that
under water what you needed was air and I was in my pre-knowing about
O2 -CO2 days and thought air was air was air. So my plan was simple I
would get some tape some straws and a few discarded yogurt containers
and hook them all together in a line and then when I went under the
water I could calmly sip air as I needed and refill the containers as
I exhaled. I had just cracked the age old problem of infinite
underwater air supply all with a few pieces of reused trash and a
dash of naivety. I have found that it is always easier to solve
problem before you are really aware of the scope of the problem. I
took my new invention and a pair of snorkeling goggles and headed up
to the reservoir to complete my victory over the watery realm. Justin
and I rode up on our bikes and I readied myself for a leisurely
afternoon of underwater exploration. I waded in up to my chest and
put my goggles on and assured Justin that I would only stay under for
a few minutes and then he could have his turn. I put the straw into
my mouth and pulled my goggles down over my eyes. I plunged under the
water and my brilliant contraption failed instantly coming apart into
all of its component parts and filling my lungs with a quart of
diseased Santaquin reservoir water. I was sputtering out water and
strangling as I struggled to my feet in the deep mud. Trying to keep
my head above water while Justin was yelling from shore wondering if
it was working or not. No, you dumb piece of crap, it is not working
- that is why I am dying. What does it look like, Idiot? I thought
those things in retrospect at the time I was trying not to drown.
When I finally struggled to shore I crawled up on the bank and
coughed uncontrollably for ten minutes. I was soaked through, muddy
and exhausted from my ordeal when Justin lamented the fact that I had
broken it before he even had a chance to try it. The lesson here is
that you should always take the first turn when testing a lethal
prototype because if you have seconds sometime the first guy will die
and you will never get a turn. I scrapped the scuba set and decided a
submarine was a more reasonable project for a couple of young men
wanting to explore the nautical depths.
Pitchforking the Carp
 |
| Asking for it by looking like this. |
There was a reservoir at the south end of Santaquin that had always
been full of what was known in the local dialect as 'garbage fish'. A
garbage fish is a non-game fish and in the case of this reservoir
consisted of white bass, mud catfish, and the ever present carp. The
other fish would occasionally be caught and eaten by legitimate
fishermen but the carp was universally despised and I never knew of
anyone who actually ate one. Most of the time there would be big
piles of rotting carp where disgusted fishermen had thrown them on
the bank to die. Sometime when I was about 11 the city decided to
clean up the reservoir and stock it with trout which are much more
desirable for sportsmen. To get rid of the garbage fish they decided
to drain the reservoir all the way down to the dirt. This made for a
massive concentration of fish as the pond got smaller and smaller.
When it was about half empty, Justin, Ryan and their cousin Nathan
and I were going up there fishing everyday because the concentration
of fish made them extra aggressive and hungry and it was awesome. The
pond continued to drain and when it was down to about ten percent
left the fish were concentrated enough and the water was so shallow
that we were able to switch from rod and reel and go attack in a
fishing melee. We brought spears and pitchforks and went to work
hauling out the suffocating fish. We got there early in the morning
and spent the whole day knee deep in mud stabbing fish. We were sore,
exhausted and sunburned and yet still compelled to press on stabbing
and throwing the fish up onto the bank, hundreds and hundreds of
doomed carp piled up and rotting in the sun. It wasn't fun after the
first hour or so but we were literally unable to stop the slaughter
until the sun was going down and we were physically and emotionally
spent. We staggered the mile home washed off and fell into bed. After
that day we didn't go back for years. I personally didn't fish there
for 20 years. I guess we just had to get the madness of killing out
of our system and then it was gone.
Assaulting the Living and the Dead
Justin's outbursts of violence were not always directed at friends,
children, or strangers – sometimes he would assault the dead. At a
fairly young age Justin was allowed to graduate from a bb gun and
move up and on to a much larger bb gun, a shotgun. I think he was
about 12 when we went walking with his younger brother out and about
to shoot at stuff. Shooting at stuff was a Santaquin pastime that is
exactly what it sounds like and what you would call it when you asked
your parents permission to go.
A conversation may go like this:
“Hey
mom? Justin and Kurt and going shooting at stuff can I go with them?”
“Only if you be safe and don't shoot birds or cats.”
“Okay.”
Simpler times.
On this trip out to shoot at stuff we had indeed shot at generic
small birds known in the Santaquin dialect as 'Tweety Birds'. Tweety
birds were the type that my mom would threaten to make me eat if she
had found that I had killed one. I never had to eat one but the
threat was sufficient to keep my attempts to kill one under wraps. It
occurs to me that Atticus Finch may have been disappointed in our
youthful predilection towards killing harmless things. It seems odd
to me know to recall but it seems like I never intended to kill a
bird I just wanted to shoot it. That seems to my adult mind to be an
untenable piece of logic but that is how I felt. Excitement over the
hunt and the opportunity to affect something at a distance with my
power and then almost instant shame for having hurt an innocent
creature. Maybe trying to sort out those types of feeling is why
growing up is such a challenge. Back to the random shooting. We were
walking up a road that fed a small canyon up the road from our houses
and we smelled something amazingly foul. It was the most unpleasant
sensations of smell I had ever had but its reign at the top of my
olfactory aversions was extremely short lived. It was about to be
supplanted so massively that it would pale in comparison. We looked
over the side of the road and there was a magnificently dead and
bloated road-killed elk that had skin that was stretched to the
bursting point by the gasses of decomposition. Before we knew what
was happening and before we could stop him, Justin had leveled the
shotgun and shot the side of the elk, bursting its juicy remains out
of their skin containment system in a frothy mess. The smell went
from nearly unbearable to vomit inducing in less time then it took to
realize what he had done. I don't know if we all puked but I
definitely did and we were all dry heaving as we beat our retreat
down the canyon road. The air was so hot and the breeze just enough
to waft the smell with out dispersing it that it seemed like forever
before we were out of nose-shot of the horrible situation. I have
seen many people make really stupid impulsive decisions but I think
that still ranks up there with the best of the worst in my mind.
Shooting WD-40
My dad got into scuba diving when we were young and he started
amassing gear. Our favorite and the most frequently misused was a
spear gun. A spear gun is like an underwater crossbow that uses two
large rubber-bands instead of a cross member to shoot a two foot long
spear that is tethered to the gun with a rope so you don't loose it.
We were never ever supposed to use it at all so that meant that we
had to do it on the sly which was not that hard really my dad worked
away from the house most days and my mom was never to watchful. One
day when Justin and his little brother were at our house I decided to
impress them with a little demonstration of the spear gun's awesome
power. We started out by shooting it at trees and toys but it was not
giving that dramatic impact that I wanted. So I got a full can of
WD-40 and set it up on a stump 4 feet away which was about the
effective range of the weapon and shot it the spear popped the can
but lodged inside and when the can discharged its contents it flew
around with the spear inside at the end of the tether. It was
awesome, but not as subtle as I had hope so for the next
demonstration we decided to go into the old unused house in our
front-yard. I think our thought process was kind of funny when you
consider that we were more concerned with getting caught and in
trouble then shooting cans full of flammable liquid under high
pressure in a confined space. For the next demonstration we selected
a can of red spray paint and set it up on a counter top in the room
that was crowded with machines and parts my dad used in his business.
