Things Just Happen

Things Just Happen


It’s true.  I don’t know why, but things just happen to me, and it’s not my fault.  Really!

Take, for instance, the time my Dad took the family fishing.  I was still only five-years-old but a very smart child who was loved by all.  I was also the youngest child with only one brother and one sister who were, as far as I could tell, the only two people on earth with very poor common sense, no feelings whatsoever, and the only two who didn’t like me.
Anyway, Dad took all of us fishing to a neighbor’s farm that bordered ours.  You could pay one dollar per day for a carload of people to fish his ponds that were fed by mountain streams.  Mom and Dad would load up our 1947 Ford with all the fishing gear, picnic basket, chairs, blankets and us three kids and head out for the “Ponds”.  Back then, they had never considered seat belts to hold you down in your seat when bouncing over rough dirt roads, they let the car roof help keep you seated properly.  It was no problem holding a small child on your lap, or having them sit on the lap of an older brother so there was more room for the important stuff you would need for fishing.

Dad also owned an old car he called The Blue Bird, it was a model T collector’s car but he would never take it on the fishing trips.  He said he didn’t want the wooden spokes broken by the rough roads.  I really liked the horn on the old Blue Bird, they don’t make horns like that anymore, where you pushed the large white ivory button in the middle of the steering wheel and you would get that beautiful sound of “AAOOOOOOOOOOGA.”

Well, we make it to the good fishing spot, one that we had been to many times before, and Dad and Mom start setting up the rods for us kids.  My older brother and sister didn’t want to fish too close to me so Dad set their rods up first about twenty yards to the right of where we would be fishing and let them settle in before he came back and tossed in the throw-line.  A throw-line is a heavy string with a weight, bobber, and hooks (three or four hooks about three feet apart).
You swing the line around over your head and toss it out into the pond as far as you can. Just make sure you have unrolled enough line and you or your small son are not standing on the line you have laid neatly on the ground.  If someone was standing on it, it would cause the line to fly out a very short distance and then snap back quickly at the thrower.  The three hooks could very easily snag a tenderloin area.  It wasn’t my fault, no one told me not to stand so close to Dad or to watch out for the line on the ground!  Besides, how is a five-year-old going to know it would cause three of the four hooks to in-bed themselves so deep???

After the hooks were removed with lots of yelling (and even a bad word thrown in here and there) Dad throws out the line again this time making sure that nothing is standing on the extra line on the ground.  Besides I felt Dad was lucky, he got to use my favorite Band-Aids that had stars and moons on them.

Now there is only one more thing that needs to be taken care of.  The spool that the line is attached to should have stayed on shore by being staked down so when you let go of the

line and it sails way out into the pond, far from shore, it will come to the end where it’s attached to the spool and drop into the water waiting to catch a fish.  You wouldn’t have expected a five-year-old to understand not to pull up the staked-down spool and be holding it up for his father to see that he is a good helper boy.  I had this very surprised look on my cute little face when the spool was roughly jerked from my hand and the spool went sailing way out into the pond with the rest of the throw line.

I looked up at my Dad who was still staring way out on the water as the spool sank from view with the rest of the throw line.  I remember saying something like, “Wow, that line gave me a burn when it was jerked out of my hand Dad.”  But Dad never looked down at me; he just kept staring out at the water.  Mom came up and took me by my good hand and as we walked away she said it was a good thing the bobber was still floating on top, that way Dad would know just where to swim out to find the line.  I was relieved that Dad would be able to get the line back, but I couldn’t help wonder when he was going to go get it, so I asked him if he would set up my rod first so I could be fishing while he swam out to get the throw line.  Mom put her hand over my mouth but I think she meant to cover my ears because of some word that I had never heard before slipped out from my Dad.

Once again, it was not my fault.

After retrieving the throw line, the three rods were then set up.  Dad didn’t take the time to set up my rod first, but Mom said it was for the best and the swim cooled Dad off.
Dad was pacing back and forth, watching over the three rods, each about ten yards apart so they wouldn’t get tangled.  Mom was sitting in a chair looking up from her knitting at her bobber every so often, and I was sitting on the ground digging in the dirt.  I figure this is safe and a pretty fun thing to do and I won’t be bothering anyone’s Dad.

I don’t know how I learned to make the noise, I just knew.  All the rods have what is called a brake on them, so when a fish grabs the line if you don’t see the bobber move, the brake makes a noise that sounds like when you hold one of your cheeks against your teeth and force air through it – no not that sound, the other sound.  Anyway, as Dad passed in front of me for the tenth time I made the sound and Mom looks down at me but Dad races to Mom’s rod and picks it up.

“That’s not my rod dear,” Mom said, meaning it wasn’t any rod but Dad took it to mean it must have been another rod, so he dropped Mom’s rod and frantically ran to the next closest one, picked it up, and I made the noise again.

“It must be the other rod,” Dad yells, dropping that rod and ran to the last one and picked it up.  By now Mom is starting to laugh and Dad hears her chuckling and turns to see what is so funny.  I make the noise again because Mom thinks it’s funny so I figure Dad would too.  Big mistake.

