***
"Wilt! Wilt! That man Jesus touched the poor guy. Look! His leg has wilted. He can't even walk. Ahh!"
***
The day I realized the King James Version would not be a fit for the ministry to which God had called me was the hot summer afternoon I assisted with a Vacation Bible School for the neighborhood children in Fresno, California in my first church assignment out of Bible college.
In our denomination, the Children's divisions for Bible instruction are carefully crafted. They often include multiple teaching props. One prop that is traditional for teaching the younger children--and is also often used by our missionaries in teaching simple truths to the illiterate in far away places in times gone by--was the Picture Roll. The Picture Roll is a 2 foot wide by 3 feet high roll, with a new picture on each page. It sits on a wooden stand, and the pictures can be show as needed by simply lifting those not in use over the top of the stand so the appropriate scene is revealed. Eager young minds could see the picture and learn the verse printed beneath it, while the teacher would tell the story from which the text and the picture were taken. It was simple, colorful, attractive teaching technology--a tool of the trade for child instructors. Pretty much anybody could use it.
Except me. I ran into a snag. With a room full of forty ghetto kids sitting around listening, I turned to the trusty Picture Roll's first scene with a feeling of conscious competence. I'd just completed four years of Bible school a matter of weeks before. Teaching these simple Bible stories to mere children should be a snap.
The picture showed Jesus bending over a lame man, his hand outstretched. The lame man was saying, "If Thou wilt, Thou canst heal me." I read the verse aloud, had the kids repeat it after me. Then, resorting to the Socratic method of instruction, I asked, "What does this mean?"
Immediately the children began chorusing, "Wilt! Wilt! That man Jesus touched the poor guy. Look! His leg has wilted. He can't even walk. Ahh!" I was so appalled at what they'd just taken from a straight forward reading of the King James, I said, "No! Oh, no! It doesn't mean 'wilt, wilt'. It means, "If you wish, you can heal me." The cheerful little chirpers with dirty faces and ragged clothes kept grinning and waiting to learn more. They liked stories about witches who live in gingerbread houses and catch kids and keep them in cages, and cook them. They liked stories about giants who shouted "Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman! I'll beat him, I'll eat him, I'll pound his bones to bread. Then I'll spread him on toast with jam and eat him for breakfast!" Or something similar.
The neighborhood kids who had come to Vacation Bible School liked my stories about Jesus, too. He could just touch people, and they would wilt. Only, I, as storyteller, they were certain, was keeping the secret for dramatic purposes. I said "wilt" meant something else. Of course, they all knew better. But they would play along until the story unfolded more fully.
Only, I knew how that story was going to unfold. I saw I was in deep water, and that maybe I didn't know how to swim as well as I'd thought. Exegeting tenses and participles in Biblical Greek and delving into eschatological distinctions concerning end time events hadn't prepared me for this. I abandoned that page of the Picture Roll as a lost cause, and moved on to something else—flipping to another page at random.
There was the same Jesus as in the first scene, only this time with children crowding around him on every side. He was laying his hands on their heads. Whew! We'd get this matter of Jesus being a hero instead of a villain cleared up quickly, before we sent these little munchkins on to cookies, punch and crafts with an entirely wrong impression.
I held forth boldly again. "Now kids, let's look at this story. Here is our memory text. Everybody say it after me, 'Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not.' They all chimed in, in the best tradition of an audience at a melodrama, repeating the text after me. Then I asked, “What does this verse mean?"
Immediately forty squirming hopscotch theologians began parsing and exegeting the text at hand, as instructed. "Suffer? Suffer? Oh, its Jesus again--that man who touches people and wilts their legs. Yes. He's touching the children so they will suffer! He is putting his hands on their heads. They're going to be wilting like dead daisies!" Suffer the little children. Plain as day. Right there in the King James Version Picture Roll text. If you read it for yourself, you know its true.
I was struck speechless, which for a preacher at any stage of his development, is a remarkable thing. I looked around at all those grinning faces beaming up at me with such good will, expecting me to tell them the truth about Jesus---and I saw they thought I was doing a marvelous job of it, so far.
Finally, I stuttered, "Suffer? Suffer? No, it doesn't mean Jesus touches them and they all suffer and wilt like the man with the lame leg. Suffer doesn't mean 'suffer'. It means 'let'. Jesus is saying, "LET the little children come unto me, don't keep them away." They all looked up at me, grinning. By now they were coming to realize I truly believed the lies I was telling them about words meaning different things than words actually meant. I could see in their eyes they knew I was a total idiot, but they liked me anyway. Because even if I didn't have a clue on God's green earth about the things I was saying, I at least had come and tell them whopping good stories. About Jesus wilting people's legs and making children suffer like dead daisies by simply patting them painfully on the head.
Any teacher who doesn't learn more from his students than they do from him, isn't fit to continue teaching. That week, I purchased a reliable modern translation of the Bible. I didn't want to keep on telling little ghetto kids--who hadn't grown up speaking 500 year old King James English as their second language—more lies about God. I've used a reliable modern language version in my preaching, teaching, and storytelling ever since. It is the only way I could keep looking God in the eye.
Showing posts with label humorous history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label humorous history. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The World's Largest Cowpie, and How It Was Almost Successfully Crossed
The World's Largest Cow Pie was, in fact, achieved by numerous chickens who worked cooperatively over a period of time. This glooping monster was expelled late one winter from a dump truck onto the half acre plot beside the house I grew up for future use as garden fertilizer. Scooped in an eye-watering cloud of ammonia fumes from beneath the laying pens at the chicken farm where we three Johnson kids gathered and packed eggs at two cents per flat, it was, we neighborhood kids were sure, the largest specimen of its kind in existence.