Justin's turn was next so he got to shoot the can. The effect was
even better than the lubricant the can didn't even get stuck on the
end of the spear and when it was shot it just flew around the room
spinning around and painting everything. That is when we realized the
flaw in our plan. There was quite a bit of paint on everything and
the room was full of paint fumes and we had to make a haste retreat
from our spectacular success. When the air had cleared we saw that
there were streaks of red paint all over the counters the ceiling and
much of the stuff in the room so we did the responsible thing and put
the spear gun away and shut the door to the front house and let that
paint dry. Months or maybe years latter when my dad was in the front
house with me looking for something he finally noticed the paint on
the cupboards and the ceiling and wondered aloud how in the hell some
idiot painted all of that. Oh if he only knew exactly how idiotic he
may have been quite impressed before he punished us.
Ryan Gets Stomped Out
Justin's brother Ryan was and is a very tough guy. He was always the
first to wade into danger and conflict and use a two-fisted approach
to conflict resolution. When he was 15 or so we went to see him match
wills with a steer at the local youth Buck-A-Roo Rodeo. The best part
of any rodeo is not the lame scripted banter between the clowns and
the announcer, or the heavy girls racing around barrels on overworked
horses it is seeing the cowboys get gored or stomped out by the
bulls. They usually keep it until the end so everyone is forced to
watch the ridiculous events like team roping. Who cares if you can
throw a rope around a calf's foot on the run? I am sure it is hard
but so is coal mining and I don't watch that either, unless someone
gets stranded in a cave in but in fairness that is no longer coal
mining it is a miner rescue. The bull riding finally ques up and the
announcer is ready with clever quips and music ques for every bull.
No nonsense songs culled from the best of heavy metal, rap metal, and
beat ass rock and roll of all stripes and specie. The rider is called
out and the people from his town or those who know him personally
hoot and holler, if you are really drunk you do this for every
contestant. Then the shoot is opened and the bull starts to free
himself from the irritating thing on his back that keeps kicking him.
Adult bulls are huge death machines as heavy as compact cars with a
tiny brain that has only evolved far enough to have the bits that
make you really mad all the time. The younger kids ride immature
bulls that have been castrated so they are less full of hate and rage
and mostly just want to be left alone. When they thrash a rider to
the ground the usually just run to the other side of the arena and
hope something like that never happens to them again. Ryan was riding
and when the shoot opened he was doing really well but when his time
was up he tried to get free and got tangled. He fell under the steer
and it stomped right on him a couple of times trying to free itself
from the riding harness. I was sick to my stomach watching him get
trampled and go completely limp. He was obviously hurt badly but
cowboy code requires a contestant to ignore personal well being and
'cowboy up' which is code for acting like a 500 pound animal stomping
your face into the dirt is no big whoop. He stood up and took a few
steps and collapsed and I felt sick because I thought he might be
dead or dieing. The EMT's ran out and put him on a board and took him
to the hospital where all the kings horses and men went to work. I
don't remember what all he had to have done but he did have a hoof print clearly on his face and part of
his eyebrow went missing never to return. He had to spend quite a
while convalescing and playing video games which was fine with me
because I like video games and not being beat up because he couldn't
for a while.
Catching Tadpoles and Snakes
 |
| Here is the plan ya'll: we warm up and then bust out en masse all over this kids house capiche? |
I have written about how my dad was always trying to factory fish
whenever he got the chance well it runs in the blood. When Justin and
I would go out to catch tadpoles or snakes we would not just catch a
few we would try and catch them all. We would get nets and buckets
and go put in a hard day of extracting tadpoles and froglets from
their home and putting them in buckets and aquariums to live until
they became frogs or were neglected and died in the sun. We would
have thousands in a bucket and they would start to eat each other
when the food ran out. One time in the early spring we found a
hibernating ball of about 30 garter snakes and caught them all and
put them in the tadpole execution chamber aquarium. You may not think
that a bunch of legless animals would be that hard to keep in a box
with sheer walls and is made of glass but after they warmed up and
got moving all but a few had slipped their bonds and were roaming
free, in Justin's house. We had been playing video games and we went
to check on them and there were only a few left in the aquarium but
they were working out an escape plan and biding their time. We went
and took a screen out of a window and put it over the top of the
aquarium which we moved outside, which really is a better place for
an aquarium full of snakes anyway. Justin's parents were not home so
we frantically got to work rounding up snakes from his basement. We
were only able to find and catch about ten which left us about 15
short. I knew snakes liked warm places so I set up a trap that
consisted of a desk lamp and a box they could hide under and we left
the area for an hour when we got back there were about eight snakes
in the box and we figured that was good enough to keep us out of deep
trouble and didn't bother to mention our scaly Steve McQueens to
anyone. We released to other snakes back into the wild and counted
ourselves lucky. They probably did too.
Peeing on the Fence
Matt, not my brother Matt, was a neighbor of Justin's and he was a
few years younger and super annoying. He was a know-it-all that would
argue with us about everything and would tell on us whenever we were
doing anything cool. He would always be hanging around irritating us
and try in get in on whatever game we were playing. We would often
let him participate in either a reconnaissance role or as a
tip-of-the-spear type in dangerous, physically or disciplinary,
assignments. Ryan had a cattle prod that he was fond of using on us
when ever he got bored. A cattle prod is a stick with leads on the
end that when you contact them give you a really good jolt of
electricity. It was quite painful and so aversive that we would take
great pains to avoid him and his toy. I tell you about the cattle
prod because in Matt's back yard there was an electric fence that was
basically the same thing just stationary. It was common knowledge
that you should never touch the fence if you didn't want a jolt and
it was widely rumored that peeing on it would make it double.
Sometimes we would touch the fence just to see how bad it would be.
It was painful but not unbearable. Matt came out and joined Ryan,
Justin and I as we were touching it one day and told us that it
didn't shock him at all. This was a lie and to call his bluff someone
suggested he pee on the fence if it didn't hurt him at all. He said
he would because he didn't care. We stood a little way back while he
started to pee on the fence. His stream hit it again and again and
nothing was happening. So Ryan decided to help the process along and
ran up and kicked Matt hard in the butt causing him to stumble
forward into the fence still in mid-pee. He ran into the wire mid
thigh and it did shock him contrary to his claims and when it did he
jerked back at the waist and released his still flowing penis as he
fell backwards onto the ground he was peeing all over himself and
screaming at Ryan that he was going to tell on him. We were laughing
so hard that that sounded fine to us it was worth it. Ryan didn't get
in trouble that day and as far as I knew he never did. Seeing that
kid hit the electric fence and then pee on himself was one of the
funniest things I had ever seen.
