Turnabout Is Fair Play

Something from the tackle box:

       Don’t fail to correct your children.  You won’t kill them by being firm, and it may even save their lives.  (Proverbs 23:12 CEV)

       Growing up in a house located on the corner of two intersecting country roads in rural Barry County Michigan I did have neighbors.  Although none of them lived closer than half a mile away, we were surround by neighbors in each of the four directions you could go from our place. 

       To the east was the Decker family.  They were good friends, and we knew them well as they had youngsters in the family too, some older ones that babysat for my two younger siblings and I when we were very little, but also a couple who were closer to our ages.  We got on the bus and rode to school together with them from the little shelter built at the end of their driveway.  We would also go swimming with them in their pond, or in our pool, in the hot summer months as we were growing up together. 

       To the south of us was the old Sprague place.  You can read about what an “adventure” it could be to try and bike past their farm on ones way to a favorite fishing hole.  That story is recorded in a post I made on this blog back in July. 

       A half a mile north of our place was the home of Bruce and Dortha Brumm.  We knew them well too.  In fact, they were like an extra set of grandparents to my brother Joe, sister Joy and I as we were growing up.  It was only a ten minute walk to get a homemade cookie any time that you wanted one.  They had a gentle collie dog that liked to play with kids.  They had the first color TV in our neck of the woods, and they’d let you watch Bonanza, or The Wonderful World of Disney, on it.

       Bruce and Dortha lived on a farm that took up a good chunk of the land north and west of the intersecion of Thronapple Lake and Price Roads.  They would have had everything northwest of that stop sign for half a mile in both directions, had they not sold the old farmhouse I grew up in, along with eight acres of land, to my parents several months before I was born.  The Brumms were good friends to my folks, and awfully good to us kids over the years we were neighbors, and while this story isn’t about the Brumms, per se, their friendship towards our family does play a role in this adventure.

       This story is about an incident involving one of our closest neighbors to the west, Ellis Garlinger.  Ellis and Dot Garlinger were an older couple who lived on a nice little farm on the south side of Thornapple Lake Road, just a half a mile west, and on the other side the road, from our place on the corner.  Across the road from the Garlinger place was about where the fencerows, fields, meadows and woodlots of the property owned by our good friends, the Brumms, had its western boundry. 

       Now, Ellis and Dot Garlinger were fine people, and good neighbors too, but as a kid I didn’t really get to know them all that well.  They had no children for me to play with, and they seemed to be busy with their own lives on the farm, which was as it should be.  I would wave to them if they were out as I biked past their place, and they would wave back, but I would never have dreamed of turning in their drive for a homemade cookie and cup of hot coco like I might have with our neighbors to the north.  They were just the older folks who lived down the road to the west, we knew them, but didn’t really take that much interest in them.  – That is, until they got the peacock. 

       I can still remember the first time I heard the bloodcurdling scream coming over the hill from the west.  I was sitting on the steps of the deck on the south side of our house, eating my Captain Crunch in the cool air of a beautiful summer morning, when the sounds of what I took to be raw human agony rent the misty peace and caused me to slosh half of my milk and cereal into my lap. 

       “Mom!  Dad!  Get out here quick!”

       “What is it son?”

       “I just heard somebody screaming over there!” I said, pointing to the west. 

       “THERE IT IS AGAIN!!”

       “My word!” cried my Mom.  “Elmer, you’d better get over there and see what’s going on!  It sounds like someone might need some help!”

       Dad just started laughing at us.  “Well, you’d better get used to it, because it sounds to me like Ellis has bought himself some peahens and a peacock for the barnyard.  It’s amazing how that sound will carry on a calm day.” 

       “Are you sure?” Mom replied, “Sounds to me like somebody is getting murdered with a hatchet.” 

       “I’m sure.  I saw Ellis putting up real high chicken wire around the empty henhouse yesterday and figured something was up.  I had imagined it would be turkeys or geese he was getting ready for, but that’s a peacock if I ever heard one.  We’ll drive by later and take a look.” 

       And that’s what we did, sure enough.  That peacock and his hens were beautiful, downright gorgeous in fact, and everyone who had heard them, and then driven around to see them, said the same.  But, gorgeous or not, we would all have to put up with the agonizing cries of dying ax murder victims on a daily basis for the pleasure of having those beautiful birds ensconced in our bailiwick. 

       Truth be told, we all got pretty used to the screeching pretty quickly.  It even became a source of entertainment for us kids when friends and relatives visited, and we could act out gruesome pantomimes in concert with the sounds of the merciless bloodletting that came from down the road.

       So, now that you have some background information, I can get around to telling you about a particularly memorable fishing adventure that I had with my brother, sister, and my younger cousin Ned, on a bright sunny Autumn day later that very year. 