“Was that you?”  Croaked Dad.
Smiling I say “sure” and I make the noise again.  Mom stands up and turns away from us with her hands over her face.  At first I thought she was crying because of the way her body was quivering.  I didn’t know anyone could shed that many tears without crying.  He pulled in my fishing rod and moved me twenty yards to the left to be by myself, then went back to his spot and waited in silence.  Mom went back to her chair, sat down and said something to Dad that I couldn’t hear, but I did hear my Dad say “not funny.”
Dad hears the noise again from my spot and yelled to me, “Go ahead and make the noise.  It will not get you any fish.”  Then he realized that I was to small to have a breath last that long to still be making the brake sound, so he came running to me just as I’m pulling on shore the largest Bull Head we had ever taken out of that spot.  I look up at Dad a he is staring down at this monster fish when Mom comes up behind him and does it again – the silent laughing.  I figured Dad would be so proud of his little man and I waited for the praise, but Dad just walked away and said another word I didn’t understand.  I noticed he was quivering this time but I didn’t notice any signs of laughter.  I am still waiting for some praise for that fish.

It was not my fault that I caught the fish.


Then there was the escapade with “The Mutt” as he was called most of the time.  He was our farm dog, a loathsome hideous beast sent to us by Beelzebub that hung around because he would get fed daily and give no service to what should have been his master –

me.  I always felt he didn’t like me much (maybe because of the fiend like bearing of fangs or the deep rumble from his throat) but I seem to be the only one that knew he was a deceitful foul K-9.
Whenever anyone else was around he would put on an act that we were the best of buddies and that he would protect me.  So my easily fooled parents let him stay and sponge off of us.  I tried to tell them, but The Mutt knew better than to leave any marks on me.

Unlike a devout and loyal dog, this depraved repugnant beast would plan wicked tricks to do to me.  One of his favorite schemes was to sit out by the big tree we had in the front yard and wait to be called into the house.  Then he would ignore the caller so my Mom would tell me to go out and get him by the collar and bring him in.

“Sure, I can do that, I’ll just go out and grab Satan’s dog that out weighs me and would just as soon eat me than look at me,” I’d say.
“Go get that dog and bring him here you big calf,” Mom would say jokingly.
So I would go out and face The Mutt and tell him he was not going to drag me into the house again and I was in charge so he had better behave.  I would then reach down and take hold of his collar and pull with all my might.  The Mutt would just sit there as if he hadn’t noticed anything at all and wouldn’t move a muscle until my Mom yelled out again, “stop playing around with that dog and bring him in here.”  Then the stupid mutt would chuckle.  So I would slip my hand under the collar and pull for all that I was worth

and The Mutt would then run for the house, dragging me over the lawn, across the sidewalk, up the stairs, and into the kitchen.  My sister would say, “Oh isn’t that cute how these two play together?”  Mom would say “look what you did, you got your clean cloths all dirty and you put a hole in your pants.  Go to bed mister, no supper for you.”
“Stupid Dog!”

The Mutt had one weakness, he loved buttermilk.  Mom would take the daily milk and churn some of it up for butter and some for buttermilk.  Then some of the churnings were sold and the rest was kept for the family.  One morning Mom left a two gallon bucket on the back porch by mistake and The Mutt discovered it.  He was in heaven, and taking his time got the whole two gallons down so he was well rounded in the middle.  He then waited for the next person to come along and entered the house to find a nice quite place to sleep off his gluttonous thievery.
I had just discovered my sister rummaging round in my bedroom.  I picked up a stick I kept in my room just incase something like this happened, and I proceeded to chase her through the house.  My sister was much faster than me, and would stay just out of reach taunting and laughing, then she took off fast and I lost her somewhere inside the house so I looked room to room.  Nowhere to be found, I returned to my bedroom to find her standing on my bed.  She had pulled all the sheets, blankets and pillow cases off the bed and threw them on the floor.  She smiled at me evilly.  What else could I do?  I attacked her jumping onto the bed swinging my stick; she was catapulted off the end of the bed


from my frontal assault and landed on a soft hairy mound that instantly deflated, folding The Mutt in half.  Buttermilk squirted out of both ends of the beast.

I thought it was funny but my sister had to ruin it all by screaming, which brought Mom, Dad, my brother and two farm hands running into my room

“What the BLEEP?”

I refused to believe that my Mom would say such a word!  The shocked looks on everyone was frozen in time for ten seconds, then my brother burst out laughing.  He was silenced by a slap to the back of his head from Dad.  I thought, “Now you’re in trouble you evil sister.”

You will understand my surprise when my Mom yells, “Look what you have done to your room young man!  Your bed is a disaster and you’ll have to wash the sheets and your sister’s clothes.  After you get that started you will mop up this buttermilk and wipe down the walls and ceiling.” 

In my defense, my kind sister stood by my side and said, “I told him not to do it Mom, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“I know dear, he will pay for this, don’t you worry,” said Mom lovingly.

I was the only one who didn’t feel sorry for my sister or The Mutt because I knew it wasn’t my fault, it just happened.