The front loader on the chicken farm tractor plunged in, tilted, backed out, and dumped its big bucket into the back of the dump truck repeatedly. Then began the ride to our garden space in the small neighborhood two towns away. The dump truck backed into the center of the waiting half acre. Then its rear flap was unlatched and the hydraulic lift screamed to lift and shift the massive load. There before our eyes, like the primordial toilet of some great dinosaur, we kids witnessed the creation of The World's Largest Cow Pie. It glurped, steaming, to the cold ground. Fragrant, semi-fluid, and thick as oozing lava, it settled in a puddle about 15 feet across and three feet deep. Within its semi-liquid heart lay my Father's dreams for the finest garden in the neighborhood.
My father's dream was not without foundation. He had grown up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, and knew the power potent fertilizer exerted upon growing things. In his boyhood days before indoor plumbing was common, outhouses were mined each spring and spread on the face of the fields under the euphemistic phrase "night soil", presumably in memory of blizzardy midnights on wooden thrones with drafty bottoms. It was their early equivalent of recycling. Everybody used night soil for fertilizer back then, and nobody complained. But times had changed. Folks had grown more finicky and tender minded. Other views and customs prevailed. So the arrival of The World's Largest Cow Pie, which while it did not emanate from humanity, was still a novelty in our neighborhood. While the concept had many enthusiasts among the younger set, their elders looked upon it with suspicion and upturned noses.
Weeks passed. The initial stink passed. The great cow pie in our garden began to crust over. We neighborhood kids, who had almost forgotten it, looked upon it again with new eyes. The huge crusting over cow pie reminded us of ice freezing over on the nearby ponds during the winter. Only this pond stood three feet deep above the surrounding chickweed in our still-to-be-tilled garden spot. It was brown and crusty, and had cracks on its surface. It didn't smell nearly so badly as the day it first arrived.
We speculated among ourselves that the crust had grown so thick one could walked across it safely. In fact, the more we talked among ourselves, the more we became convinced this was a important fact that needed verification. In the end, we recruited my four-year-old sister, Ingrid, to prove our theory. Ingrid was the most likely subject for the experiment. First, she was young enough to be be pliable. She could be talked into it. Second, she was the littlest and lightest kid in the neighborhood. She had the best chance of pulling it off. Third, we weren't entirely sure the crust would actually hold, so we needed someone else to brave the crossing. We led her, by persuasions and enticements of the glory that would be hers, to the edge of the great heap of moldering dung. Lack of life experience is a dreadful thing when others wish you to attempt what they will not.
Ingrid scaled the side of The World's Largest Cow Pie successfully. Its edges had indeed become hardened as the liquid vaporized or sank into the soil below. Our theory that the dried crust would support her lighter weight proved true--up to a point about six feet from the nearest edge. She was tiptoeing across quite nicely, when, suddenly, the brown crust broke beneath her like treacherous ice. Ingrid sank past her waist into the oozing chicken muck that boiled up from below. We who stood around watching were struck by the sudden fear that the stinking poop would suck her clear under, like quick sand. We set up a general wail that brought my Mom out of the house on the run. My sister floundered toward the edge and reached out a desperate hand. Mom grabbed hold and dragged her to safety. Then she turned on the garden hose and sprayed her off, before stripping her shorts and shirt, wrapping her in a towel, and leading her inside for a warm bath.
The World's Largest Cow Pie had plainly become a hazard to small children. It had nearly swallowed my sister. It might eat more of us. Mom prevailed upon Dad to do something about it. After work over the next week, Dad turned the original monster into a thousand smaller versions of itself. He scooped shovel fulls into his wheelbarrow, transported it through the early spring weeds, and plopped it down every few feet over the garden's entire surface. It looked like our half acre garden spot had hosted a herd of Holsteins with the runs. Only it stank rankly like the chicken poop it was. You could smell the Johnson place before you could see it driving in from town. Complaints from neighbors near and far rose to an angry rumble. What could those Johnson's be doing down there that smelled so bad? Why should they inflict this horrific odor on the entire neighborhood? The stench was enough to gag a maggot.
Dad ignored the neighbors' talk, and kept stolidly shoveling the fragrant stuff. He was a man with a plan, and nobody was going to stop him. Once the great cow pie was distributed, he hired a man with a tractor and a rototiller to come and churn the stinky stuff into garden soil. Then we planted corn, pole and string beans, summer squash, carrots, kohlrabi, tomatoes, beets, cabbages, lettuce, dill, parsley, potatoes, pumpkins, radishes, and the rest in rows and hills.
It mattered little what we planted. Vegetables and weeds alike exploded in glorious profusion. That year our garden easily produced three times more than any other garden in our neighborhood. Our corn patch rose, a mighty forest. The pole beans slithered up and weighted down their holding lines like jungle vines. Tomatoes loomed large in vivid green, weighed down with fruit. Our zucchinis swelled and jutted like torpedoes. Row upon row of the rankest and richest vegetation flourished in Eden-like profusion. Mom's rows of cut flowers for the church pulpit bouquets blossomed, heavy-headed on vigorous stalks. It seems everything that grows likes the taste of chicken manure.
As we lived near the entrance to our street, our lush garden was readily visible to passing neighbors. It produced so much food we were handing out fresh vegetables to anyone who would take it the rest of the summer. People took to locking their car doors at church to keep annonymous bags of zuchinis from appearing on their front seats during services. Back home, the public mood changed. The next spring, every garden plot behind the houses along our street had its own great cow pie installed. It seemed my Dad had become the gardening trend setter. The World's Largest Cow Pie had inspired imitators. Our neighborhood stank for miles. Nobody complained.
As for us kids, we played Robin Hood of Sherwood's forest in the corn patch, built dinosaurs from excess summer squash using kindling sticks for legs and hooking together the body parts, and grazed on fresh vegetables at will. The World's Largest Cow Pie had paid off hansomely.
We never heard of any other kids attempting another cow pie crossing, however. It seems the word had gotten around and grew into local cautionary legend. Sometimes, one experiment is enough.
