Posted on 04/01/2016 7:27:40 PM PDT by West Texas Chuck
No sooner had I tied off at the sheave and started to attach the the grease gun hose to the grease fitting when a swarm of yellow jackets that had made their home on the inside of a cross girder came after me. I got stung twice in the time it took to unhook my safety chain.
I just dropped as fast as I could and caught a ladder rung about 20 feet down. Of course the other guys on the crew got a big kick out of it, saying they had never seen me move that fast. Ha ha.
Well, dammit, I’ve knowed a whole lot of old bulls in my day.
There work is never done.
I like it...sounds like a semi-universal kid experience, at least from days where kids did that.
I spent a few years in the Philippines as a kid, and our houses lined a stretch of jungle that dropped off on an incline. They had the baboons of some kind that had enormous canines just like a nasty ass dog, and those baboons would travel in a group of about 15 or 20 at a time.
They would go along the edge of the jungle from house to house, with about twenty yards of grass between the jungle and the house, eating those little bananas off the trees or scrounging food that people threw to them. The females would often have babies clinging to them, and there was always at least one (rarely two) big, aggressive male.
And they weren’t cuddly. They were really aggressive and mean, extremely taut, and faster than hell. They were about the size of a medium sized lab, maybe 30-50 lbs I would guess from memory.
Me and my buddies would do things like empty the insides out of eggs through a small hole, then toss the empty eggs to them, which pissed them off. It was like putting a stick into a hornet’s nest. One day, I was at the kid next door’s house, and we sprayed some Raid on a piece of Wonder Bread, walked down from the 2nd story kitchen via back stairs, and at the bottom, and threw it out to the “monkeys” as we called them.
When we did, this big male started aggressively clearing the area of his mates as he jogged over to the bread. He made little charges at them, whacked others with his arms or hands, bared his teeth, and they all flew from him. He picked up the bread and snarled.
And instantly made a beeline right for us at the bottom of the stairs. There was no looking around to see who thew it out there, or to decide if we were guilty or innocent. He just snarled and ran on all fours, faster than a dog, with his teeth bared.
We both bolted up the stairs, barely getting inside and closing the door, before he was right there, his chest heaving as he glared malevolently at us.
I never messed with them ever again. I nearly crapped my pants. We were just stupid, dumb boys, doing typical stupid, young, boy stuff.
Years later, my mother told me a story I found far more interesting.
She was a Navy wife, and there was one woman (who was married to a Captain) who had a flagpole on her house that could be seen from all the other houses on the ridge. Her house was down below. When she raised a certain flag she had made, all the other wives in the neighborhood (or at least the ones who traveled in that crowd) would take a walk down for an afternoon drink together when they saw that flag raised.
One day, those Navy wives were having their afternoon Happy Hour, and the woman who lived there (I seem to recall her name was Maxine McDaniels) said to the other women “Watch this!” as she plucked a wooden banana out of a decorative bowl. It was all painted up and looked like a banana, and she walked out the back door to the steps that descended to the ground, and threw the wooden banana out to the gaggle of monkeys milling about.
She immediately went back inside, because she was a lot older and smarter than I was.
Well, that monkey ran over, picked up that banana, and started screeching as it waved it above its head in the air.
All the wives were looking out a big glass picture (maybe six feet by four feet) window at this enraged monkey, when it dashed towards the house and scampered up a tree growing right next to the window. It scurried out on a branch right near the window, and began bashing the window with that wooden banana.
My mother said they were all backing away from the window, thinking that baboon was going to come right through it. Yep. Navy wives and alcohol always seemed to be a potent combination.
Hahahahahaha...that’s hilarious!
Now, you get some maturity on you, you would never do something like that. But being a stupid kid with a BB gun...well...
That is a great visual with you guys clinging to that power pole with all your might while that pissed off bull is whacking the pole with his forehead!
I can imagine your screams, getting louder each time the bull whacks the pole!
That was a great story!
You do realize you will now be reincarnated as a monkey in one of these clans.
You and me have shared a cross word or two, but I'm with you tonight. Enough with the polly ticks. I'm enjoying the tall tales and childhood memories.
When I lived in Japan, we had our first unfettered (except for lack of money) access to fireworks. I was into slingshots too, at the time, and was quite adept at making them out of wood from the right shaped tree branch, and the bands from sliced up old inner tubes.
I must say-there was a lot of similarity in the process of making a sling shot from scratch, and making a kite from scratch. There was a lot of the same kind of trial and error, though, with the slingshot, it was far more painful and dangerous.