Super Hero Supplier
I have always like to invent and create things and when I was hanging
out with kids who liked to fight I built fighting things. I have
mentioned about the water jug and motor cyborg enhancement suit that
went horribly wrong and almost broke Justin's arm off. Well, I never
let anything like massive failure and a little dismemberment slow me
down so I decided to make a range of super hero/wizard-esque weapons
based on fire. My customer base was thrilled with the idea and I got
to work re-purposing a broom handle and a welding glove. With the
broom handle I took a drill bit and drilled a hole right down the end
and six inches deep. I affixed a wire loop that held a match over the
end of the hole and them filled it up with gasoline and plugged the
hole with a rubber stopper. To use the flame throwing stick you
would strike the match and throw the stick forward while the match
was still igniting and won't go out. If it was time right and the
stopper popped out the way it should you could get a pretty awesome
stream of flame. The welding glove was a thick leather glove that we
would dip in gasoline that had Styrofoam dissolved in it to make it
as thick as jelly. When you were ready to get the party started you
would light the glove on fire and then wave it around in front of you
while the noxious mixture burned in thick black plumes of smoke. In
concept I thought it was going to look like you were holding a ball
of clear blue flame it was mostly smoke. Not mostly, all. Even though
they were not quite perfect Justin, Ryan and I had some fun playing
with the stuff and would fantasize about using them in a desperate
situation to turn the tide of battle. If we were ever in a battle,
which to date we had not been but better be safe and armed with
gasoline based weapons than sorry. So I guess 'safe' is a relative
term in that last sentence.
Taller if You Stretch
Both Justin and Ryan were not very tall but one day Ryan showed me
his plan for a remedy. He had rigged a weight to the end of a rope
and had set it up so he could tie one end to his feet while he slept
and hand the weight off the end of the bed. He had heard that this
would make you taller. It did not. I know, because after I saw his
ingenious contraption I went home and made myself one. I didn't have any weights so I had to use a brick which I put the rope through and tied to my ankle. It was uncomfortable but it was going to be worth it when I was 6' 4". Unfortunately, all I got
for my trouble was a chafe around my ankle and a fitful night's
sleep. I was not able to grow any taller but I learned what does not
work and sometimes that is the most valuable lesson of all.
Poop in a Bag
 |
| Open bag, insert manure. Repeat if desired. |
Sometimes the attacks were more personal than familial. One time
Justin's neighbor girls were out camping in the field behind their
house so we decided to go terrorize them. We started by creeping
around to sneak up on them and scare them. That was okay fun but then
Ryan started picking up dried cow pies and throwing it at them. They
were scared at first but then they started to get angry and yelled at
us. We started throwing more stuff at them and then Ryan broke out
and ran into their little camp and snatched up a girls sleeping bag
and shook her down into the bottom of the bag and held the open end
up in the air. She was mad as hell and screaming about grievous
bodily harm that she wished on all of us. Justin happened upon a
fantastic plan, we should throw the cow poop into the bag. Bully
genius. We grabbed up a few cow pies and threw them down the throat
of the bag onto its very mad and increasingly vocal occupant. We were
too caught up in the purely transcendent pleasure of loading cow poop
into her bag that we didn't notice that the party was coming to an
end in the form of her recently awakened and agitated father. He came
out of the house and was across the back yard before we noticed and
when he got out to us we scattered and ran to hide in the field. He
yelled for us to come back but any kid who comes back when some one
tells them to deserves what they get. We waited for the heat to blow
over and then we went back to Justin's house where his dad was
waiting for us and after midnight that is never a good sign. He
didn't even ask our side of the story he just grabbed Ryan's arm and
kicked him hard in the butt, then he did the same for Justin and then
he pointed at me and told me I was going home. I heard that loud and
clear went and got my sleeping bag and wadded it up in my haste and
left. I walked the three blocks home in the middle of the night and
snuck back into my house and fidgeted in fear for a few hours before
I fell asleep. I guess they figured the incident was over and that I
was not an instigator because no one ever called my parents and I
never got in trouble. It was just fine with that.
Misunderstood Ice on the Door
There was a family who's son I mentioned peeing on a another kids
head. Well, they moved across town and were now Justin's neighbors
and we hated them. They had a daughter older than us whom we ignored
completely. They had a son one year older than us who we fought at
every opportunity. This included throwing rocks at each other on the
way back from school, regular trampoline wrestling, and sometimes
fistfights. In the strange calculus of the relationships of young
boys just because you fought with someone all the time did not mean
you did not like them it was just how it worked out. They had a
daughter a year younger than us that we hated, loathed, despised and
wished hateful things upon. I really cannot remember what was so
odious about that girl but she inspired a boiling rage that could
only be cooled by antagonizing her and her family. One day in the
late fall, around thanksgiving, I was sleeping over at Justin's house
and we worked out a plan with Ryan to play a prank. It was below
freezing so we thought a really funny joke would be to take a hose
put it against their door and turn it on just enough to keep water
flowing over their front door all night. The plan was executed and
when we looked across the street in the morning it was beautiful
there was a massive ice sculpture freezing the door shut and covering
the entire porch and stems in a icy frosting of pranksters delight.
The dad was out front trying to break it up with a hatchet and it
looked like he might be really mad. While he chopped we knelt
backwards on the couch looking out the window when all of the sudden
he dropped his tool and started walking across the street. Our hearts
dropped because we thought he was coming to tell and then there would
be retribution swift and sure. We scrambled off the couch and went
and hid in Ryan's room and waited. He knocked on the door and
Justin's mom answered and talked to him for a second and then he
left. We gave it a second and then moseyed out to see what the story
was. We asked casually what the neighbor was up to and she said he
was just asking if he could borrow something to get the ice off of
his front porch because one of his kids had left a hose on. We were
at once relived that our certain doom had been averted but we were
also deeply saddened. There is nothing worse than for a prank to be
misunderstood as a simple case of negligence or an accident instead of the brilliant plan that it was. Well, I guess it beats certain death.
Burning Down the Sandbox
I
always loved playing with fire and Justin and his brother Ryan were
always on board for a little dabbling
in pyromania. Their neighbor had some kids who were much younger than
us and they had a great sandbox it was deep and pure and perfect for
us to build a G.I. Joe ad worthy war diorama and populate it with
many of Justin and Ryan's toys. Anyone who has built a diorama knows
that building it is the only fun part and it is incredibly boring
when it is finished. After about five minutes of pretend war play we
switched over to to bringing so gas over from Justin's house to
simulate some nice napalm and lake-o-fire effects. We would pour out
a puddle of gas and light it with a match and make hilarious
screaming in pain sounds for the plastic soldiers who were bravely
dieing in the conflagration. After a few hours of amazing play time
with all sorts of fire based scenarios were played out the neighbor
came home from work and discovered his once pristine sandbox was
destroyed. Well, if you think a sandbox filled with puddles of
burning sooty gas and melted toys is destroyed then it was, in fact,
destroyed. He was a little upset about it and he started yelling at
us to clean it up and I, as is my style decided to avoid the conflict
and when the neighbor walked away to go get some rakes and shovels
for us to use to clean up I ran as fast as I could into a field to
the south and kept running abandoning my comeuppance and my friends.