"The steps of a man are established by the Lord, and He delights in his way. When he falls he will not be hurled headlong, because the Lord is the one who holds his hand." Psalm 37:23, 24 NASB
The front loader on the chicken farm tractor plunged in, tilted, backed out, and dumped its big bucket into the back of the dump truck repeatedly. Then began the ride to our garden space in the small neighborhood two towns away. The dump truck backed into the center of the waiting half acre. Then its rear flap was unlatched and the hydraulic lift screamed to lift and shift the massive load. There before our eyes, like the primordial toilet of some great dinosaur, we kids witnessed the creation of The World's Largest Cow Pie. It glurped, steaming, to the cold ground. Fragrant, semi-fluid, and thick as oozing lava, it settled in a puddle about 15 feet across and three feet deep. Within its semi-liquid heart lay my Father's dreams for the finest garden in the neighborhood.
My father's dream was not without foundation. He had grown up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, and knew the power potent fertilizer exerted upon growing things. In his boyhood days before indoor plumbing was common, outhouses were mined each spring and spread on the face of the fields under the euphemistic phrase "night soil", presumably in memory of blizzardy midnights on wooden thrones with drafty bottoms. It was their early equivalent of recycling. Everybody used night soil for fertilizer back then, and nobody complained. But times had changed. Folks had grown more finicky and tender minded. Other views and customs prevailed. So the arrival of The World's Largest Cow Pie, which while it did not emanate from humanity, was still a novelty in our neighborhood. While the concept had many enthusiasts among the younger set, their elders looked upon it with suspicion and upturned noses.
Weeks passed. The initial stink passed. The great cow pie in our garden began to crust over. We neighborhood kids, who had almost forgotten it, looked upon it again with new eyes. The huge crusting over cow pie reminded us of ice freezing over on the nearby ponds during the winter. Only this pond stood three feet deep above the surrounding chickweed in our still-to-be-tilled garden spot. It was brown and crusty, and had cracks on its surface. It didn't smell nearly so badly as the day it first arrived.
We speculated among ourselves that the crust had grown so thick one could walked across it safely. In fact, the more we talked among ourselves, the more we became convinced this was a important fact that needed verification. In the end, we recruited my four-year-old sister, Ingrid, to prove our theory. Ingrid was the most likely subject for the experiment. First, she was young enough to be be pliable. She could be talked into it. Second, she was the littlest and lightest kid in the neighborhood. She had the best chance of pulling it off. Third, we weren't entirely sure the crust would actually hold, so we needed someone else to brave the crossing. We led her, by persuasions and enticements of the glory that would be hers, to the edge of the great heap of moldering dung. Lack of life experience is a dreadful thing when others wish you to attempt what they will not.
Ingrid scaled the side of The World's Largest Cow Pie successfully. Its edges had indeed become hardened as the liquid vaporized or sank into the soil below. Our theory that the dried crust would support her lighter weight proved true--up to a point about six feet from the nearest edge. She was tiptoeing across quite nicely, when, suddenly, the brown crust broke beneath her like treacherous ice. Ingrid sank past her waist into the oozing chicken muck that boiled up from below. We who stood around watching were struck by the sudden fear that the stinking poop would suck her clear under, like quick sand. We set up a general wail that brought my Mom out of the house on the run. My sister floundered toward the edge and reached out a desperate hand. Mom grabbed hold and dragged her to safety. Then she turned on the garden hose and sprayed her off, before stripping her shorts and shirt, wrapping her in a towel, and leading her inside for a warm bath.
The World's Largest Cow Pie had plainly become a hazard to small children. It had nearly swallowed my sister. It might eat more of us. Mom prevailed upon Dad to do something about it. After work over the next week, Dad turned the original monster into a thousand smaller versions of itself. He scooped shovel fulls into his wheelbarrow, transported it through the early spring weeds, and plopped it down every few feet over the garden's entire surface. It looked like our half acre garden spot had hosted a herd of Holsteins with the runs. Only it stank rankly like the chicken poop it was. You could smell the Johnson place before you could see it driving in from town. Complaints from neighbors near and far rose to an angry rumble. What could those Johnson's be doing down there that smelled so bad? Why should they inflict this horrific odor on the entire neighborhood? The stench was enough to gag a maggot.
Dad ignored the neighbors' talk, and kept stolidly shoveling the fragrant stuff. He was a man with a plan, and nobody was going to stop him. Once the great cow pie was distributed, he hired a man with a tractor and a rototiller to come and churn the stinky stuff into garden soil. Then we planted corn, pole and string beans, summer squash, carrots, kohlrabi, tomatoes, beets, cabbages, lettuce, dill, parsley, potatoes, pumpkins, radishes, and the rest in rows and hills.
It mattered little what we planted. Vegetables and weeds alike exploded in glorious profusion. That year our garden easily produced three times more than any other garden in our neighborhood. Our corn patch rose, a mighty forest. The pole beans slithered up and weighted down their holding lines like jungle vines. Tomatoes loomed large in vivid green, weighed down with fruit. Our zucchinis swelled and jutted like torpedoes. Row upon row of the rankest and richest vegetation flourished in Eden-like profusion. Mom's rows of cut flowers for the church pulpit bouquets blossomed, heavy-headed on vigorous stalks. It seems everything that grows likes the taste of chicken manure.
As we lived near the entrance to our street, our lush garden was readily visible to passing neighbors. It produced so much food we were handing out fresh vegetables to anyone who would take it the rest of the summer. People took to locking their car doors at church to keep annonymous bags of zuchinis from appearing on their front seats during services. Back home, the public mood changed. The next spring, every garden plot behind the houses along our street had its own great cow pie installed. It seemed my Dad had become the gardening trend setter. The World's Largest Cow Pie had inspired imitators. Our neighborhood stank for miles. Nobody complained.
As for us kids, we played Robin Hood of Sherwood's forest in the corn patch, built dinosaurs from excess summer squash using kindling sticks for legs and hooking together the body parts, and grazed on fresh vegetables at will. The World's Largest Cow Pie had paid off hansomely.
