My leukemia's back.

[3goodeggs]

See, If I hadn't tried so hard to find a good Clash photo, I'd have been in time to tell you that.

 

[lazy gardener]

Oh wait LG, is that your anniversary? The 16th?

Yep, Phil and I got married that date. Um... different year, different state, different spouses!

 

[LittleLakePhil]

Wow.....parallel universe.....

 

[lazy gardener]

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction!

 

[Blooie]

So I had a little time between cathing Kendra and getting her ready for school and read the childhoods you posted. Gotta wonder how some of us made it to adulthood! (Or, have we?) This is one of my favorite childhood stories. I had to search a bit to find it because I'd posted it on the Porch way last spring, so I hope it's okay if I copied and pasted instead of retyping it.



Don't forget stealing green apples and eating them with salt until we got sick!! Oh, but we thought we were clever! Grab a big brown grocery bag - the ones we had always had said, "Shop at Sunshine" - and the old Tupperware salt shaker off the stove top. Then wait until it was dark and let the mahem begin!! The apples had to be the right size - too small and there wasn't enough salt in the universe to make them palatable, and sometimes fences would give us a little grief.

I remember once when Old Man Van der Linde flipped on his porch light and yelled, "You little Ba****ds get the hell out of that tree!" We all split, but I went the wrong way. I didn't see the little wire fence he had around his garden, hooked my foot in it, and went down flat on my face in the cabbage! Oh, I thought I was gonna die...I just knew he was coming after me with a meat cleaver, because that's what all the older kids said he did to apple swipers. There I lay, all alone, face planted into a smelly cabbage plant, just waiting for death, snot and tears running down my face. I was too scared to get up and run. I kept telling my feet to move, but they weren't listening. Where were my co-conspirators? How could they let me die like this? Would my sister tell Ma where I was so she could claim my little body?

Suddenly he was there - right there. Old Man Van der Linde, the evil child killer of South Dakota. "Got yerself inta a bind there, didn't ya Diane?"

"Um, yessir, I guess I did."
"I should just leave ya there for the cabbage worms to eat." Worms?? Oh, Lordy, help me!!

Then just as gently as could be, he helped me up. He wiped my face off with the corner of his t-shirt, extricated my tennis shoe from the fence where it was stuck with my foot no longer inside, and swatted me on my backside. "Now git yer a** on home!'

He didn't have to tell me twice. But as I ran off, sneaker in hand, I turned back to him. "Are you gonna tell my dad?"

He thought for a second and then he said, "Nope." Oh, whew!! And he continued, "You are."

Now I'd like to say that I never swiped another green apple, but I'd be lying. I did, however, learn to watch for short little fences. And I did learn that Old Man Van der Linde didn't kill little kids. Nope, he left that for their fathers!

 

[N F C]

Blooie, I love the way you tell your stories. You should write a book!

 

[sourland]

Blooie has a way with the written word, for sure!

 

[Suzie]

So I had a little time between cathing Kendra and getting her ready for school and read the childhoods you posted. Gotta wonder how some of us made it to adulthood! (Or, have we?) This is one of my favorite childhood stories. I had to search a bit to find it because I'd posted it on the Porch way last spring, so I hope it's okay if I copied and pasted instead of retyping it.



Don't forget stealing green apples and eating them with salt until we got sick!! Oh, but we thought we were clever! Grab a big brown grocery bag - the ones we had always had said, "Shop at Sunshine" - and the old Tupperware salt shaker off the stove top. Then wait until it was dark and let the mahem begin!! The apples had to be the right size - too small and there wasn't enough salt in the universe to make them palatable, and sometimes fences would give us a little grief.

I remember once when Old Man Van der Linde flipped on his porch light and yelled, "You little Ba****ds get the hell out of that tree!" We all split, but I went the wrong way. I didn't see the little wire fence he had around his garden, hooked my foot in it, and went down flat on my face in the cabbage! Oh, I thought I was gonna die...I just knew he was coming after me with a meat cleaver, because that's what all the older kids said he did to apple swipers. There I lay, all alone, face planted into a smelly cabbage plant, just waiting for death, snot and tears running down my face. I was too scared to get up and run. I kept telling my feet to move, but they weren't listening. Where were my co-conspirators? How could they let me die like this? Would my sister tell Ma where I was so she could claim my little body?

Suddenly he was there - right there. Old Man Van der Linde, the evil child killer of South Dakota. "Got yerself inta a bind there, didn't ya Diane?"

"Um, yessir, I guess I did."
"I should just leave ya there for the cabbage worms to eat." Worms?? Oh, Lordy, help me!!

Then just as gently as could be, he helped me up. He wiped my face off with the corner of his t-shirt, extricated my tennis shoe from the fence where it was stuck with my foot no longer inside, and swatted me on my backside. "Now git yer a** on home!'

He didn't have to tell me twice. But as I ran off, sneaker in hand, I turned back to him. "Are you gonna tell my dad?"

He thought for a second and then he said, "Nope." Oh, whew!! And he continued, "You are."

Now I'd like to say that I never swiped another green apple, but I'd be lying. I did, however, learn to watch for short little fences. And I did learn that Old Man Van der Linde didn't kill little kids. Nope, he left that for their fathers!

OMG...I did that in England when I was young...such wonderful memories...we called it scrumping....!

 

[Blooie]

OMG...I did that in England when I was young...such wonderful memories...we called it scrumping....!

Oh my! Old Man Van der Linde was in England too?? That old fa....er....geezer got around back then, didn't he? Scrumping - I like that word! Think I'll borrow it (scrump it?) and use it around here!

NFC and Sourland, I thank you kindly! But if I were ever to put a book together of my childhood, they'd have to put it in the "fiction" section of the bookstore on accounta nobody'd believe it!

 

[3goodeggs]

I watch a lot of European movies and shows, and I never knew that is what it meant.
I thought it was ...maybe a little dirty or something.
Europeans are so much more openly ...liberal about ...things....