I ran fast and hard the four block to my house and then hid in case,
as was my private fear, that the neighbor would call my parents and
bring down punishment on me. I spent the evening and most of the
night with my stomach trying to climb up out of my throat while I
contemplated the unendurable suffering that would surely be mine when
I was ratted out. But nothing happened, when we went to church that
Sunday I tried to avoid the man who's sandbox I destroyed but he came
right up to my dad and joked with him about how I burned down his
sandbox and then ran off as fast I could. For some reason them making
fun of me hurt worse than the horrible dismemberment I thought I was
going to get and I hated them both.
Technically Food.
I
have mentioned that Justin's family had a goat milk based diet, not
based actually, but that is all I could taste most of the time. There
were several meals that I got to share with Justin's family and I
never remember a good one. It seemed like his mom liked to overcook
everything so noodles were mushy, meat was like jerky but not in a
good way and vegetables were boiled down into paste. My mom was not a
regular by the schedule cook but when she did cook it was pretty good
food. Justin had dinner or at least he had food ready every day at
the same time ready to be served up and eaten if you were able. My
normal technique for battling through horrible food was a quick bite
and then a slug of milk to cleanse the pallet and send the vile
sustenance on its way. The goat milk was the flaw in that coping
mechanism. There I would be; hungry and having to do battle with my
rising gorge, both literally and figuratively, with nothing but my
will power alone with no milk for succor. I powered through and never
backed down from the challenge. It was interesting for me to learn
years later that my wife who happened to live down the road from
Justin when she was growing up was sometimes babysat by his mother.
After we were married she was describing some traumatizing food she
had to eat at a babysitters house and I explained about my friend
who's mother served foul food and we realized we were talking about
the same food, and bonded.
Cat Dying Revenge
I am not a cat person, that is not to say I am a dog person either, I
am a animals-should-not-be-in-our-houses person and I don't like
extra chores. For example, I have a device, for the humans in my house, that whisks my
excrement off and away and automatically refills itself for another
use. With a cat you get all of the joy of picking through some stinky
poop dirt and throwing it out by hand, like a gosh danged cave
person. It is the future people, poop of any species should not be handled. Now, we don't have the jet packs we
were promised, but dagnabit have we not progressed any further in our
excrement disposal technology then letting a aloof feline poop in
some nice smelling sand contained in Tupperware for us to clean up later.
Imagine if one billionth of the time and effort that has been put
into smart phone games, development and play time, had been put into
poop management systems we would have real-time disposal and truly
odorless cat-ladies. I have not digressed onto that little rant
because I had never gress-ed and therefore could not have digressed.
The gression that I was going to gress before I meandered over to the
comically fruitful plain of feline feces and plucked some low hanging
fruit was about a time that Justin and I saw a cat die from drinking
anti-freeze. We were at his house after school and found his new
mother cat in deep distress under the cab-over portion of a camper
that was resting on the ground. She was breathing heavily and was
meoweling horrifically in considerable pain. We tried to make her
comfortable because even though we were not cat fans per se
there is a need for even rough boys to save the day. After an hour of
horrible suffering she aloof the sudden shot strait up ran in a
circle horizontally and then ran in one vertically using the cab-over
for her upper floor and a barrel for her vertical decent. She yowled
one last pathetic time and was dead. After she died she threw up some
antifreeze as her body convulsed. Now that we knew the cause of death
there was only one logical explanation, a convoluted plot by the
neighbor to kill the cat and make it look like an accident. They had
a crazy old lady and her reclusive thirty something son living in a
house across the road that was always hassling us and yelling about
someone stealing stuff from her. Our logical assumption was that by
no accident that old lady or her son had compelled the unfortunate
tabby to drink the common, but poisonous, automotive fluid by subtle
trickery and subterfuge. We snuck over to look for evidence, we
didn't find any, that only meant we were dealing with one of those
extra sneaky cat murderers that take pains to cover their tracks. We
decided on planning a revenge suitably gruesome to adequately punish
someone who would kill a cat with the cowards weapon of poison. We
thought of lots of great and funny plans but ran out of time to exact
sweet vengeance before it was time to go home for dinner, homework
and bed. We planned for several more day but the pure white hot fury
of seeing a murdered cat had cooled in our hearts and that combined
with cowardice led us to abandon the execution portion of our
retributive plans.
The Replacement Paper Boy
 |
| Yeah, it looks great but is it bulletproof? |
Justin had a paper route and I thought that was an awesome job. All
you had to do was deliver forty newspapers every day for a month and
you would get eighty dollars if you could collect it. The collection
part was the part I did not understand he, after faithfully
delivering a paper daily would have to go up and beg for his money,
and the people would blow him off and say they would pay him later.
But he had to pay the paper company no matter what so non-payment
came out of his end. I told him if it were me they would not get
another paper after they didn't pay and when they did pay they could
resume service but he said the paper company would fire you if you
did that and you just had to eat the difference or bug the customer
until they paid. This was injustice on the most minor scale but it
burned me up something fierce. When Justin and his family were to be
away he had to find a replacement for his paper route or loose his
job. I would try and volunteer every single time because I loved
rolling or bagging the papers, putting on the apron and filling it up
and taking of with a mission on my bike. I really felt deputized like
I was helping complete some vital task that depended on my dedication
and strength, and it was fun to have an official-ish job. Most of the
paper route would be going along fine but when I would turn down this
one road there was a bully named Jared who loved to antagonize the
paperboy. He was usually throwing stuff or threatening loudly but on
occasion he would break out the big guns, literally. He had a pellet
gun that he would sit out on his porch with it and pump it up and menace me. He was the same age as my older sister and her best friend
lived across the street so he would call me Christy's-brother.
He would yell out, “Hey Christy's-brother want me to shoot you?”
I would whimper-yell back, “No.” Now that I consider it he may
have been asking rhetorically and didn't require a response.
He would pump the gun once or twice and holler as I delivered the four papers that went to the houses on his block. Every once in a
while he would aim and shoot at me and then go back to yelling,
threatening and pumping. You know? I hated that block, it was not
worth the $2.60 to put up with that. He was a mercifully poor shot
and never hit me but he had shot Justin before so it was possible and
that kept the fear in it. The really tragic part was that it was not
the worst job I would ever have.