We never heard of any other kids attempting another cow pie crossing, however. It seems the word had gotten around and grew into local cautionary legend. Sometimes, one experiment is enough.
"The steps of a man are established by the Lord, and He delights in his way. When he falls he will not be hurled headlong, because the Lord is the one who holds his hand." Psalm 37:23, 24 NASB
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Things That Are Supposed to Be True About Skunks...But Aren't
When I was a boy, we had three skunks for pets. I caught two of them myself. They were still armed, so to speak. In the process, I disproved certain myths, falsely circulated as facts, concerning this fragrant critter.
My Mom caught our first skunk one summer while blackberry picking in Washington State, where we lived, while the rest of the family was back on my Grandparent's farm in Missouri, where Dad was remodeling a house. By the time we arrived home, Cologne, as she had named the new addition to our rather extensive "family animal menagerie", was as innocuous as a kitten, olfactorily speaking.
The skunk, having such a deadly chemical weapon at its ready disposal, never has had to develop a hostile disposition to ensure survive. As a result, this particular branch of the mammal clan has a rather pleasing personality. Once the twin glands beneath his tail were removed through minor veterinarian surgery, Cologne became as sweet a pet as you could hope to acquire. When my father lay on the bed, Cologne would stand on his chest and pound with his front paws to request the raw hamburger that was his favorite food. He once scrubbed a shrew into mush when we presented one the cat had dragged up on the front porch. He refused to eat the tiny rodent, however. Apparently, he thought it stank. Ground steer was more to his liking.
Attached to a leash, Cologne scooted along the sidewalk like a small dog, much to the amazement and interest of the general public. People were never quite sure whether to draw near in wonder, or flee in terror. Cologne liked being carried. He would even stick his head inside my brother's mouth in search of some fragment of a potato or blot of mustard he might devour, much to us watching kids' delight. We all wondered how far down he would go, so kept a leash on during such experiments, in case a retrieval were required and we must drag him back through my brother's tonsils. All in all, Cologne was a marvelous pet.
One night, Cologne escaped through the kicked-through bottom of our front screen door when someone forgot to shut the main door. The neighbor boy had kicked in the screen door and come in to help himself to a cube of butter one day when he found the screen door latched. We had never repaired it. We hoped Cologne's reputation would come to his assistance in the great wild world beyond, since his six gun holsters were both empty.
I immediately began dreaming of catching Cologne's replacement.
Us three Johnson kids were still in grade school. As we attended a small, church-operated educational facility that relied on charging tuition rather than taxing the public for its support, we began working to help earn our tuition at an early age. One of our first jobs for pay was gathering eggs on one of the chicken farms that belonged to the doctor in whose clinic my Mom worked. Those long laying houses where the eggs rolled down to the aisles on each side and the chicken poop fell through to the ground below, attracted skunks. They'd come in, along with rats and raccoons from the adjoining woods, to search for such eggs as broke and fell through the wire, or to eat the occasional dead chicken that had been discarded into the stink below. Even over the sometimes over powering smell of ammonia from the juicy droppings, a skunk's smell still carries. There's really nothing else like it in nature. As I gathered eggs, I kept an eye open for a new skunk for a pet. But though I often saw adults of the species, there were none young enough for de-scenting and taming.
Then late one rainy night as we neared home, I spotted a small skunk in the beam of the headlights. "Stop the car!" I howled. Whether in agreement, or in shock, Mom complied. I quickly exited the car in pursuit of the skunk, which disappeared over the dark bank down into the field adjoining my friend, Ken Knutson's parents' house. Even in the near dark, those black and white stripes allowed me to keep his trail.
Now I happened to be wearing my brother's new grizzly bear coat. We each had gotten a new winter coat of fake animal fur a few days earlier. His was imitation grizzly bear's hide, long, dark and tipped with blue highlights. Mine was a blonder longhaired variety with a touch of brown shading--perhaps a polyester buffalo of some sort. I'm not sure why I had John's coat on rather than my own that night. But I do recall him calling, "Watch out for my new coat!" I was too excited at the prospect of capturing my own pet skunk to pay heed. The wild wind and rain snatched away his words as though they had never been spoken.
I trailed the escaping skunk from the mowed field through the Knutson's garden. He dodged this way and that among the rows of corn and pumpkin vines, lifted his tail briefly, but kept on going. Eventually, I cornered him beside the glass door going into the Knutson's basement. There the wall jutted out at the edge of the slab of cement where we shot hoops. He was stuck in the V, and I could head him off whichever way he turned. The skunk whirled to face me in earnest, stomping and lifting his tail, according to the custom of his kind. I ripped off my brother's great grizzly bear coat and began shaking it at the skunk, like a bullfighter taunting the raging beast with a cape.
Based on what I had earlier read concerning skunks, this seemed the most prudent strategy. According to notable experts in wildlife, the common white and black striped skunk has only 6 or 7 squirts of that stinky stuff before he runs dry. The implication is that if you can entice him to use up that ammunition, you can pick him up safely at your leisure. The poor little skunk must have thought that great, fake-furred grizzly had him for sure. Each time I lunged forward, he'd go up on his forelegs and cut loose with another blinding blast of nose venom.
One!
Two!
Three!
Four!
Five!
Six!
Seven!
Ha! He was all squirted out. I had him now. I lowered my brother's odiferous coat to allow an unimpeded view of my quarry.
Eight!
Nine!
He nailed me with two withering shots that smelled like essence of burned rubber, and which, by all written accounts by armchair nature experts, couldn't possibly have been in his gun. My jaw dropped open and my eyes widened in amazement. I lowered the coat even further to view this marvel of nature.
Ten!
In the end, I caught that skunk just as Dr. Knutson, who had been watching T.V. in the basement, slid the glass door open to find out what was causing the horrific stench to permeate his living quarters. My friend's father, being a hunter, owned a shotgun. He sometimes emptied the lead shot and reloaded the shells with rock salt to educate dogs that toppled his trashcans. He was angry enough to educate me in a similar fashion, I think. But he couldn't chance a shot with the skunk in such close proximity without becoming liable to incur additional damages. So I made my escape.
