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 |  My 5th house in Blogville, located at the corner of Humor and Human Interest |
"Invalid Item"  started 2005 ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** "Invalid Item" started 2006"Invalid Item" started 2008"Invalid Item" started 2012Above are links to four other blogs I've done over the years here at WDC. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** My reason for being. My one true love. My universe. Me and my bride, Melinda McClain Welcome to my fifth home here in Blogville. Over the past two years I have gone through some changes. Widowhood, stroke, depression....all life stages of life I experienced. This is my attempt to move on, to get over it, to.....live again. So now I have a new blog house here in my beloved cyber-city of Blogville and the intersection of Humor and Human Interest. Come by for a visit anytime you like, friends are always welcome. We'll sit a spell and talk. I want this new Blog home to be light and airy so the topics I write about will reflect what passes for humor for me...most of the time. I will also write about a subject near and dear to me: Animals. All sorts of animals...great and small. That is not to say I won't get serious at times, I will, but one thing I won't do (hopefully) is write about politics. As Val Kilmer said in Tombstone: "My hypocrisy only goes so far." |
| My group of blogging buddies and I came up with the idea of having a "Throwback Thursday" where we share a memory or memories of our distant childhood. Here then is my own poor offering on that subject. Dusk. The sun was quickly sinking behind the horizon but its absence did nothing to relieve the stifling heat that blanketed the land where the two opposing armies faced each other. It was July after all and the heat of the day was expected. The two commanders of the warring armies stood on high ground, glaring across no-man's land at their opponent. Each had positioned his troops in their final positions. One army arrayed at the foot of the hill and the other one dug into defensive positions on the hillside awaiting the inevitable attack. After a tense moment in which the two commanders glared at each other, the battle began. Both of them stood and began to hurl lit firecrackers at their opponent's plastic army. The air was filled with explosions, flashes of light, smoke, and tiny fallen bodies of warriors. The two commanders…my seven year old brother and myself who was elder by five years, stood our ground and fought bravely, throwing firecrackers, firing Roman Candles and bottle rockets. Night sky was alive with our pyrotechnics that hot Forth of July night so many years ago. Two young Texas boys having the time of their life, lost in a make believe world of their own design and loving every minute of it. What makes this memory stand out so vividly over the intervening decades is not the make believe play we enjoyed so much but what happened next. At this point it might be helpful to know that my brother and I have always delighted in another sort of war…The Practical Joke War and this is what started that war that still rages today. The make believe battle was almost done, it was too dark to really see properly, when mom stepped out onto the porch and called: "Time to come in boys. Supper is ready." We might be the make believe commanders of armies, but we both knew who the real Commander-in-Chief of the family was and didn't dare ignore her call. So we quickly began to gather up our toy soldiers and prepare for the walk home…maybe two hundred yards from our "battleground". It was then that I had a flash of inspiration. Each of us carried two large paper bags. One contained our toy men and tanks while the other contained our loads of munitions…firecrackers, bottle rockets, roman candles and the like. Each of us had our lit punks. The punk as we called it was simply a stick of slow burning material you got with the purchase of the fireworks and that you used to light the various fuses. I had not put mine out yet and still held it as I watched my brother who was busy gathering his toys. In a flash, without thinking about it, I walked over to where he had placed his bag of fireworks and I calmly dropped my lit punk in his bag. "Let's go. Hurry up, dufus, you're gonna make us late for supper." I yelled at him. The thought of being late for supper was too much for the boy. He quickly grabbed up his toys and his bag of fireworks and started walking quickly toward the house. He never noticed the faint glow of the burning punk inside his bag of fireworks. I sat down on the ground and eagerly watched his retreating back with anticipation. It was so dark by then I really couldn't make him out. All I could see was the glow of that punk in that bag, receding in the distance. Then it happened… BOOM! BAM! BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! With each explosion my brother's body was illuminated by a flash of light and with each flash he was in a different pose of panic. Arms flailing, jumping, falling down. It looked exactly like one of those old Road Runner cartoons where the coyote is caught in one of his own exploding traps. I laughed and laughed. I laughed so hard I couldn't get up so I lay there, still laughing, with tears running down my cheeks. That is how dad found me. Mom had sent him out to see what was keeping us. Believe me, that's when the laughing stopped, but damn, it was worth it. After that, over the years there have been many practical jokes by both of us and I'm sure there will be a few more but none of them as sweet as that first time. |
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