First, I didn’t have the right kind of inner tube slices, and the damn things would snap and hurt like Hell. but once I got the bands down right, and figured out how to securely attach them, that was when I nearly put my eye out (if it hadn’t been for my glasses)
I could never do a safe test before actually trying it for real-I was far, FAR too impatient. So after a few broken straps and straps that wouldn’t stay attached, I fixed it, loaded up a rock, and pulled it all the way back an arms length to my eye.
The damn wood snapped, and came back and nailed me in my eye and forehead. It cut my head and broke my glasses, but my eye didn’t get hurt.
Anyway, with my first access to fireworks and right in the middle of learning all about how not to make a slingshot, the two things, fireworks and slingshots, seemed to go together just like peas and carrots.
There was a playground down the hill and across the street from the back of my house, so I went out there, lit up a smoke bomb (a little sphere about an inch across with a thick fuse coming out the top) loaded it up, and as soon as it started smoking, would fire it over the road into the playground (which was empty)
What I didn’t realize was that those smoke bombs not only emitted smoke, but a shower of sparks, too, through the little hole where the fuze had been. Well, I was able to shoot one far enough to leave an arc of red smoke in the sky before it landed in the playground, still belching smoke.
And sparks.
That grass was dry, and pretty soon the thing was on flames from end to end, with fire trucks coming up the street.
I ran into the house, up the stairs, and cowered in my bedroom, peeking over the windowsill at the firetrucks, knowing for sure there would be a knock on the door. But there never was.
Sigh. Probably. I guess I would deserve it...
May the stings of a thousand yellow jackets infest their pubic hairs.
Amen.
These words you say are true.
I try not to gather any more karma than necessary.
But I like to tell a good story :)
Stay safe FReeper. We will live to debate another day.
And a good night to you, too, fellow Texan. No matter what ill winds blow across this land, we all know where home is, and who our real friends are.
I am a huge fan of Samurai films.
Feudal Samurai had a relationship with their opponents that was not based in hatred. It was about tactics and firepower.
Musashi wrote that you must fight as if you are already dead.
On some weird level that makes sense to me.
We had a hornets nest on the eaves on our cabin.
My old man used gasoline for everything. Killing weeds, lighting the barbeque, the campfire (”Now be careful when you add it to a fire - ya put a bit in a small can and toss it in the air and you’ll be okay” Tried it once - it wasn’t okay!)
So anyways, he takes a tin can full of gas and throws it up at the hornet’s nest. Then follows that up with a match.
Caught the nest all up on fire just great!
And I didn’t know he could run that fast down to the lake with a pail to get some water. Had to replace that part of the roof, but got away with just repainting some of the siding.
(Pretty sure that was idiocy and not balls!)
Ouch!! But your glasses saved you.
You were lucky the fire department was close.
Aw, the memories.
Thanks for sharing that.
...I wish I could find a church key. Used to have a bunch of them and now can’t find a single one.
Maybe we have stumbled across a niche business for someone.
I was had the hardware store and got a church key in the painting department. My daughter asked me what it was for.
“Well, this end is for opening up paint cans, and this end is for opening up bottles of beer.”
“Why would you have that together!?”
“Trust me, you’ll figure it out when you’re older and have met a few painters.”
Look on vetfriends dot com and I am pretty sure you can find a P-38 there except the new ones are made of lighter material but still fully functional. However, I do still have one I have had on my key ring since Nam in 70-71....
Can probably get both, but likely Made In China.....
For pure balls (or stupidity), one would be challenged to approach the nest with a can of hair spray and a lighter.
******************************
In the early ‘50s, we had honeysuckle shrubs on two sides of our house. They were favorites for the yellowjackets that built large ‘paper’ nests. Dad taught me to get a long branch and wrap a rag around the end. A little charcoal starter was poured onto the rag that was then lit and held below the nests to set them on fire. ......As soon as the nests caught fire I’d run like crazy, but was stung many times over the years. Those little flying demons know how to track you down!
well, I remember one day when Melrose was up on the hill in the field fenced off from the heifers. My uncle put jackboy up there with him. He had been down with the cows.
Later that morning a pick up pulling a trailer arrived down below and they unloaded a magnificent new bull. As soon as he was in the pasture he headed over to the heifers and started sniffing around to try to get it on.
Poor naive Jackboy did like you said, he tore off down the hill trailing the barb wire and attacked the new bull. He was beaten to a pulp and put back up the hill with ol melville. Melville asked what in the world provoked you to attack that new bull? He has 300 pounds on you
Jackboy, licking his wounds allowed “ I wanted for him to be sure I wasn’t a cow”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.