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!
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!
