Hot Summer Nights

Hot Summer Nights

My moms sister, my Aunt Sally, was kind enough to offer to take Matt and I for a month in the summer before my eighth grade year, the parents couldn’t pay for the plane tickets fast enough. I was twelve and Matt was ten and this was to be our first vacation away from the parents, and Vice versa.

We were heading to a little farm town in Northwest Texas, called Tulia (now infamous for a big cocaine bust that was blamed on the few black men that happened to live there, it was all bullshit), in between the bustling metropolises of Amarillo and Lubbock.

We’d never been to a working farm and Aunt Sally and Uncle Ken had three hundred and sixty plus acres of wheat and corn, a huge undertaking, and having a couple pairs of extra hands, even city hands, was a gift to them. Our cousins Blair and Doug Boyd would show us city slickers the ropes and we were expected to do our part.

We arrived in early July and it was hot, melt shit outside, fucking hot. The days started before sunrise with breakfast then we were off to do chores. We rode our first horses out there, helped Uncle Ken clearing out fields and barns, it was back breaking, hard work, and just getting a glimpse of this life, it wasn’t for us.

After about a week of this we were introduced to Sunday supper, early dinner as Matt and I knew it. These folks ate a lot of grub, most of it grown on their farm. Hell I didn’t even recognize half the stuff on my plate, but why would I, there was a lot of vegetables.

It wasn’t all work however, as we had some play time and adventure seeking freedom from our chores.They had a ranch style home, one story that covered over 3000SF and of course a basement, they were in tornado country. While digging around cleaning out the main garage we came upon a bucket filled with baseballs, odd because neither of our cousins were overly athletic. Come to find out Uncle Ken pitched in the minors, for the Pittsburgh Pirates organization. He even played along side Vernon Law, I looked at him differently after that discovery.

We chose off teams, after finding the baseballs, it would be the youngest of us, Doug and the oldest me versus Matt and Blair, and although Doug was small, he competed and we kicked their butts daily. Our only problem was we kept hitting balls into the corn fields and losing them.

After a few days of two on two our cousins told us they had some next door neighbors that played ball as well, Blair called them and they invited us over. Matt and I looked next door but didn’t even see a house. Yet Sally and Ken had extra bikes so we grabbed our gloves, bats and balls and followed our cousins.

When we got on the street out front we realized this was not asphalt, but sun dried dirt, harder than any asphalt we’d ever seen. 0n the way over Blair told us to watch for rattlers, which we had no idea what the fuck he was talking about. Between the y’all’s and other Texas twang we couldn’t understand much. We were about a quarter mile down the road when Doug spotted the first snake, it was huge and we had to park our bikes and wait for him to cross before we were allowed to continue. Matt and I wanted to throw rocks at it, hit it with our bats, but our cousins told us that wasn’t a good idea, so we watched it slither away and moved on.

The nearest neighbor was a mile down the road and in the heat of the day it seemed like a haul. When we got there we met two boys about our age, but these were big old farm boys. The throwing bales of hay, farm boys. Yet neither of them were worth a lick and Matt, Doug and I beat them quite easily. They insisted they were better at football, so we scheduled a game the following week.

Aunt Sally this time drove us as we were meeting other neighbors as well, and when we got to that house there was a total of ten kids and a huge field to play football on. They showed us the boundaries and chose teams, Matt and I got Doug and the two youngest kids and squared off for a game of tackle football. These boys we were playing were at least a head taller than I and they were talking smack to the California boys, I think, it was hard to understand those twangs still.

What they didn’t know was Matt and I had played organized tackle football and we were quite a bit quicker and faster than them. We were still in the steroids as well and the game got ugly quick. We beat the piss out if them, the oldest boy was a freshman in high school and chose me off, after I pinned him in the ground and bloodied his mouth the moms came out and scolded me. Matt and I had enough of this West Texas bullshit and decided we were going to walk home, and took to the road. We weren’t walking to Sally and Kens either, we were walking to California. I was blamed for beating the kid up and we were tired if twangs, suppers and them that crying baby Texans!