I strode home in a swirling cloud of victory, with Cologne the Second held at arm's length in the furry folds of my brother's ruined grizzly bear coat. Everyone in the neighborhood knew something had tangled with a skunk before I arrived at that one place where, if you come, they have to take you in. Fortunately, my family did not own firearms. No one wanted to get near enough to me to whop me, as I deserved with a belt, or even to prod me with a broom handle. So they locked the doors and called out hopeful instructions through cracked windows.
My crimes against humanity were such that I escaped direct punishment, other than the simple expedient of social banishment. I dropped the new skunk into a large ice chest beside the garage, carefully inserting some milk-soaked bread and a broken egg for his supper, as we had no hamburger available. I wanted Cologne the Second to survive until we could get him to the vet for descenting. Then I began the futile effort of attempting the impossibility of cleansing my stinking self back into civilized society again.
According to the experts I had consulting among the weekly armloads of books we checked out from the local library, there are, in fact, several suitable liquids legendary for their ability to remove scent of the skunk from one's defiled person and clothing. Some experts list their favorite few. Others offer different suggestions. Occasionally, the experts' lists overlap. Besides having arrived in print, these recommendations have one thing in common: They don't work.
I tried quarts of tomato juice, vinegar, bleach, ammonia, laundry detergent, and even gasoline. These only enhanced, rather than removed, the original fragrance. In the end, I buried my brother's grizzly bear coat, along with the rest of the clothes I had been wearing, in a deep hole at the end of our garden. That, I had read, is also a recommended method for removing smell of skunk. Unlike the liquid suggestions, burial actually works. So long as you bury it deep enough. So long as you never dig the clothes up again ever. So long as you have included the essential step of burying yourself along with them.
For the next several days, the teacher at our grade school sat me at a desk by the open classroom window. My condition made me a little neurotic. Out on the playground at recess I could tag along with the games, so long as we played outdoors and I was careful to stay down wind. Inside, it was a different matter. On warm afternoons, when I began to perspire, I could smell myself. I was sure everyone else in the classroom could as well--particularly when they started choking and gagging and wiping their eyes. That sort of thing can put a permanent dent in a boy's budding psyche.
Eventually, the skunk's smell faded. By then, Cologne the Second was also a memory. He had eaten the bread and egg I provided, nosed open the crack in the lid of the ice chest, and returned to the wilds from which I had snatched him the same night I caught him.
Several weeks passed before I encountered Cologne the Third. I was coming back along the lane from Horseshoe Lake, which lay a half-mile behind the Knutson's property. We'd go down there fishing in the summer and hunting with BB guns in the fall and winter. By now, it was fall. I looked up the muddy lane to see a half grown skunk crossing between brush rows that bordered the lane. I immediately dropped my BB gun, ripped off my outer long-sleeved shirt, and began the bullfighting stance required for capture. One tends to revert to old habits in a crisis, even if they didn't work well before.
Exactly as the experts stated, the skunk, when disturbed, first pounds the ground with his front feet. That's his sign language means of warning you to back off. Then he lifts his tail. If you still don't get the message, he raised up on his front paws, lifting his hind legs over his shoulders and arching his back so that he can both shoot you over his own head and see what he's aiming at the same time. This is rather a neat acrobatic trick if you see it on a nature show on T.V., rather than in person.
I saw the yellow globules of spray beginning to spread in the air before they hit me. The wretched odor of concentrated burned rubber smote my nostrils a staggering blow. I gagged, yet I still pressed forward, closing in for the quick capture. I knew I had no idea how many shots this treacherous critter might have stored rectally. But since my last encounter with the species, I had acquired another curious and helpful fact about skunks. The best experts all affirmed it: If you pick up a skunk by its tail, it cannot squirt you. Somehow, dangling by his tail paralyzes the muscles that do the aiming and the ejection of the significant fluids.
I closed in quickly, like an infantryman charging a trench mid-mustard gas attack. The air was thick with the foulest spray, but I had my eye on the prize, that black and white frond of a tail. I reached and caught hold of it, lifting my quarry into the air. There, dangling with all four feet off the ground, the little stinker twisted his small body, looked me in the eye, and let me have a blistering blast at point blank range. So much for the experts' advice.
After that, I swore off skunks. I'd tried the patience of my family, classmates, neighbors, teachers, and fellow church members sufficiently. My interests turned to other wild pets. A half grown crow with an injured wing that my brother and I built a spacious cage for, only to find its new occupant a heap of cold feathers the next morning. Polliwogs with no, one, two, three, and even four legs we scooped from a slough along the road in a fishing net we constructed from the wedding veil we found in my Mom's closet and installed with the goldfish in the bowl on the bookcase. A score of sunfish we brought home and set swimming in our wading pool. The naked, still-blind baby sparrow my Mom found blasted from the nest in the bush beside the back door to the clinic where she worked by a sudden summer downpour. These, along with the more ordinary dogs, cats, puppies, kittens, sheep, chickens, and horse all entered and exited our lives in their turn. When we were collecting insects at school, by brother and I even sent away for praying mantis eggs, hatched them, and had 20 or 30 Mason jars incubators where we raised them on fruit flies.
But of all the members of our family's animal menagerie, none could match the three Colognes, at least in their ability to harness the attention of the neighbors--who involuntarily learned of their capture, and retained that memory for several days. My friend Ken's Dad finally forgave me for catching that skunk on his back porch. It was either that, or kill me. Many years later, Dr. Knutson still shifted in his chair uneasily and eyed me suspiciously when I reminded him of the incident. I had, after all, temporarily driven down housing prices in the area. My brother got a new winter coat. The skunks themselves became a wafting memory. Somewhere in the back of the old garden beside the house where I was raised, under two feet of dirt, lies the moldering remains of a fake grizzly bear's hide. I never did dig up my brother's coat, or the other clothes I buried with it. Some things, once buried, are better left undisturbed.
