When I was a Child

Here are 3 short stories (articles) that I wrote and they are true.

My earliest memories are of my mother singing to me as I laid on a bed. These weren’t the usual lullabies that most mothers sing to their children in fact later on one of these “lullabies” was going to cause a problem. The songs my mother sang were “Rye Whiskey”, “Jack of Diamonds”, and “I am going to give you back to the Indians because you’re to mean for me” the last song was the one that would cause the trouble.

When I was between 3 and 4 my mother took me to the CSU field house to watch the Souix Indians perform their dances. Even at this tender age I was absolutely nuts about anything that had to do with Indians. The Souix came down from Cheyenne Wyoming where they were part of the Cheyenne Frontier Days celebration. There was one old Souix there that had been in the Custer fight and he had with him the prettiest little grand daughter that I ever saw she was dressed in white buckskins and she was my age.

Well we started talking and playing together while her grand father danced. When the dancing was over and all the Indians were getting on the bus to go back to Cheyenne her and I were holding hands and I got on the bus with them. That poor old man probably wondered what was going no because all of a sudden here was this little white boy holding his grand daughters hand and getting on the bus. Hey I had asked her if it was ok and I told her that my mom had said she was going to give me back to the Indians because I was too mean for her and this was the perfect opportunity.

Mean while my mother is frantically looking for me, someone told her they had seen a little white boy get on the bus with the Indians. She came storming on to the bus calling my name “George Wayne” she always hollered that when I was in trouble for something. Well I was already seated next to my new girl friend and her grandfather. She grab me and asked just what I thought I was doing getting no the bus with the Indians so I told her I was going with them because she was going to give me to them anyway. My mother never sang that song again.

How to turn a black cat white.

To say I was a handful is putting it mildly I was always into something or doing something I shouldn’t. Like the day I painted our black cat white this happened shortly after the bus incident. My folks were painting my older sisters bedroom and they left the paint where I could get it. Actually it wasn’t really paint it was a can full of turpentine that my dad was cleaning the brushes in.

I started by painting the fort board of Darlene’s bed when the cat wondered into the room. This wasn’t going to be one of Sylvester’s better days. I garb him by the tail and began painting, Sylvester stared screaming and doing his best to get away which included sinking his claws in me. I turned loose of the cat just as my mother came into the room. Mom grab me and then tried to grab the cat about this time my dad came home for lunch.

When he walked into the kitchen there was my mom with me in one hand and a very pissed off kitty in the other. I think she was trying beat me and wash the cat all at the same time but it just wasn’t working. My dad grabbed the cat and my mom whacked me.
Trying to wash the cat is where the real fun began needless to say the cat wasn’t having any part of the sink full of water plus the fact the turpentine was burning him. I didn’t now that painting the cat would hurt him or cause this much trouble. Dad went back to work with some scratches and a story to tell and I had a sore butt. That was the last time I ever painted a cat.

The Burmese Tiger Trap

This was my sisters fault for this one Darlene was 9 years older than me. I was interested in anything she was studying in school. It also gave me a leg up on school studies. Darlene was studying Indochina she was in 8th grade and I was in the first grade. Darlene read to me about the ways they trapped tigers using a pit. Some of the pits had sharpened bamboo stakes driving into the bottom on which to impale the tiger when it fell into the trap. The other type of pit trap did not have stakes and was used to live capture a tiger. Is she hadn’t told me about the Burmese Tiger trap I would never have made one.

That weekend my cousin Jim DeCicco came over and I told him about the Burmese Tiger Trap and that if he helped me we could make one to catch the peeping tom that was in the neighborhood. We started digging the pit right below my sisters bedroom window the problem with our chosen location was it was also between the back door and the basement door.

The pit we dug seemed to be 10 feet deep when in reality it was only about 3 feet deep it wouldn’t hold a tiger but it might work for a peeping tom. We stopped digging when we had to start using buckets to get the dirt out of the hole. Now we had to find something to cover the hole with.

It was a large hole so we needed something big to cover the hole. We decided to go ash pitting, (dumpster diving is what it is called today) to see what we could find something that might work. It was our lucky day the neighbor lady Mrs. Risher had thrown away an old tanned cow hide that she used to cover her washing machine that sat out on the back porch.

We lugged our new found treasure home and laid it over the pit, of course it just fell into the hole. We would need someway to hold it in place. We went down the basement to see what we could find that would work to hold the cow hide over the hole and lets us put enough dirt on it to cover it. Here on my dads bench was a sack of 16 penny nails and a couple of hammers we were in business.

Jim and I stretched and nailed the cow hide to the edge of the hole this worked because the soil in our yard was clay. After the hide was nailed over the hole Jim and I shoveled enough dirt over the cow hide to cover it. Then we used a broom to sweep it so that it was totally camouflaged. It was hard tell that there was a hole there even close up.

That night after dinner my dad was going to the basement to work on some things and asked if I wanted to come help. I always wanted to help my dad even if he didn’t want my help. Just as we reached the edge of the house next to my sisters bedroom window I remembered the Burmese Tiger Trap. The only thing I could think of was to run as fast as I could and see if mom would protect me from what was coming.

Just as I reached the back door I heard my father scream “George Wayne” as he hit the bottom of the tiger trap. My mother went running to the back door when she heard my dad scream. About this time my dad showed up looking a little disheveled and plenty mad. Mom asked if he was ok said he was ok because he had been for warned “when George took off like the devil was after him I knew something was wrong”. I tried to explain that I was only trying to protect my sister and catch the peeping tom. That excuse didn’t work and not only did I get my butt beat but they took my cow hide to the dump. That cow hide was something I had always wanted. I always told Mrs. Risher that if she ever threw that hide away I wanted it. Mom said it was a moth eaten smelly old hide and she didn’t want it in her house. Over the years they took a lot of my treasures to the dump.

The tiger trap wasn’t all bad my mom had been wanting a new bathroom and my dad wanted a new basement entrance. My mother asked my dad where he wanted the new entrance. He told we might as well put where George had dug the hole George was half way there anyhow.