If you have never run threw a full grown row of cow corn at night with only the light of the moon to guide you than you should do that. We thought it was the most magnificent thing that was ever invented. We had never heard of maze but that was it. Just a way for us to have fun down there with not a lot to do. We made fun out of anything. But the night we did some damage to Daddy's corn, although unintentionally, that fun thing stopped abruptly. Oh boy was that fun while it lasted though. Well, except for the night we came head on with a skunk and her babies. A skunk is bad enough but with babies, Psew awful. But that's another story. I started out to talk about Mamma's flyswat.
In the winter when it was not good to break a switch off the peach tree then Mamma had a fly swatter that worked well. We were swatted a lot because we were getting in to things a lot. We survived and we didn't have flash backs or whatever they say now for the reason for a kid not to be swatted.
The swats were different then. Not plastic but made of wire like was used on screen doors. This wire was surrounded in metal. They were tough now I'm here to tell you. I watched Mamma kill a rat with hers swat one day.
Mamma did not allow fighting and for sure she didn't in the house. One day Norman and Paul were having a slapping match and I was running in the kitchen to tell on them. She listened then she got that old fly swatter and gave me a swat. “Mamma I wasn't doing nothin” I protested. I guess I got it for some of the times I DID do Somethin' and didn't get caught. Or maybe for being a tattle tail. Mamma didn't like that either. She said once that she could find out all our stuff' on her own. She could too. After she took care of my whack the boys got their turns.
Then there was the day we brought the baby rabbit in the house. That thing was full of filth. I know it had bugs cause something bit me. Anyway we were able to hide it from Mamma for all of ½ of a day. Long time considering her track record. We got a box and made it a bed. We got some carrots and lettuce out of the old ice box and laid them in the box. The rabbit probably wasn't old enough to eat but we didn't know that. Of course we got bored after a while and went on to other things. When we finally went back to our box the rabbit was gone. We looked everywhere. Boy Howdy we knew we'd better find that durn rabbit or we were in big trouble. We just could not find it so we decided it had got out of the box and somehow got outside. OK That'll Work! We put the box back where we found it and forgot the whole thing.
At supper that night Mamma said “Clyde I killed a rat today with my fly swat. We sure need some more rat poison”. We looked at each other in horror. Oh No she had killed our rabbit. After we all ate Mamma said, “I also found some lettuce and carrots in the trash. Would you kids know anything about that?” Well Good Grief, did that woman ever miss anything? Heck no she never missed a thing if we had done it.
The rabbit had got out of the box and Mamma HAD killed it with her fly swat but at the time she was killing it she thought it WAS a rat. I don't know what she would have done if she had known it was a rabbit and I never asked her but after we got whacked a good one with her fly swatter (Of course she scrubbed it first) we never brought another rabbit in the house. NOPE!!! NO WAY.
