Author: glenda

Today’s post is written by Garrett. Garrett loves winter and always has fun.  Enjoy.

I love this season. When I was younger my brother, Cookie and I would spend winter days making snowmen. We usually built them just to knock them down again. However, on one occasion we got very creative. Our dad's architecture office was in town but he'd come home for lunch to see us. Cookie and I loved to ambush him. In the summer we'd hide in the hayloft and blast him with our Super Soaker's. In the fall we'd hide in leaf piles and jump out to scare him.

"If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm." -Bruce Barton

 During the winter we had great fun building rows of snow people across the driveway just to see them run over by our dad's truck. One day we had an even better idea. Not only would we build snowmen across the driveway, but we'd  put bags of red food coloring inside them. This way we were sure to scare our dad into thinking that he'd run something over! The morning was spent building whole families of snow people filled with food coloring. By the time our dad got home it was impossible to avoid hitting them. As good humored as he is, he willingly obliged us by driving over them again, and again. Much to his dismay though, my brother and I started yelling instead of laughing when he hit the snowmen. He stopped to see what was going on. He was thoroughly confused by the red snow all over the driveway where the snowmen had been. Only then did Cookie and I burst into laughter, which was short lived. We were then given the task of cleaning up our mess before someone thought there had been some kind of tragic accident. My dad was worried that we would scare our older neighbor, Corky. On a fairly regular basis she would watch what Cookie and I were doing through the lens of her binoculars. She would report our activities to our mom who, in turn, would ask us to move to the other side of the yard out of Corky's view. My dad didn't want to upset her so we started shoveling clean snow over the gruesome scene. We kept a few snowmen in the yard with the carnage still visable as a reminder of the fun we'd had.

 

Today's post is written by Cookie. We were going through old pictures and I asked him to write about growing up on a farm. Here's what he came up with, enjoy.

 

I was eight years old when I first did it. I unplugged the electric fence and waited for something to try and crawl under it. Then I jammed the plug back into the socket. Off yelped a dog, blasted by a pulse of electricity. I was a deranged eight year old, mad with power, using an electric fence to terrify whoever was unfortunate enough to cross his path. My friend David got zapped several times, he always forgave me.

 The fence was four rails made of wood with three strands of electric wire; one at the bottom, second rail, and one strand along the top. My shocking spree lasted several weeks. It was sporadic and unpredictable. At random I’d strike. Dogs, pigs, goats, horses, brothers, or friends were all fair game.

 Then I saw it. The big score. The one to go out with.

It was a frosty morning and the fence needed to be fixed. My dad was on one side, leaning over to reach something across from him. At this point both my parents were blissfully unaware of my newfound hobby, or so I thought. As such, they charged me with unplugging the fence and making sure that it stayed off until my dad was done.

Old habits die hard. In went the plug. Profanity ensued from my father. The deed was done.

Days passed and nothing happened. I was a free man. My alibi of “the wind must have plugged it back in” had seemed to hold up. No one was the wiser. While I hadn’t struck since, I was planning to. In fact, I had unplugged the fence and was sitting on top of it, contemplating when and where to strike next. Shocking people was fun, and I doubted it even hurt that much. Personally I’d never been zapped, but it couldn’t be that bad. Atop the fence I sat, blissfully unaware that I made a perfect target for anyone out for revenge. My mom, intent on teaching me a lesson about mischievous boys, entered the barn behind me.

I was wrong about how bad getting shocked was. When it happened I was taken by complete surprise. If there’s anything worse than sitting on an electrified wire, I’ve never experienced it. Immediately I regretted all my past electrocutions.

From that day forth I've never played with the fencer. Everyone on the farm has been safe from getting an electrical shock from me.

"Good Judgement comes from experience, and experience - well, that comes from poor judgement". -Unknown