SOME SISTERS CAN BE A PAIN IN THE A**,
or, HOW LEONARD BECAME A MARKSMAN!

You know, when you're great white hunters, it's pretty easy to get yourself, through no fault of your own mind you, into serious trouble with people who have no sympathy for great white hunters!
One day Leonard and I just happened to be about 50 yards out behind his house lying in the tall grass watching the big, white cloud formations overhead. As most eight year olds will do, we were talking about what great men we were going to be someday, when we heard the back door of his house bang shut. We sat up and observed, in thoughtful silence, Leonard's six year old sister Mary making a quick trip to the outhouse. The front door of Leonard's outhouse was situated at a right angle to us, which made observation of entrances and exits quite clear. After a couple of minutes, Mary was ready to exit. By mutual agreement and for want of anything better to do, we waited until the latch lifted and the door started to swing toward us. We both fired one round from our ever-present BB guns at the center of the door.
The door slammed shut. Not a sound. The door slowly started to swing open once more. Two more shots zinged off the front of the door. The screams of outrage from sister Mary brought Mother to the rescue from the house. Of course, Leonard's Ma couldn't see us in the tall grass. Ten minutes later, after the uproar had died down, Leonard went into the house to ask his Mother's permission to go hunting with me in the Durant woods. I knew there was something amiss when Leonard came out of the house followed by sister Mary. With a hang-dog expression, he informed me that his Mother, as punishment for our shooting at the outhouse door, had said he could go hunting, but had to let sister Mary tag along. Talk about inventive punishment!
It was an impending disaster from the start!
Sister Mary skipped joyfully ahead of us towards the woods. Occasionally she would stop, bend over, flip her skirt over her back baring her panties in our face and comment, scathingly, "Nyah, Nyah!" The comment annoyed me, but I was appreciative of the view.
The third time this happened, Leonard pushed the barrel of his BB gun within one inch of her left buttock and pulled the trigger. So ended the hunting trip for sister Mary!
It was two weeks before I saw Leonard again!

I remember once, Leonard and I were trying to knock a squirrel out of a tree by tossing rocks at him. Leonard's aim, that day, was better than mine; his rock conked the squirrel upside the head, knocking him cold! Leonard went over and picked him up while I looked on enviously.
As we stood admiring his fur--which was full of fleas--Mr. Squirrel suddenly woke up. He took one look at Leonard's face and demonstrated his desire to become a living flag by turning his head and chomping onto the web between Leonard's thumb and first finger, which, of course, caused Leonard to hoist the squirrel into the air, and flap him vigorously while running for the house making big hunter noises like, "Yowch! Eeyow! Ma-a-a-a!"
When he figured he'd flapped long enough to make his point, Mr. Squirrel dropped off and zipped up the nearest tree.
Leonard was a neat guy and funny, too! He was also fast as hell when he wanted to be!

AMAZING FACTS! (YEAH! SURE!)

In the Winter, the pond in the woods had ice to skate on and nearby were small hills for the older kids to ski on. My buddies and I used the hills for sledding, sometimes getting in the way of the skiers, which invariably ticked them off something fierce! They didn't argue with us too much, though. After all, sleds are built ankle height!
As all ponds do, this one had thin spots in the ice around the edges, which were easily broken through if you didn't have enough sled speed to carry you up onto the bank. Stop short and you dropped into a foot of freezing water.
I'll never forget watching Leonard, out in the center of the ice, as he came running hell-bent for leather for the shore. After reaching what he judged to be exit speed, he threw himself down on his sled and glided swiftly to within two feet of the shore where the sled, slowing, stopped dead. For one agonizing second, I could see the cold facts of his circumstance soaking into Leonard's swift little brain, then, with a soft CRACK, Leonard dropped into water that closed completely over his back! He came up sputtering and blowing and spent the next hour by a roaring fire on the bank, trying to get dry.
All the time he sat there drying out, he kept muttering about how he was going to "--fix my wagon", because I wouldn't stop laughing.
I couldn't sympathize with him because whenever I came home with half-frozen feet, my Mother would take my boots off and rub my feet with snow and, young as I was, that never made sense to me. My feet were cold and she put more snow on them? Well, what did I know? I was only a kid and the rubbing did warm my feet up--eventually!

I've talked about how the Winters were cold but never mentioned how wonderful I thought the Summers were. I really liked it most when the humidity was 98 percent and the temperature hovered around 85 degrees. Adults hated it, but it usually rained then and Mom would let me go out on the front lawn and play in the rain. I'd wear a bathing suit and run all over the lawn just like I was in a sprinkler, only I'd never actually seen a sprinkler, of course!
One day, under those same rainy conditions, Mom wouldn't let me go outside. I couldn't understand why. She pointed out the door at several blue gossamer balls, probably four to six inches in diameter, some rolling quickly over the lawn while others zigzagged a little more thoughtfully.
They looked harmless to me. In fact, they looked like it might be fun to chase a few of them and give 'em a good kick, and I wished Mom wasn't such a scaredy-cat as I watched her go back to her ironing.
Eventually I lost interest in watching balls I couldn't chase and moved to the front room floor to goof around with some small cars. Moments later, I heard a strange sizzling sound and when I looked up, the screen door was covered in a blue haze--and just as I looked--BANG!-- there was a streak of blue that zipped up to the ceiling, striking a conduit carrying electrical wiring to a light bulb in the middle of the ceiling, and POW the bulb blew out!
POW, I was under the couch!
My Mother didn't have time to be frightened. The iron, which had been plugged into the outlet on the other end of the conduit was now deader'n a doornail and left her standing there wondering what the hell had happened. She didn't have a mark on her, but the con-duit and wiring were black!
I was a lot more careful about what I wished for from then on, let me tell you! I also decided maybe Mom knew what she was doing, after all!