Growing up I was lucky that I had a best friend and he happened to live next door to me. That he was also my cousin made things all the more special because that meant we also got to be together during family holiday celebrations. Bobby was a couple of years younger than me and that suited me just fine because I was the youngest at home. Being a younger sibling always left me on the powerless side of most interactions with my sister, but being older than Bobby gave me almost limitless power with him. Of course, it helped that he practically worshiped me and would do almost anything I asked him to do.
Summer months found us inseparable, especially since we were commanded by our mothers to exit the house at daybreak and not to return until dusk. We, being known to create mayhem inside, were not allowed to come into either of our houses and remain together, so we chose to stick it out in the most uncomfortable heat to enjoy each other's company.
We had ways of combating the hot days and one of them was to find shade whenever possible. My family had a barn, or at least what looked like a barn, which was a two-story structure with red cedar walls. It wasn't really a barn since the floor was a concrete garage and the upstairs a plywood floored loft. It was however the perfect childhood haunt and we had several ways to access the upstairs from the ground floor, only one of them using the actual stairs.
On one summer morning, Bobby and I decided to go into the barn for the sheer lack of anything else to do and in hope of being a little cooler in the shade. The downstairs of the barn was already uncomfortably hot and it got worse as we climbed the stairs to the floor of the upstairs loft. The entry was covered by a plywood sheet. As we lifted the plywood a blast of hot air hit us like an oven. The upstairs was completely dark and I only found the latch to the north window by feel. The windows were covered by wooden shutters which swung outward. Opening the window let in more light but made nearly no difference in the room temperature. It was outrageously hot. I scurried over to the south side of the barn and opened the window there. Mercifully a light breeze blew in and very soon the loft was reasonably comfortable.
Having solved our air temperature problem we now just needed to conquer boredom. The loft provided ample room for several activities such as roller-skating if we put the plywood back down over the stairway. Unfortunately, the skates were not upstairs and both of us were too lethargic to try and locate them. So we looked around for anything to do. After the barn was built, numerous cedar shingles had been leftover and a couple of bundles of these were up against the eves of the loft floor. Bobby went over and grabbed a shingle and then pitching a crayon in the air, spanked a shot that sailed straight out of the barn window. Not to be outdone I also grabbed a shingle but being spectacularly un-gifted in anything athletic I barely hit the crayon I tossed up. Bobby's first shot had been his best and although he made contact with another crayon it failed to make it out the window.
It was on a subsequent attempt that something happened that changed the day for us. While Bobby was standing near the window and trying to line up another shot, a red wasp floated downward about a foot from his head. The wasp was not in any way threatening us and was merely caught in an eddy created by the breeze blowing through the window. Bobby's response was automatic and immediate. He brought the cedar shingle up with a smack that brought the wasp to a mid-air conclusion. The deceased wasp sailed out the window.
Generally, we were never the kind of children that took our pleasure from the torment of any animal, bugs included, but wasps were in a special niche. We had a very complicated relationship with several of the types of wasps that inhabited our rural acreage. There were mud wasps or 'mud daubers' as we called them. These were a harmless type that spent their lives on a quest for mud which they gathered to make their little nests on practically any flat surface. The only way one of these wasps would sting was if you stepped on one. They did not even defend their nests, which allowed us to break into them to go after the immature mud dauber larvae. We fed the larvae to captured lizards in a sort of benevolent act toward the lizards for allowing us to catch them.
Another type of wasp we frequently encountered was the black or red wasp. These wasps were rather large, about one and a half inches long, and a solid rusty red or black color. Red wasps were more aggressive than the mud daubers, but only if you were messing with their nests. They were so big they could not move very fast and rather bumbled through the air in a sort of J pattern with ups and downs in their forward progress. Since they nested rather high up we rarely encountered them in any negative way.
The worst type of wasp where we lived were yellow jackets. These wasps were the smallest of the three and had black wings and legs with a yellow-banded body. These guys lived to be aggressive and built their paper nests all over the place. You merely had to be close to the location of one of their nests for them to go after you. They might be small, but they were rocket-fast and tended to attack in groups as well. Practically everyone in our families including the two of us had been on the receiving end of their painful stings.