I recall these things and have written them here because a childhood friend, who sat near me at school, reminded me of the incident earlier today. Apparently, of our many shared memories of growing up together, this is the one that left its mark most deeply engraved in his recollections four decades later.
He remembers how I stank.
"A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it." Proverbs 22:3 NIV
My Mom caught our first skunk one summer while blackberry picking in Washington State, where we lived, while the rest of the family was back on my Grandparent's farm in Missouri, where Dad was remodeling a house. By the time we arrived home, Cologne, as she had named the new addition to our rather extensive "family animal menagerie", was as innocuous as a kitten, olfactorily speaking.
The skunk, having such a deadly chemical weapon at its ready disposal, never has had to develop a hostile disposition to ensure survive. As a result, this particular branch of the mammal clan has a rather pleasing personality. Once the twin glands beneath his tail were removed through minor veterinarian surgery, Cologne became as sweet a pet as you could hope to acquire. When my father lay on the bed, Cologne would stand on his chest and pound with his front paws to request the raw hamburger that was his favorite food. He once scrubbed a shrew into mush when we presented one the cat had dragged up on the front porch. He refused to eat the tiny rodent, however. Apparently, he thought it stank. Ground steer was more to his liking.
Attached to a leash, Cologne scooted along the sidewalk like a small dog, much to the amazement and interest of the general public. People were never quite sure whether to draw near in wonder, or flee in terror. Cologne liked being carried. He would even stick his head inside my brother's mouth in search of some fragment of a potato or blot of mustard he might devour, much to us watching kids' delight. We all wondered how far down he would go, so kept a leash on during such experiments, in case a retrieval were required and we must drag him back through my brother's tonsils. All in all, Cologne was a marvelous pet.
One night, Cologne escaped through the kicked-through bottom of our front screen door when someone forgot to shut the main door. The neighbor boy had kicked in the screen door and come in to help himself to a cube of butter one day when he found the screen door latched. We had never repaired it. We hoped Cologne's reputation would come to his assistance in the great wild world beyond, since his six gun holsters were both empty.
I immediately began dreaming of catching Cologne's replacement.
Us three Johnson kids were still in grade school. As we attended a small, church-operated educational facility that relied on charging tuition rather than taxing the public for its support, we began working to help earn our tuition at an early age. One of our first jobs for pay was gathering eggs on one of the chicken farms that belonged to the doctor in whose clinic my Mom worked. Those long laying houses where the eggs rolled down to the aisles on each side and the chicken poop fell through to the ground below, attracted skunks. They'd come in, along with rats and raccoons from the adjoining woods, to search for such eggs as broke and fell through the wire, or to eat the occasional dead chicken that had been discarded into the stink below. Even over the sometimes over powering smell of ammonia from the juicy droppings, a skunk's smell still carries. There's really nothing else like it in nature. As I gathered eggs, I kept an eye open for a new skunk for a pet. But though I often saw adults of the species, there were none young enough for de-scenting and taming.
Then late one rainy night as we neared home, I spotted a small skunk in the beam of the headlights. "Stop the car!" I howled. Whether in agreement, or in shock, Mom complied. I quickly exited the car in pursuit of the skunk, which disappeared over the dark bank down into the field adjoining my friend, Ken Knutson's parents' house. Even in the near dark, those black and white stripes allowed me to keep his trail.
Now I happened to be wearing my brother's new grizzly bear coat. We each had gotten a new winter coat of fake animal fur a few days earlier. His was imitation grizzly bear's hide, long, dark and tipped with blue highlights. Mine was a blonder longhaired variety with a touch of brown shading--perhaps a polyester buffalo of some sort. I'm not sure why I had John's coat on rather than my own that night. But I do recall him calling, "Watch out for my new coat!" I was too excited at the prospect of capturing my own pet skunk to pay heed. The wild wind and rain snatched away his words as though they had never been spoken.
I trailed the escaping skunk from the mowed field through the Knutson's garden. He dodged this way and that among the rows of corn and pumpkin vines, lifted his tail briefly, but kept on going. Eventually, I cornered him beside the glass door going into the Knutson's basement. There the wall jutted out at the edge of the slab of cement where we shot hoops. He was stuck in the V, and I could head him off whichever way he turned. The skunk whirled to face me in earnest, stomping and lifting his tail, according to the custom of his kind. I ripped off my brother's great grizzly bear coat and began shaking it at the skunk, like a bullfighter taunting the raging beast with a cape.
Based on what I had earlier read concerning skunks, this seemed the most prudent strategy. According to notable experts in wildlife, the common white and black striped skunk has only 6 or 7 squirts of that stinky stuff before he runs dry. The implication is that if you can entice him to use up that ammunition, you can pick him up safely at your leisure. The poor little skunk must have thought that great, fake-furred grizzly had him for sure. Each time I lunged forward, he'd go up on his forelegs and cut loose with another blinding blast of nose venom.
One!
Two!
Three!
Four!
Five!
Six!
Seven!
Ha! He was all squirted out. I had him now. I lowered my brother's odiferous coat to allow an unimpeded view of my quarry.
Eight!
Nine!
He nailed me with two withering shots that smelled like essence of burned rubber, and which, by all written accounts by armchair nature experts, couldn't possibly have been in his gun. My jaw dropped open and my eyes widened in amazement. I lowered the coat even further to view this marvel of nature.
Ten!
In the end, I caught that skunk just as Dr. Knutson, who had been watching T.V. in the basement, slid the glass door open to find out what was causing the horrific stench to permeate his living quarters. My friend's father, being a hunter, owned a shotgun. He sometimes emptied the lead shot and reloaded the shells with rock salt to educate dogs that toppled his trashcans. He was angry enough to educate me in a similar fashion, I think. But he couldn't chance a shot with the skunk in such close proximity without becoming liable to incur additional damages. So I made my escape.