Goats Milk Ammo
Justin's family had goats, and they drank the milk, to the exclusion
of what I called regular milk or good milk. When I was over and we
were having a meal they would roll out the goat milk as a beverage or
as some kind or blasphemous insult to cold cereal. I was not a fan
and would try and avoid it at all costs. What I did love though was
milking goats. Justin was in the rotation to milk them, a job he was
not super excited about but I really loved doing it. You would walk
the goat up onto a stand and secure her head with a lever and to keep
her occupied and docile you fed her at the same time. Unlike cows
which have four teats goats have two which is ideal for the two
handed milker. The goats expect a firm and rhythmic milking and not
only tolerate it but seem to get relief from the pressure of their
udders so they are interested in getting milked for that reason. What
makes them agitated is when an amateur like myself was yanking
clumsily at the teat instead of applying the steady smooth pressure
that extracted milk quickly and efficiently. I could barely get out a
trickle while Justin and Ryan could make the metal pail ring with the
jet of milk hitting its side. They could also turn that awesome
extractive power for evil by pointing it at me and squirting a warm
stream of goat milk right into my face. I would always want to give
them a little payback but my retaliation fell as droplets out of the
teat going no more than a few inches and giving my targets more of a
cause for laughter then the thorough goat milk soaking they deserved.
Double Dragon
For Christmas the
year I turned 11 Justin and Ryan got an Atari 7800. This was when
Atari looked like it might compete with Nintendo and Sony was still
five years out from dipping its toe into the console wars. They
received a few games with the system that I cannot remember but the
one I absolutely loved was Double Dragon. It was like a nerd had a
fantasy about his girlfriend being kidnapped by an evil black man and
he was able to beat up like a million tough and super tough baddies
to get he back, and then made it into a game. It was like they had
read my mind, I would fight for my woman with my pretend Karate
skills just like the Dragon brothers were forced to, so I better practice up
strategically so I knew what do do in the heat of battle.
 |
| The box art promise. Notice the Dragons only need vests , no shirt or chest hair , to do battle with a menacing black man with no shirt and his army of foot soldiers and bosses all dedicated to making sure he was able to hold on to the hot white girl. Notice the hero's come armed with a knife and a whip both invaluable weapons to the shirtless vigilante street fighter. |
 |
| Nailed it. I think we can agree this is basically the box art moving and fighting. |
I was
really bad at the game so I only got turns on the non 'conquering the
game' tries. Justin and Ryan would play deep into the game taking
hours because there was no way to save so a push to the end was not to
be taken in bits and pieces, it required Herculean effort and Sun Tzu
like tactical skill, and the dedication to power through a sore
thumb, and bladder control, I mean God help the boy who had to go pee
in crunch time. All this to save a little bit of digital hotness from
certain defilement at the hands of the pixelated villain. If it was
my turn death was swift and unjust as I had clearly been pushing the
jump button when I fell down that hole, I was pushing it, that stupid
computer cheated. Then it wouldn't cheat when Ryan was playing so I
would watch the game like a movie for hours while they did battle and
one day while I was there they beat it and we were honestly euphoric
jumping around high-fiving and laughing. To the non-nerd it is really
hard to explain why I was so excited to see someone else accomplish
a basically meaningless feat of digital dexterity but for all the
hard core geeks they know the feeling, better if it is your own but
not bad if you are just watching.
The Rendezvous
If you are not
deep into the hillbilly culture you may not know about a little
cos-play reenactment festival that is held several times a year
around the country known as the Mountain Man Rendezvous. Modeled
after the twice yearly trading meetings held by trappers and hunters
to trade furs for supplies the modern rendezvous has a lot more
kettle corn than the original but is otherwise identical. I jest, it
is mainly middle aged men wearing leather clothing and using 19th
century arms for contests of skill. There is also more commemorative
plates featuring reproductions of the James Fraser 'End of the Trail'
statue than at the original rendezvous. Justin and his family loved
the Mountain Man and his dad had a full blown leather suit, black
powder guns and the whole nine yards. I was able to go with them one
year and when we drove into the valley where it was being held it was
awesome to behold the teepee's and wall tents and it really looked
like the past only cleaner with a lot more station wagons. We got out
and walked around to the different booths and vendors most people
were dressed to some degree in primitive clothes and they were
shooting guns and cannons, in short it was the greatest thing I had
ever seen. I wanted to be a mountain man so badly they all had great
clothes, guns, and knifes; they lived off the land and didn't need
help from no one. They had some Indian dancers come and do a couple
traditional dances which was awesome as well. They had shooting
contests, knife throwing contests, tomahawk throwing contests, and
archery contests for all age groups so I gave a few of them a try. It
may not seem like it would be hard to throw a tomahawk thirty feet
and then stick it in the end of a stump but it turns out there is
some skill to it. My first couple of throws missed the stump quite
badly which was a harsh reality check for the image of the martial
prowess that I supposed myself to have based on my fantasizing. We
had lots of fun and came home the next day tired and happy. I was so
excited that I wrote in my journal, which I rarely did, that I wanted
to be a mountain man when I grew up. I did write that I could be a
mountain-man-paleontologist, really the best of all possible
scenarios in the mind of a pre-girl interested boy. After my trip to
the rendezvous I practiced throwing a hatchet a lot which is
basically like a tomahawk just available at army/navy stores for 5
dollars. Despite my intense interest the desire to dress in leather
clothing and trap for a living never translated into anything more
concrete and I sadly am not a mountain person.
My Wonderful Mother
I have a great
mom. She is sweet, caring and full of love for everything weak, sad
or helpless. When we were growing up my mom was always there for us
to take care of our tragedies big and small, real and imagined. She
is always willing to take the time to listen to someone in need and
spend whatever time they require to let them know that she cares
about them. She is always looking for ways to serve others and take
care of those wounded by life. She taught us all the finer points of
civil disobedience and has continued the tradition of scofflaw-ing
with my children teaching them how to trespass and not get caught.
The reason for teaching proper trespassing is simple, it is because
all of the best adventures are behind gates and fences clearly
labeled 'No Trespassing'. She was the type of mom that liked to take
us out on what she called 'high risk outdoor adventures' and press
forward into where the world keeps all of the real fun. There was
severe flooding in the middle 80's and many of the roads in the
canyon by our house were washed completely out. That only sweetened
the pot of the hiking payout now with danger, posted signs and a
great day of exercise we were into the fabled recreation trifecta, so
of course we partook. When we came to badly washed out sections my
mom would lead out across the narrow strips of road that were left
demonstrating how to hold onto scrub oak to help us keep our balance
as were braved the washed out precipice. It was a great day and just
one of many that mom mom took us on always teaching us to embrace
life and the experience at every moment. She is an amazing woman and
a better mother.
