It funny what comes to your mind when you start writing things down. When I was pretty little, from the time I can remember until the early part of my second grade year, we lived down the road from my Grandparents farm and the other Grandparents lived across the yard from us. This was outside
Now this was a pretty good deal for a growing boy or two in the case of my brother and me. We used to eat breakfast at home, then run down and have Grandma Dennee feed us, then it was back to Grandma Johnson’s to eat again (and this was just breakfast, we used to try to hit the trifecta for all three meals). I wonder now why Mom and Dad said they had such a big feed bill with Cully and I, they only fed us a third of the time! HA!
Being on a farm / ranch there were all sorts of things two, almost twin (14 months apart) boys could get into. Dad used to have a BB gun that he shot pigeons with down at the dairy. One day Cully and I got our hands on it and took off over behind the silo (we had and above ground silage “stack”) so that no one could see us. Obviously there was no thought we might get into trouble…we hid…duh! After we shot at the farm equipment for a while, we got bored. So we decided to shoot at the pigs. We did that until we ran out of BB’s. Then being the super intelligent kids we were, we started hitting them with the gun. At that point, the gun broke! So, further showing our intelligence, we scotch taped it back together! You know Dad would never notice that…..sometimes I wonder how we made it through childhood, showing that much intelligence and all. Of course, this led to a spanking….3 times…..once by Dad, once by Mom and once by Bummy (we called Grandpa Dennee, Bummy. When we started learning to talk he was Bumpa, and it stuck.). Bummy’s wasn’t too bad…I think he thought it was funny!
Being so close in age, Cully led me into a lot of trouble….well I would like to blame him, but I don’t think I can. I was probably the instigator on most of our trouble. He was the one who always wanted to do the right thing…..I was just interested in having fun! I remember the time we ate Uncle George’s ice cream bars. Bad move! There were a few things you didn’t mess with in the Dennee house…..Bummy’s Mountain Dew and orange slice candy and George’s ice cream bars! We begged George to let us have one and he kept saying no, so when he went back out to the field…I stole them. Cully and I ate every one of them and boy were they good! Of course, our intelligence showed again. Instead of throwing the box away in the barn to draw attention away from ourselves (hmm, maybe Andy would have gotten blamed then….), we threw them away in the house….where only Grandma and ourselves were. Of course, she didn’t eat anything like that…so it only left two options…Cully and I! George was storming after finding the ice cream gone and Cully immediately apologized…the traitor! Man all we had to do was deny, deny, deny! Of course this led to spankings, not so much that I ate his ice cream, but more so because I wouldn’t apologize! I’d get up in the morning, Mom would ask me if I was going to apologize…or course the answer was no, so she would spank me! I’d get down to Bummy’s, George would ask if I was going to apologize, of course the answer was no…another spanking! Dad would get home from work, ask if I was going to apologize…of course the answer was no, another spanking. This went on for about a week. In looking back, I have to ask myself “what fool would let this go on this long?” All for the want of two words, “I’m sorry”. I never said I wasn’t stubborn! I can clearly remember the day I finally apologized, George had caught me in Grandma’s front yard and he had me by one arm and was chasing me in circles, spanking me with the other hand. I guess after 4 days times 3 spankings a day, I’d finally had enough…..I finally started yelling / crying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry”. Boom, spankings stopped….duh!
Not all of the bad things we did ended up with spankings, although it sure did teach us that there were consequences to our actions. I remember the time Cully and I ate a bushel basket full of pears. I say “ate” because the first time around we took one bite out of every pear and put them back, with the bite mark down, in the basket. Grandma found out and was not going to punish us at all, but Dad said no, that won’t do. There are consequences, so he made us eat the whole basket. Not all at once of course, it took us about a week. Talk about regularity…..still can’t stand pears!
Almost everything here had some kind of punishment involved, but there was a lot more fun times than there were punishments. The punishments are just a whole lot funnier to look back at and laugh. Maybe I will write about some of the other stuff in the future.
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