Skunks

                                                  

                                               Pepé Le Pew

                                         picture: courtesy of Wikipedia

Skunks

Most folks see them either on the sides of the roads or on a cartoon on television. We got a very close experience of many of them.

In the northern states the cellars or basements close off the bottom of most of the houses. Those little devils found a way to dig down enough to get under the floor of the apartment. This was in the middle of winter so we had to wait until spring  for them to leave. It was terrible. Every time you walked across the floor you could hear them thumping along under your feet.

We were told several ways to get rid of them. Our first try was to pull up the edges of the carpeting and drill holes into the corners of the hard wood floor. Once that was done we poured ammonia down those holes. I can tell you it does not work! The only thing this did was to make them mad and then you would get that awful aroma after.

Next thing on the list was to crush up a bunch of glass and put it around the perimeter so when the skunks would come back after their feedings; it would discourage them from going back under the house. It DID NOT work! Those little critters are very stubborn!

Once my husband caught one of the skunks coming out and shot it! Well; that was one less skunk BUT his shoes were never worn again from the smell after burying it. The grass was covered with the smell. We finally got it off his pant legs. This was in the very early spring.

The last thing we tried was to take pressure treated wood and dig down six feet to place it. We never had another problem. I must tell you though; I almost washed all the paint off the walls trying to get rid of the smell out of the house .

Has anyone else had any experiences with skunks? I would love to hear it.

Entertainment on a Cotton Farm

We lived a few miles from town but we never got there but every 6 weeks. I remember when we did we would all load up in the back of the old red truck and away we would go. Everything looked so fascinating to us.  The Duke and Ayers store (five and dime) was always fun to look in. One time our sister Bonni picked up a pair of those pink handle plastic scissors and started cutting the back of our mothers dress while she walked around. Needless to say; that was quite a while before we got back into town again.

We had that long driveway at home and we would drive our bicycles or scooter to the end and count to a certain color car went by and them we could ride back. Taking turns of course.

There were two old junked cars sitting under some china berry trees. We would crawl on our hands and knees over the tops of the cars and pretend we were on the road and had to stay on our side of the car. Now those china berry trees were something else! Have you ever had china berry fights? Well I can tell you it just plain hurts to get hit by one. We would grab old tin cans and fill them up and then look out! The fight was on!

Do any of you ever remeber making mud pies? My mother threw out an old frying pan and us kids took it to play with. We would gather up hand fulls of dirt and sift it through some chicken wire until it was real fine. Then we would add a little water to it and make patties and pretend we were cooking burgers.

Running across the cotton rows before the plants came up was another thing that was fun. But don't let Daddy catch you doing it! If you accidentally missed the inbetween parts in the rows and he saw it; you were in big trouble.

I remember my sister Tedri and I had a coloring book and colors. We would study the picture real good and then turn the lights out and color to where we thought the things should be. After wards the light would come back on and we would laugh at how crazy the picture looked. Later we would judge who did the best job.

I hope you enjoyed some of this stuff we would come up with to entertain ourselves. There are many more tales and it wasn't always fun. Picking cotton wasn't easy either.

Childhhood Pranks

I am sure everyone has their own tales to tell on their childhood. Mine is no different. I wanted to share with all of you some of the things us siblings went through under my oldest sisters mischeviousness.
Sunni (her name was Vicki back then) had a wild imagination. We didn't have much entertainment stuck out on that farm so I look back and see why she did some of this stuff and laugh about it now.

One of the first things I remember her doing is drawing a hatchet out of paper; coloring it and then cutting it out. She also drew a hand. The boys were always the ones that would end up usually with one of these under their pillow. Of course it came with a horror story if you were the one with it. We were always careful to draw the covers back slowly just in case it was under our covers or pillow. Some of her characters she made up was Mr. Pumperknickle and Mr. Egghead.
Have you ever had to eat or drink something that was just horrifying just to look at? Well; leave it to Sunni; she came up with stuff like this too. I can't remember why she singled us out but I remember getting it twice. Once I had to eat a concoction of mustard and ketchup stirred up together. On another occasion I remember her having me drink chocolate milk with raw figs in it. Back then our grandmother had a fig tree and we were always grabbing the figs off of it and eating them. By this time I was so sick of those things and somehow Sunni knew this. I will never in my lifetime ever eat a raw fig again!
There was a time when she would draw and color all kinds of pills out of papaer and she would make up some illness that we had and we had to eat those things. Don't ask me why we always went along with what she said. I guess since she was the oldest out of 7 of us we figured she knew what she was talking about.
I remember another time when there was a huge ladder laying on the back porch. She told me once I had to jump in the rungs without touching any sides and jump to the end of the ladder. If you touch anything while doing this something unGodly was suppose to happen. I am sure my other siblings can remember other things she put them through as well.

 Remembering School Days......

The first words we heard on school mornings was Daddy saying:
"Up and at 'em boys and girls
 Rise and Shine
 Time to hit the bus line!"
Not one of us has ever forgotten those words. And if you didn't get out of bed Daddy was right there either pulling the covers off or turning our cots over.

Before we went to school; Mama always had some little something for us to eat before we caught the bus. My favorite memory was her taking the cinnamon rolls in that little tin package and setting them in the oven on warm for us all to have atleast a bite of them before we left for school. Some days she would take a slice of bread and put a table knife through it from corner to corner and hold it over the stove burner to brown and then butter it for us.

I used to really hate hearing the words while I was growing up "kids don't realize how easy they have it today". Now I find myself saying the same thing as an adult. I can remember the first day I was to catch the bus with all of my siblings in the morning. We had to walk down the long dirt driveway to the end and stand by the side of the highway and wait for the bus. Sometimes on winter days where the driveway was so muddy that you couldn't walk down it; Daddy would bring the cow trailer around and load us all up on it to take us to the end of the road to catch the bus. (my four sisters and older brother and me. The youngest brother was not old enough yet to go to school).

I remember feeling so excited that first time to be going with the others. Back then we all rode the same bus to school. It was very scary going up those steps and seeing all those other kids already sitting down. I never had an assigned seat. It seemed like I was always getting shuffled around somewhere. Usually as far to the back of the bus as possible. The high school kids looked like giants to me and once we were on the bus my siblings never talked to me on the ride to school. The bus driver Mr. Knapps wasn't a very nice fellow either. He was always hollering at someone. And to think I was so excited to be going with all my sisters and brother to catch that bus. Of course the novelty wore off after a while.

Everyone had to be at school by 8:00 AM or they would be counted as tardy. And I remember watching the clock for 3:45PM to come around so that we would once again be loaded onto buses to come home. We were not all on the same bus coming home. This pattern went on and on until we moved from the farm into town. Then some of us walked the two blocks to school while the older girls would get rides to school with their friends. No more school buses for us. Atleast not the older ones. I can remember later the population grew so much that we had to ride different buses to the school that was picked for us because it was so far away.