Peteetneet Hill-Billies
For gravitational
acceleration there was not much better sledding than the side hill of
a decommissioned school in the next town over named after a displaced
Indian chief – Peteetneet. It is about a hundred feet tall and
awesomely steep with deep ruts worn through the snow to icy dirt. On
any given holiday or weekend in the winter there would be a couple of
hundred people sledding and tubing down the hill and trying to hike
back up without falling back down or being assaulted accidentally or
on purpose by other sledders coming down the hill. When I would go
with Justin and Ryan we were always causing accidents of the on
purpose variety. We wouldn't aim for little kids or families but any
boys around our age we would take careful aim on our tube from the
top of the hill take a running start and jump on and try to take them
out on their way back up the hill. Ryan and Justin liked to really
cream people and hopefully start a fight because they were quite
violent by nature. I, on the other hand would always try and miss and
if I did hit someone, by genuine accident I would apologize profusely
to avoid conflict. When I got to the top of the hill again I would
pretend that I was super mad that I had missed my target and try and
line up another near miss to keep my bully street cred intact. We
would spend a couple of hours sledding, hitting and hiking until we
were soaked through and our parents came to pick us up. Cold, wet,
and worn out sounds like a pretty terrible day to me now so I am glad
I got it out of the way when I didn't whine so much.
A Chucked Cat Propulsion System
Justin
and his family were hunters and of the 'with dog' variety. They had
some really great German short hair dogs who would do what you told
them to do. I know there are lots of dogs trained to obey commands
but it was always weird for me to see one because most of the dogs in
Santaquin and especially my dog Beau didn't give two craps about what
you told him to do. These dogs had the demeanor of subservient
obedience that comes from constant training and hard justice for
disobedience. In the winter of the year I was 10 years old we were
sledding at this abandoned basement excavation but between the
depression and the hill of extracted dirt there was only about a
twenty foot drop that ended pretty abruptly. We were looking for
some sledding with less of a concussion factor when Justin and I
stumbled upon a beautiful plan. Like the mighty Eskimo (and they were
still Eskimo back then they had not yet become Inuit) we decided to
harness the power of dogs to pull our sled. We tied one of the his
trained up dogs to the sled and then tried to get her to pull us but
we would only go in fits and starts. That is when Justin discovered
the trick to getting real speed and power out of our rig. He got the
family cat and held it in his lap while I held the dog's leash so she
would point out strait. Justin would then throw the cat as hard as he
could out in front of the dog and he was off to the races. That dog
shot forward trying to catch the cat and pulled Justin at a
tremendous speed until he was scraped off on the corner of the house
that he was third to go around. The only real problem with our
system was that the cat would just go and run up a tree and the ride
was over in about 40'. While we tried to coax our little motivator
out of the tree we were working out a cat on a rope on a long stick
situation that would give us unlimited power. We were unable to
execute the plan because the cat would not get out of the tree and it
got dark. We decided to try the new plan on another day but Justin's
mom strictly forbade using the cat as bait to motivate the dog to
pull us in a sled. So we resigned ourselves to purely gravitational
sled propulsion, like poor people use.
Robot Minions
We had taken about as many beatings off of Ryan as we were going to
and we started devising plans for revenge. We were constantly working
out fantasy ways in which the 'Dingo Warrior' would get a world class
beat down. Some were just absurd, the creation of a gang with us at
the helm calling out thrashings on a whim. While others were more
practical, we would build cyborg strength enhancement suits and give
him the beating our selves. Well, that was obviously the method of
vengeance that we needed to pursue. We started by drawing up plans,
and by plans of course I mean we drew cool pictures of super awesome
robotic enhancements that a boy could wear. We had limited
fabrication facilities and abilities so we decided to find stuff that
looked very much like what we wanted the final product to look like
and make minor alterations. The chassis we found was a 5 gallon
square water container which we made wearable by cutting out a large
hole in the bottom for Justin's waist, a smaller hole in the top for
his head, and a couple of arm holes and we had a older brother
resistant armor.
 |
| We cut off all that handle and nozzle nonsense and added arm and head holes. Voila! |
Once we had the chassis is was time to start in with
the enhancements. We got a swamp-cooler motor with a cradle mount and
bolted it onto the back of the rig right in line with his right arm.
Then we smashed the end of a two foot long piece of electrical
conduit and drilled a hole through it and epoxied it to the shaft of
the motor. The fact that we only glued and didn't bolt or weld it on
may have saved Justin's arm from major damage. We wired the motor to
a power cord and put it through a box with a light switch for
activating and deactivating the super punch feature of our cybernetic
doom suit. We had originally designed it to be self contained but we
didn't know how to do that so we would have to only give retribution
in teams of two and within reach of a power socket. Justin slipped
the 5 gallon suit on and we tapped the conduit to his arm and giddily
readied ourselves for a real game-changer in the power dynamic. I
plugged in the motor and asked if Justin was ready, he was, and I hit
the switch. I don't think what happened could be called a unqualified
success. When the motor activated it tried to turn 360 degrees over
and over 1160 times a minute Justin's arm was more designed to go
maybe 90 degrees once, and not nearly that fast. His shoulder and the
motor were also not concentric and that immediately caused an
alignment problem with his arm being twisted not just in a circle but
backwards and down at the same time. He started screaming almost
instantly and quite a bit. Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ooooooooooow! His
screaming panicked me and I didn't turn the thing off for maybe 10
seconds. A couple of things probably save the functionality of
Justin's arm: 1: We had only taped it to his arm allowing for a
degree of slippage to occur, 2: we had only used a ¼ hp motor which
caused a lot of pain but was far below what was needed to jerk his
arm clean off, 3: The bars attachment to the motor shaft was round
and when the epoxy broke the motor shaft could spin freely. Those
turned out not to be design flaws but features, safeguards of
incompetence. We pulled him up off of the ground and sat him
uncomfortably in a chair, the plastic jug suit tended to pinch when
it any position but standing up and strait. We untaped his arm and
helped him out of the power suit of doom and took a look at his arm.
Bruised, quite badly bruised all over his shoulder and upper arm and
he said it hurt really bad when he moved it in any direction or held
it completely still. We decided that this advanced type of anti-bully
cyborg technology was years out and we shelved the project. Justin's
arm got better which is good because later in life he lost the use of
his legs in a traffic accident so two working arms is definitely a
plus. I also reaffirmed my conviction that I should never test my
inventions on myself.
The Trampoline, a Dingo Warrior, and Top Guns
I think where Justin may have become unbalanced as far as violence
was concerned was from his older brother Ryan. He was a guy who at
turns could be exceptionally cool our terribly cruel. As we got older
Ryan, his cousin Nathan and I got to be better friends than Justin
and I but early on he was a terrorist. Over at Justin's house we
would spend a lot of time jumping and wrestling out on the
trampoline, that was fun. If Ryan saw us he would rush out and abuse
us which was not fun. One thing he loved to do was run out to the
tramp full speed jump on and throw every one who was on the tramp off
onto the ground. He was doing this in emulation of a very popular
professional wrestler at the time called the 'Dingo Warrior'. The
real Dingo, who would later change his name to 'The Ultimate
Warrior', would run as fast as he could down the gangway and into the
ring and start shaking the ropes up and down as hard as he could.