       As I said earlier, our friends and neighbors to the north, the Brumms, owned a large section of land to the north and west of our place on the corner.  Being so close to us, and understanding the advantages that come with growing up in union nature as country folk, they allowed my brother, sister and I to run free on their property for the purpose of exploring and enjoying its woodlots, meadows, lanes and swales, like any kid would do if given half the chance.  As long as we didn’t disturb any crops in any field that might be tilled at the time, we could do as we pleased on the Brumm place.  And we did.  It was a gift to our young lives beyond price, and I will always love Bruce and Dortha for allowing us the access to what became, for us, a veritable kingdom of wilderness adventures.  This story is about one I remember particularly well.

       My cousin Ned was over for a weekend stay with my brother, sister and I, and one of us got the idea that we should make the trek over to the pond over on the western edge of the Brumm place for the purpose of hooking minnows, catching frogs, netting dragonflies, or otherwise seeing what kind of wildlife we could trap into temporary captivity along the pond’s cattail lined banks.  As all parties were agreeable to this idea, it was not long before we had outfitted ourselves with fishing rods, butterfly nets and an assortment of boxes and jars for our intended safari. 

       The pond was an easy march from our place.  You went down an old farm lane, due west from our barnyard, for a quarter mile.  From the end of the lane you cut diagonally across a beautiful meadow that was only occasionally cut for hay.  Once on the other side of that rolling meadow, you crossed a ridge with an old fence line running along it, and then entered a brushy swale with a two-acre pond at its bottom.  The pond would gather a lot of runoff, growing quite big on a wet year, but it also had spring that fed into it, so that even in a dry year it always held a couple feet of water and very small fish could be caught in it.  The whole thing sat due north of the Garlinger farm, about a quarter mile due north off the road.

       It was a beautiful parade on the way back to the pond on that sunny afternoon.  I had the fishing pole, Joy carried the butterfly net, Joe and Ned followed in train with the boxes and jars for our intended catch.  Optimism was running high about our prospects of success.  But once we were within site of our hunting and fishing grounds we realized that the gathering of specimens for our pleasure and study might not be as easy achieved as we had hoped for at first.  When the weather is dry the old pond would stay well within its appointed banks, with a very narrow band of mud and cattails being all that had to be negotiated when fishing or frogging.  But with much rain, as we’d had over the last couple weeks, the banks widened and sponged up considerably.  There would be no getting up to the water without some very careful scouting for suitable approaches.  We split up, surrounded the pond, and began our assault in these less than optimal conditions.

       “It’s too mucky over here!”

       “Wha did ya say?”

       “IT’S TOO MUCKY!!”

       “Oh, .. Well, … be careful then.”

       “My shoe just came off in the mud.”

       “Wha did ya say?”

       “I said, MY SHOE’S STUCK IN THE MUD!!”

       “Well, … OK, .. pull it out and back up.”

       “OK, … I’ll have to get down on my knees and get my pants a little muddy.”

       “Wha did ya say?”

       “I said, MY KNEES ARE GETTING IN THE MUD!!  I CAN’T GET IT OUT!!”

       “Hold on, I’ll come over and help you.
       “What did you say?”

       “I said, HOLD ON I’LL TRY AND HELP YOU!!”

       “Hey!  What’s going on down there”

       “Ned’s got a shoe stuck in the mud.”

       “What?”

       “I said, NED’S STUCK IN THE MUD!!  COME OVER AND GIVE US SOME HELP!!”

       “If I go around this way I’ll get in the mud too.”

       “Wha did ya say?”

       “I said, I CAN’T GET TO YOU THIS WAY!!  I’LL GET STUCK TOO IF I TRY!!”

       That’s about when we saw Mr. Garlinger come over the fenced ridge to the south of the pond.  He was on a dead run, huffing and puffing like an old man that had just sprinted a quarter mile, which is exactly what he was.  He pulled up short when he saw all four of us standing together on dry ground, one of us with dirty knees and holding a muddy sneaker.

       “WHAT IN TARNATION IS GOING ON!”

       “Hey there Mr. Garlinger.  Ned’s shoe just came off in the mud.  We got it out now.”

       Mr. Garlinger sat down on an old log, pulled a bandana out of the pocket of his bib overalls and began to mop his brow.  It took him a minute to say anything else, but when he did we all knew that he was pretty upset.

       “You kids git home right now!  And tell your mothers that you all need a spanking for scaring me half to death!  And don’t you come back here any time today!  Do you hear me!?”

       We somberly picked up our gear and headed in the direction of our house.  We were half way home before anyone spoke.

       “Boy, your neighbor sure was mad.”

       “I don’t think he can kick us off the pond.  Bruce and Dortha say we can play there any time we want.”

       “Well, …I don’t think we’d better go back and try again today.”

       “I wonder why Ellis was so upset.”

       “I don’t know.”

       “Maybe those screaming peacocks of his woke him up too early this morning and now he needs to take a nap.”

       “Mayy-beee.”

Something to take home in your creel:

        We sure as heck never did tell our mothers that we needed a spanking for scaring Mr. Garlinger half to death that day, or ever even hinted to our folks about what had happened for that matter.  Ellis is long gone to a better home now, and I never did apologize to him for upsetting him so that day.  But I’m sixty now, and much more in sympathy with him over what happened than I was back then…  The memory still makes me chuckle though.