I strode home in a swirling cloud of victory, with Cologne the Second held at arm's length in the furry folds of my brother's ruined grizzly bear coat. Everyone in the neighborhood knew something had tangled with a skunk before I arrived at that one place where, if you come, they have to take you in. Fortunately, my family did not own firearms. No one wanted to get near enough to me to whop me, as I deserved with a belt, or even to prod me with a broom handle. So they locked the doors and called out hopeful instructions through cracked windows.
My crimes against humanity were such that I escaped direct punishment, other than the simple expedient of social banishment. I dropped the new skunk into a large ice chest beside the garage, carefully inserting some milk-soaked bread and a broken egg for his supper, as we had no hamburger available. I wanted Cologne the Second to survive until we could get him to the vet for descenting. Then I began the futile effort of attempting the impossibility of cleansing my stinking self back into civilized society again.
According to the experts I had consulting among the weekly armloads of books we checked out from the local library, there are, in fact, several suitable liquids legendary for their ability to remove scent of the skunk from one's defiled person and clothing. Some experts list their favorite few. Others offer different suggestions. Occasionally, the experts' lists overlap. Besides having arrived in print, these recommendations have one thing in common: They don't work.
I tried quarts of tomato juice, vinegar, bleach, ammonia, laundry detergent, and even gasoline. These only enhanced, rather than removed, the original fragrance. In the end, I buried my brother's grizzly bear coat, along with the rest of the clothes I had been wearing, in a deep hole at the end of our garden. That, I had read, is also a recommended method for removing smell of skunk. Unlike the liquid suggestions, burial actually works. So long as you bury it deep enough. So long as you never dig the clothes up again ever. So long as you have included the essential step of burying yourself along with them.
For the next several days, the teacher at our grade school sat me at a desk by the open classroom window. My condition made me a little neurotic. Out on the playground at recess I could tag along with the games, so long as we played outdoors and I was careful to stay down wind. Inside, it was a different matter. On warm afternoons, when I began to perspire, I could smell myself. I was sure everyone else in the classroom could as well--particularly when they started choking and gagging and wiping their eyes. That sort of thing can put a permanent dent in a boy's budding psyche.
Eventually, the skunk's smell faded. By then, Cologne the Second was also a memory. He had eaten the bread and egg I provided, nosed open the crack in the lid of the ice chest, and returned to the wilds from which I had snatched him the same night I caught him.
Several weeks passed before I encountered Cologne the Third. I was coming back along the lane from Horseshoe Lake, which lay a half-mile behind the Knutson's property. We'd go down there fishing in the summer and hunting with BB guns in the fall and winter. By now, it was fall. I looked up the muddy lane to see a half grown skunk crossing between brush rows that bordered the lane. I immediately dropped my BB gun, ripped off my outer long-sleeved shirt, and began the bullfighting stance required for capture. One tends to revert to old habits in a crisis, even if they didn't work well before.
Exactly as the experts stated, the skunk, when disturbed, first pounds the ground with his front feet. That's his sign language means of warning you to back off. Then he lifts his tail. If you still don't get the message, he raised up on his front paws, lifting his hind legs over his shoulders and arching his back so that he can both shoot you over his own head and see what he's aiming at the same time. This is rather a neat acrobatic trick if you see it on a nature show on T.V., rather than in person.
I saw the yellow globules of spray beginning to spread in the air before they hit me. The wretched odor of concentrated burned rubber smote my nostrils a staggering blow. I gagged, yet I still pressed forward, closing in for the quick capture. I knew I had no idea how many shots this treacherous critter might have stored rectally. But since my last encounter with the species, I had acquired another curious and helpful fact about skunks. The best experts all affirmed it: If you pick up a skunk by its tail, it cannot squirt you. Somehow, dangling by his tail paralyzes the muscles that do the aiming and the ejection of the significant fluids.
I closed in quickly, like an infantryman charging a trench mid-mustard gas attack. The air was thick with the foulest spray, but I had my eye on the prize, that black and white frond of a tail. I reached and caught hold of it, lifting my quarry into the air. There, dangling with all four feet off the ground, the little stinker twisted his small body, looked me in the eye, and let me have a blistering blast at point blank range. So much for the experts' advice.
After that, I swore off skunks. I'd tried the patience of my family, classmates, neighbors, teachers, and fellow church members sufficiently. My interests turned to other wild pets. A half grown crow with an injured wing that my brother and I built a spacious cage for, only to find its new occupant a heap of cold feathers the next morning. Polliwogs with no, one, two, three, and even four legs we scooped from a slough along the road in a fishing net we constructed from the wedding veil we found in my Mom's closet and installed with the goldfish in the bowl on the bookcase. A score of sunfish we brought home and set swimming in our wading pool. The naked, still-blind baby sparrow my Mom found blasted from the nest in the bush beside the back door to the clinic where she worked by a sudden summer downpour. These, along with the more ordinary dogs, cats, puppies, kittens, sheep, chickens, and horse all entered and exited our lives in their turn. When we were collecting insects at school, by brother and I even sent away for praying mantis eggs, hatched them, and had 20 or 30 Mason jars incubators where we raised them on fruit flies.
But of all the members of our family's animal menagerie, none could match the three Colognes, at least in their ability to harness the attention of the neighbors--who involuntarily learned of their capture, and retained that memory for several days. My friend Ken's Dad finally forgave me for catching that skunk on his back porch. It was either that, or kill me. Many years later, Dr. Knutson still shifted in his chair uneasily and eyed me suspiciously when I reminded him of the incident. I had, after all, temporarily driven down housing prices in the area. My brother got a new winter coat. The skunks themselves became a wafting memory. Somewhere in the back of the old garden beside the house where I was raised, under two feet of dirt, lies the moldering remains of a fake grizzly bear's hide. I never did dig up my brother's coat, or the other clothes I buried with it. Some things, once buried, are better left undisturbed.
I recall these things and have written them here because a childhood friend, who sat near me at school, reminded me of the incident earlier today. Apparently, of our many shared memories of growing up together, this is the one that left its mark most deeply engraved in his recollections four decades later.