After the ersatz Dingo had thrown us all off the tramp he would
demand we got back on, which was mandatory because if you didn't and
tried to run the punishment was doubly bad. I really know how The
Clash felt when faced with the same conundrum; if I go there will be
trouble but if I stay it will be double. We would usually climb back
on the tramp as he flexed and peacocked with his sleeves rolled up
and slapping his biceps and calling out in a deep wrestling voice
about the carnage he was about to bring down on us. Then we would be
pile driven and power slammed while we tried ineffectually to resist
the awesome power of the Dingo Warrior. He would slam us over and
over and put us in painful locks and chokes until he bored of the
game and then once again he would throw us off the tramp onto the
ground. The other game he had us play with for his amusement was
based on the blockbuster film Top Gun. He would pick up projectiles
usually small rocks, but he wouldn't turn a nice stick away if one
was at hand, and he would tell us to try and jump in a manner so as
to avoid being shot by him as he circled the tramp firing away at us.
When you were shot by a rock you were dead and got to stop jumping
and sit on the side until all of the MIGs were shot down by rocks and
the game would reset as another interceptor wing was launched and
started jumping evasively again. Unlike at our house where a bulling
game generally stopped when someone started crying, tears were like
pay to Ryan and why stop working when you are getting paid? It just
makes sense to work over time an get that time-and-a-half.
Justin is Crazy, Mean
When I was 10 I made friends with a kid who lived a few blocks down
the road from me and he was crazy mean. He was always right on the
edge of escalating any situation turn violent. That sounds straight
forward but it was not. For example, we were walking home from school
one day and we were talking about building on the fort and out of the
blue he told me to look up in the sky at something I did and as soon
as my throat was exposed he karate chopped it as hard as he could. If
you have never been struck hard in the throat you may not know that
it is spectacularly painful, but not in a good way. I was writhing
around on the ground trying to breathe Justin was standing there
laughing saying I never saw it coming and I looked hilarious when I
got hit and dropped to the ground. You would think this type of
randomly violent behavior would be a friendship deal breaker but I
was so desperately nerdy and such a social pariah that it was Justin
or being friendless. Many of my inventions and building projects required two people so I had to have a friend. The inventions needed to be tested too. He was also a hard worker and shared many of my
interests. We both loved fishing, camping and building forts so when
he was not doing something completely insanely violent he was a
really good friend. Besides hanging out with Justin I was also
friends with his older brother and his cousin who were both a year
older than us and worked with us on many projects, so I don't want to
give the impression that I was in a completely abusive friendship we
had a lot of fun when he wasn't trying to kill me.
One Amazing Morning
On the nudest marred trip to Lake Powell we had a massive wind storm
one night and we were all forced to hide in the campers and in tents.
The wind whipped sand around all night and shook the camper but by
about 4:30 in the morning it was completely calm. My dad came out and
asked all of the boys that were camping out if we would like to go
fishing but only my cousin Blake and I wanted to because everyone
else was still exhausted from being up all night. It is like they
didn't have their priorities strait, tragic. Blake, and my dad and I
got loaded up and drove the boat out in the predawn light to a wall
that dropped off into the water and went strait down 120'. We were
slowly getting our poles rigged and out when I put mine in first, it
had been in the water for only a few seconds when I had a good sized
stripped bass on. Blake put in his pole and he had one on my dad had
two poles in and they both had one on all in less than a minute. We
got the fish off and quickly re-baited and the second time was just
as fast as the first. Right then we realized we were into something
special. My dad abandoned his second pole because there was just not
enough time in between strikes to use it. We hauled in fish after
fish after fish laughing and joking the whole time. We had been using
anchovies for bait and had started the day with several pounds but by
the time we had caught over a hundred fish our stocks were running
dangerously low. We started the day using half of an anchovy, then an
quarter, then an eighth and that was the minimum that would actually
fit on a hook. By the end of the morning we were trying to mash up
any little scrap of anchovy that we could mush onto a hook. Finally,
with hundreds of pounds of fish in the bottom of the boat and no bait
left we went back to camp. It was about nine in the morning and all
the lazy-bums had decided to roll out of bed and they came down to
the boat the see how we had done. When they saw the hundreds of fish
in the boat they were sick with jealousy and quickly helped to unload
the boat so they could go get more bait and head back out and get a
little slice of the fishing glory pie. They headed right back out
with new bait but the moment had passed the fish gods had moved their
benevolent gaze away from the wall we had so much success at and they
only caught 5 or 6 fish in four hours. The lesson here is clear; no
matter how you feel always go fishing, always. You never know when it
will be the best day fishing in the history of the world and why
would you risk that? Why?
Freebirds, or I Don't Know Why an Uncaged Bird Sings
I have briefly mentioned our clothing optional neighbors, but we were
basically all prepubescent so having some naked women cavorting in
the next camp over meant nothing to us, except we did think it was really funny. Our parents
were very concerned that we were going to sneak a peak and become
corrupted so they were very careful to make sure only they got a good
look. When we were driving into our camp I was sitting in the cab of our camper with my dad and he took a good look at a topless lady as we drove past and only remarked that she was going to get burned. One day when we were heading out to do some water weenie-ing my
cousin Blake and I were riding on the toy when my dad pulled us right
past a lady so tan and so old that her nudity was most disturbing.
She looked like an old leather shoe that has been chewed on by a mischievous puppy. She was also so hirsute that
from a distance it appeared she was wearing a bikini bottom and maybe
smuggling a few squirrels under her arms. This is when I realized
that the fantasy of nudism is much better that the reality. I am sure
she was feeling free and easy and reveling in the knowledge that she
would have no tan lines.
 |
| Oh, yeah, old lady don't take it off, don't take it all off. Like this but not so hot and naked in a silver float tube. |
We were just horrified. My brother and
cousin happened upon another nudest while out paddling the canoe and
both were accused of trying to manufacture the encounter. Which would
have been odd if a couple of 9-year-olds would have even been
interested, which they weren't, but their protestations of prior
ignorance were ignored. This may have been reaction formation on the
part of my cousin's step-dad who more than once was observed with
binoculars reconnoitering the naturalist position. Most likely in the
most chaste manner, purely to make sure of their exact state of
undress and location so that we were spared the contact. God bless
that selfless man.