When Bobby launched that red wasp with his shingle it was as if a truce had been broken and all of our pent-up wasp aggravation was unleashed. A couple of other red wasps were floating around and both he and I smacked them to oblivion. We were glee stricken but then thwarted because there were no other wasps. A solitary red wasp floated in on the breeze and we both rushed to attack it. Bobby was closer but in his desire to reach it first he swung his board so high it smacked edge first into the upper window sill. A rain of red wasps descended from a nest we could not see. We made sure these half dozen wasps went the way of their kindred and we were laughing and calling out to each other.
As soon as they were gone we banged the window sill to bring down some more. After several repeated efforts, the floor was littered with wasp bodies and there were fewer and fewer wasps that responded to our knocking. Well, this just would not do. Both of us were high on wasp-fueled adrenalin and wanted more. We carefully made our barefooted way around the wasp bodies and down to the south end of the loft to the other window. We reasoned if there had been wasps in one window area there were bound to be wasps at the other one.
Bobby struck the window sill with his board. Nothing happened. He smacked it again and still, nothing happened. The disappointment was crushing. In a final attempt to reclaim our wasp-fueled glory, Bobby banged the window sill as hard as possible. Immediately a shower of wasps rained down along with a wasp nest as well. A paper wasp nest about the size of a softball and covered with yellow jackets that it shed as it rolled toward us. Suddenly the air was filled with small darting and above all, angry wasps. I was slightly further back in the loft than Bobby so they reached him first. He began swinging his shingle wildly, but they were relentless and coming in from all angles.
I dropped my shingle and began to back away quickly or to be more accurate I turned and ran. But I didn't get far. Behind me I heard Bobby cry out, "Julie! Help me!" which reached some altruistic part of my brain. In the next instant, I turned and headed back his way. I snatched up my shingle and battled my way to him swinging frantically non-stop. Together we made it to the stairs and tumbled down them. Only after we were out of the barn did we stop to take stock of our wounds.
Surprisingly Bobby had only about three or four stings on his neck and shoulders. I, on the other hand, did not even have a single sting which was amazing owing to the sheer numbers of wasps we had run through as well as the bodies of the red wasps on the floor we had run blindly past in our bare feet. Still, for Bobby, that many stings were pretty tough to take so we decided to seek help. First, however, we had to get our story straight. There was no way either of us was going to tell an adult what actually happened.
Being as we were no strangers to getting into trouble we went to exhausting lengths to always appear as innocent as possible. Taunting wasps would not be seen as harmless fun. We needed to make sure we looked like victims in the encounter. We also knew that our stories would be compared by our mothers. Coming up with spontaneous fabrications usually didn't work well for us so we had gotten into the habit of getting our stories straight, especially before seeking medical care.
This is the lie we came up with:
We went up in the barn loft to play. When we opened the south window the wasp nest just fell down. Lucky for us a couple of shingles happened to be lying around so we were able to protect ourselves as we hastily exited the area. We were both wearing shoes.
It seemed good to us. There was the element of wholesome play, the element of innocent victims, we had covered why they would find shingles and wasp bodies on the floor and had thrown in the shoe wearing for good measure. They always asked if we were wearing shoes and the truth was we never were.
Bobby also wanted to make it so he had rushed in to save me. This was a problem. Lately, when we were making up our cover stories, Bobby had taken to adding in some sort of heroic twist. I was not about to let myself be seen as needing rescuing so I nixed that plan. He relented quickly no doubt due to the painfulness of his situation. We parted company and went home. The story seemed to arouse my mother's suspicions. She said, "You were wearing shoes?" and I said "Yes." which got me a narrow-eyed look. She knew. She may not have known what the details were, but she knew. She later sent me back up to the loft to close the windows. I said, "But what about the wasps?" She said, "You will be fine. You'll be wearing shoes."
No comments:
Post a Comment