He remembers how I stank.
"A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it." Proverbs 22:3 NIV
The Ballad of Boston's Stolen Drink
The following lyric is based on actual events, retold here as humorous history. The people of central Massachusetts submerged four towns when the Swift River was dammed to create the Quabbin Reservior to create a water supply for Boston, the largest city of the six New England States.
Town Meetings, which are mentioned, are the place where New Englanders could go ill-informed and sound off anyway. They often occurred in March, and allowed individual residents in the town-based society to have their way about everything down to where the new fire hydrants would be installed. In Vermont, these meetings were generally accompanied by a meal of donated food, and were sometimes referred to as "Vermont's Dinner Theater" due to the local theatrics so often on unrehearsed display.
Attendance by all voters at such events was simply assumed in times gone by, as the following actual notice reveals:
Warning of Town Meeting:
Residents Who Are Legal Voters
Are Hereby Notified and Warned to Meet
The refrain "I'm 'Agin It!" is a characteristically New England one, where a great deal of stubborn joy is derived based on things to which one is opposed. The irony is that Boston has long been champion of individual freedoms--a hotbed for activism of all kinds dating from before the Boston Tea Party. That she should have stolen her water supply at the cost of personal property rights of four towns of neighbors is a point where this grand old American city can properly be needled, as I do in the following lyric...
The Ballad of Boston's Drink
(I'm 'Agin It)
They flooded four towns so Boston could drink,
They dammed up the Swift for Bean Town's sink.
Now the water is rising and I must go,
But next Town Meeting, I'll let them know
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'ain it!
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'agin it!
Its a sin and a crime
And a dirty rotten shame.
I'm 'agin it all over again!
Grandma floating by in her galvanized tub,
Paddling with a broom as she rub-a-dub-dubs.
Granpa on stilts--he's wading like a bird!
In his winter longjohns, he looks absurd.
Mama on our roof, steaming fit to kill.
She loves her home, but she'll have to grow gills.
Papa rides the barn door with a rooster and a pig.
He tunes his fiddle and he plays this jig:
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'ain it!
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'agin it!
Its a sin and a crime
And a dirty rotten shame.
I'm 'agin it all over again!
Sister in her cradle caught the dob by the tail.
Wherever he swims, that's where she'll sail.
Parson on his pulpit, swirling on by,
Saying his prayers, trying to keep dry.
Brother rides shotgun on the chicken coop roof,
With poor Aunt Sally and three sheep on the hoof--
Trying to keep balance so their perch won't slant.
As they start to sink, they raise this chant:
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'ain it!
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'agin it!
Its a sin and a crime
And a dirty rotten shame.
I'm 'agin it all over again!
Well, that next Town Meeting, it never came.
Now the Swift swirls 'round down Bean Town's drain.
There in the city, they drink mighty good,
But here's one thing I'd tell them, if I could:
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'ain it!
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'agin it!
Its a sin and a crime
And a dirty rotten shame.
I'm 'agin it all over again!
c2009 Skip Johnson
"You shall not steal." (The eighth of the Ten Commandments) Exodus 20:15 NIV
Town Meetings, which are mentioned, are the place where New Englanders could go ill-informed and sound off anyway. They often occurred in March, and allowed individual residents in the town-based society to have their way about everything down to where the new fire hydrants would be installed. In Vermont, these meetings were generally accompanied by a meal of donated food, and were sometimes referred to as "Vermont's Dinner Theater" due to the local theatrics so often on unrehearsed display.
Attendance by all voters at such events was simply assumed in times gone by, as the following actual notice reveals:
Warning of Town Meeting:
Residents Who Are Legal Voters
Are Hereby Notified and Warned to Meet
The refrain "I'm 'Agin It!" is a characteristically New England one, where a great deal of stubborn joy is derived based on things to which one is opposed. The irony is that Boston has long been champion of individual freedoms--a hotbed for activism of all kinds dating from before the Boston Tea Party. That she should have stolen her water supply at the cost of personal property rights of four towns of neighbors is a point where this grand old American city can properly be needled, as I do in the following lyric...
The Ballad of Boston's Drink
(I'm 'Agin It)
They flooded four towns so Boston could drink,
They dammed up the Swift for Bean Town's sink.
Now the water is rising and I must go,
But next Town Meeting, I'll let them know
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'ain it!
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'agin it!
Its a sin and a crime
And a dirty rotten shame.
I'm 'agin it all over again!
Grandma floating by in her galvanized tub,
Paddling with a broom as she rub-a-dub-dubs.
Granpa on stilts--he's wading like a bird!
In his winter longjohns, he looks absurd.
Mama on our roof, steaming fit to kill.
She loves her home, but she'll have to grow gills.
Papa rides the barn door with a rooster and a pig.
He tunes his fiddle and he plays this jig:
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'ain it!
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'agin it!
Its a sin and a crime
And a dirty rotten shame.
I'm 'agin it all over again!
Sister in her cradle caught the dob by the tail.
Wherever he swims, that's where she'll sail.
Parson on his pulpit, swirling on by,
Saying his prayers, trying to keep dry.
Brother rides shotgun on the chicken coop roof,
With poor Aunt Sally and three sheep on the hoof--
Trying to keep balance so their perch won't slant.
As they start to sink, they raise this chant:
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'ain it!
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'agin it!
Its a sin and a crime
And a dirty rotten shame.
I'm 'agin it all over again!
Well, that next Town Meeting, it never came.
Now the Swift swirls 'round down Bean Town's drain.
There in the city, they drink mighty good,
But here's one thing I'd tell them, if I could:
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'ain it!
I'm 'agin it! I'm 'agin it!
I'm dead set 'agin it!
Its a sin and a crime
And a dirty rotten shame.
I'm 'agin it all over again!
c2009 Skip Johnson
"You shall not steal." (The eighth of the Ten Commandments) Exodus 20:15 NIV
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