Lake Powell
We have a huge lake here in Utah that was made when they damned the
Colorado River. It filled up all of the little canyons for about 100
miles but it is not very wide at any point just long and skinny with
thousands of little inlets. It was about a five hour drive from our
home in Santaquin and once a year or every two years my family would
go down there with another family or youth group. We had a little
boat for fishing and water weenie-ing and knee boarding and we would
live in our cab over camper while we played and fished for a week or
so. One of the first times I remember going down there was with the
Attaway cousins soon after their mom had remarried and had two new
little babies. We camped at the end of a really long canyon and the
only other people down there were a group of clothing optional
partying types. It was well over a hundred degrees the whole week we
were down there so unless it was early in the morning before dawn
when we could go fishing in the cool we spent the rest of the day in
the shade cast by the camper or in the water. At the bottom of the
water was some really lovely mud and you could dip down and grab a handful and come up like a Navy Seal and chuck it at anyone else
who's head had breached the surface of the water.
 |
| Like this but with mud instead of nextgen weapons but otherwise it felt just like this. |
It was such a fun
game that we did it for hours and hours every day. It was such a free
flowing game the rules were simple the first one who cried signaled
the end of the game. After fishing in the morning we would wade in
mud fight until lunch eat and wade back into to battle until dinner
time and then it would have cooled off enough to go fishing again.
People always wonder why kids are so much happier than adult and it
is stuff exactly like this that is the reason why. Simple pleasures
purely enjoyed without reason.
The Waddley-Acha, Doodly Doo
When the three
Attaway cousins that were around my age were about 10 or so their mom
remarried and had some kids with her new husband. Being in a second
family ten years apart the new kids were more like entertainment then
siblings. My cousin Brooke had a hilarious little dance she used to
do with the little baby Brittney – the second of the new batch of
kids. She would pick Brittney up by her foot and swing her back and
forth in a funny dance set to the tune of 'Waddle-Acha, Doodly Doo'.
She would swing her back and forth and in a circle entertaining us
and Brittney at the same time. The finale was usually Brooke slamming
Brittney down on the bed or sofa she was using for a safety net and
timing it so it landed on the last syllable of 'Doodly-Doooooooo!'.
My brother and I thought the performance was so funny that we used to
terrorize my little sister by repeating it with her precious baby
dolls. We would start it out the same by holding the baby doll by her
foot and then we would take it in a much darker direction by singing
the song but on every 'Doo' we would slam the doll into something
hard tryig to break something off. If you worked it out perfectly on
the final refrain of 'Doodly Doooooo' you would slam the doll down
and , God willing, knock its head clean off. We loved that game, my
little sister not to much. So she used the one weapon at the disposal
of little sisters from time immemorial, the tattle. My mom sided with
the property rights advocate without considering the artistic merit
of our dance and awarded my sister new dolls to be paid for by my
brother and I. I think those replacement dolls may have been shot at
some point but it is hard to remember which ones exactly because so
many dolls got shot.
If you don't know it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9JElDoQbE8&feature=player_detailpage#t=40s
Stealing From Kid Cousins
Besides the bread incident it was almost always us eating the Attaway
cousins good food to excess. They had good and fun food like fruit
snacks and soda just sitting around to be eaten on a whim. One thing
that turned out to be off limits was the desserts in what my brother
Matt and cousin Brent called 'kid cousins'. They were actually frozen
dinners for children named 'Kid Cuisine', but they both were
mispronouncing it. They didn't know the first couple of times that my
aunt asked about who was stealing the desserts out of the Kid Cuisine
boxes that she was referring to the 'kid cousin' boxes. They had
pilfered quite a few before she sat us all down and asked who was
taking the tasteless frozen brownies out of the boxes she was now
holding up. Everything seemed to then click and the culprits
confessed, were reprimanded and repented of their sweat-toothed
thievery. I took the opportunity to mock them both for not knowing
how to pronounce the word cuisine. Because that is the kind of jerk I
am.
Bread Massacre
Generally our food was not as good as the Attaway cousins but once
when they were sleepoing over my mom had just bought four loafs of
the most amazing white bread. It was soft and chewy and sweet and we
purloined a loaf to eat while my two cousins, my brother and I were
sleeping out on the trampoline. We were taking stacks of four soft
slices and biting through them all at once. We were peeling off the
crust and then wadding up the rest of the dough into a ball and
eating a tasty, tasty dough ball. We were taking a single slice and
trying to stuff the whole thing in our mouth at once. The only
problem was that we ran out of supplies fairly quickly but the show
must go on, and another loaf was secreted out to our bivouac. The second
loaf was gone almost as soon as it landed and a third was required to
keep the party rolling. Like a gambler chasing losses we were back at
the metaphorical bread ATM at two in the morning promising ourselves
that this was the last trip and then we were going to quit no matter
what. But an addict never quits until then supply is exhausted and
the fourth loaf was procured and devoured. Riding a carb high he
goofed off late in the night until our blood sugar plummeted and we
were off to the restful slumber of the diabetic coma. My mom was outside at the side of the trampoline early in the morning ruining our
gluten hangover sleep in with some crazy accusations that we ate all
of the bread for an entire week for a family of 8. I protested that
the bread would have lasted 5 days tops and that she was
exaggerating. She wouldn't be reasoned with and I had to give up my
allowance for the next week to buy back some of the bread. It was
really her fault for buying good bread instead of the usual wheat
bread. It is like punishing a man for drinking when he comes out of
the high in fiber desert.
Fort Nails
 |
| Oh yeah that is the one right there the object of my desire. |
I mentioned that nails were one of the two choke points in the
construction of ever bigger and better forts. The second was, of
course, wood. Besides recycling and theft we didn't have much of a
method to get more wood because no one in town sold it and we had no
way to transport it anyway. The nails were always available, at a
price. When we had some money from a birthday windfall or a payment
for a job my brother and sister and I would get on our bikes and head
up to main street and drop into the only hardware store in Santaquin,
Stringham's hardware. Stringham's was a nail buyers paradise they had
long ones short ones and the greatest nail of them all a glue coated
one that we called 'sinkers'. Those nails would heat up as they were
driven and the glue would melt and fix the in place which was good,
they cost about twice as much as regular nails which was bad. We
would head into the store and over to the huge bins of nails that
were on a spindle in the center that would spin around letting you
weigh you fastening options. Yes, you could walk right in a grab the
three fingered nail hook and drag out a couple of pounds of 16 penny
nails and be on your way, but you would miss out on the delicious agony of
selection. What if we were to get the smaller cheap nails for
paneling and roofing and extended our nail buying dollar? What ratio
of short to long will get that new wing built today? These were the
pressing questions that the youthful and poverty stricken nail buyer
always had to consider. We were not good at getting the right amount
for the money we had so we would tell the owner Kurt what our budget
was and he would help us sort out the best bang for our nail buying
buck. I even noticed one time that he was quite generous on the
weighing when he was getting us some nails and it was well over the
two pounds of nails we could afford at the listed price. It was a
couple of cents worth of nails but I thought the world of a guy who
is not stingy in the measure when it comes to helping kids build. We
would take our nails home giddy with the possibilities and we could
once again expand the danger of our construction up and out and back
up again. One nail, and hopefully no more, at a time.
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