The two of us were dead set on walking home but thankfully Sally pulled up in the truck I coerced us to “quit being stupid y’all and get in the damn truck”. We weren’t happy she interrupted our trip home, at least on the outside, but she offered us water so we got in the ‘damn’ truck.

We weren’t invited back to that farm to play ball again but we did meet up with them a week later and at town cement pond, pool in Texan. We rode our bikes into downtown Tulia on a Saturday and after working all week it was a gift. The thermometer was reading in triple figures everyday and swimming sounded great. Once again we hadn’t been downtown yet and it was a five mile bike ride on those sun baked roads to get there, a swimming pool never looked that grand before or after, ever.

It cost us each a quarter to get in, but we’ll worth it. Most of these farms boys couldn’t swim a lick but with a pool in our backyard Matt and I certainly could. Apparently a church group had a contest coming up where we could win prizes and Matt and I were chomping at the bit to see if we could win something.

The church group took washers and numbered them and if you were lucky enough to grab one off the bottom of the pool, you won the prize that correlated to the number on the washer. All the kids lined up along the side the pool and the church group tossed the washers everywhere. We were both on the side of the pool in the deep end, figuring our chances to grab a few off the bottom was better as we went deeper.

Washers now distributed, Matt and I devised a plan, he would go left and I would go right and grab as many as we could. All the kids awaited the starting bell and as it went off, we went in. There was a lot of boys jumping in but only two of us diving in. Within the first dive I had six washers and Matt had four. These kids were not swimmers, so we both took one more dive and we both came up with two more.

The ending bell rang and it was prize revealing time. We were back a bit in line and when we came to the front there were a lot of gifts left. The fella running the event, I believe he was the local pastor, asked me which one I got. I opened my grubby little hands and showed him my haul, Matt was standing behind me eyeing the goods. We both hoped we could get all of our winnings on our bikes.

As I opened my hands the ladies behind the table gasped as did the pastor, we heard hushed exclamations like “well I never” and “that’s where they all went”. The pastor waved Matt forward as well and the whispers got louder. Finally the pastor quieted down the clucking hens behind him with a wave of his hand and explained the situation to us.

“I’m sorry boys but we only allow one gift per child” and I’m thinking what the fuck, this us a rip off and Matt flat out says what’s on his mind. “Why didn’t you tell us that?” he brazenly questioned.

The pastor tried to quiet down Matt but my brother was a bit to the right of stubborn. “Should of told us mister”, and the pastor didn’t like being questioned or the tone in Matt’s voice, but my brother was right. I piped in as well “there’s no sign says that”, and the hens behind him starting clucking again.

He didn’t mince words anymore. “You each get one prize and no more”. They took a washer I had left on the table and chose one, number 19, young man you win a six pack of Coke. I hated Coke, always have. “I don’t want that what else did I win?”

“This us all you get young man and I don’t appreciate the attitude”, well he hadn’t seen anything yet. Matt grabbed his washers off the table and now knowing the gig he looked through them and handed the head hen his choice. She looked at the number and took all of his washers from his hand. This is what you get, and she handed him a yo-yo. I honestly thought Matt was going to throw it at her but I grabbed him and pushed him away from the table, but not before he fired his last shot “this is a fucking rip off” and with that they threw us out of the pool area.

Blair and Doug shook their heads in disappointment as the four of us headed towards home, I believe they were ashamed of us, but Doug was smiling and Blair wanted a Coke, so we were fine.

In our last week there the four of us were picking corn when a light rain started and then turned into a little hale, we watched our cousins run to the house and we were perplexed. Aunt Sally was a hollaring from the back door to run and we were about forty yards away. We started to walk but the hale stones were getting bigger and I got one on the noggin the size of a golf ball. The put a hitch in my giddy up and by the time we got to the door these stones were baseball sized and we’d made it just in time.

Great memories from days gone by. After my dad had passed Uncle Ken and I became quite close. We’d chat once a week, he’d tell me baseball stories and we traded books. Both Sally and Ken have passed, I hear from Doug a bit on Facebook but haven’t spoken to Blair in forty years, just another fond memory from days long gone by.

Hope this finds you all well, as we slowly get back to normal’, whatever the fuck that means. Have a blessed day my friends!

Crack Egg Out