To Stone a Bull

When I was young, we would go to my Uncle Buck's country farm every summer in Ohio. The closest town was Gallipolis, which was near Waterloo. They were out in the country. We drove across America, and it was beautiful. I remember them building the Arch in St. Louis. We saw a mammoth crane put the gleaming sections into place in the Great Gateway Arch.

Uncle Buck's farm had a double-decker chicken coop and planted fields of different crops. Aunt Bertha or Aunt Burt had a big garden with many great vegetables. Uncle Buck grew a lot of other things. He would take me out to pick pole beans. I was taller than the pole beans, so he called me "Bean Pole." Aunt Bert likes to plant big Sun Flowers around the outhouse.

In the evening, the adults would sit around and drink beer, take their 22's and try to shoot the groundhogs that would pop out of the cornfield.

I walked over to the cherry trees. The cherries were full, ripe, and red. I picked one, and it was so delicious.

"OMG, these cherries are great," I said.

"They're from Ohio," Vicky said, "Of course they are great.

Vicky ate one too.

I ate another of the plump red cherries. The two colossal trees were by Uncle Buck's neighbor's prized bull's pasture.

Soon, we ate all the cherries we could reach. I said, "Let's climb into the trees."

We ate more in the trees. As we ate them, we would suck the stones clean and collect them in our hand.

I said, "I got more stones than you."

Then the cranky bull came over to see what we were doing in his pasture.

"Hey, Vicky, watch this."

I threw my hand full of cherry stones at the behemoth bull. He snorted and stomped around. OMG, he was mad.

"Vicky said, "Here, Mr. Bull. Nanny, nanny, nan ney."

Eventually, the great stud bull came over to her, looked up, and snorted.

"Here!" she said, and she threw all her cherry stones at the bull.

He spun in a circle to the left and snorted at us. He was even madder, and we laughed and laughed. We kept eating cherries and throwing the cherry stones at the dumb old bull.

"Try and hit him on his big fat nose," I said.

Many of my shots failed, but the few that succeeded made the bull hopping mad. One of my shots bounced off his eye.

"Bull's eye!" I said.

The great mass of steaming muscle tried to jump up and get us. We laughed and laughed. The good innocents ran so sweet. Soon the stupid bull lost interest and wandered away. The fat yellow sun was warm. We sat and ate fresh cherries in the lazy afternoon for a spell.

After we ate stuffing us, Vicky said, "Watch this."

The bull was on the far side of the pasture, grazing on new green grass. Vicky jumped down to the ground and did a silly little dance, shaking her butt at the bull. Its eyes went wide open, and so did ours, as it went insane. It shook its head, pawed the earth, and charged at her. She jumped up into the tree. I had to help her.

"That was dumb," I said.

She, flushing with adrenalin, giggled. The bull furiously pawed at the ground and looked up at us. We were laughing so hard I was crying, and it shook its head. Then it bellowed. I had never heard a bull bellow before. Let me tell you, it got my attention. It had the fire in its eyes, and we both knew if that mean old bull ever got us, we were goners. Oh, my lord, it was mad. I had made many friends, but this was the first time I knew I had made an enemy.