Sneaking Around

 

Sneaking around usually implies that you are doing something that you shouldn’t be doing. To a young boy this kind of stuff is exciting. You know you shouldn’t be doing it, yet you can’t wait to give it a try. Here’s the story.

 

 

 

Sneaking Around

There was this drugstore in Phillips, Texas, in the Pantex Camp area called Jolly’s Drug. It was the old style that had a candy and cigar rack up front and a long row of stools at a counter with soda fountains. When we had a quarter, we would walk from Stark Street to the Drug store. I went once with my next door neighbor Ronnie and on the way there, Ronnie said “I’ll distract the owner and you can swipe us a couple of those rum tipped cigars to smoke on the way home.” I was a bit nervous about this, but it sounded exciting so I said “OK, I’ll do it.” Ronnie went to the far end of the soda fountain while I was browsing around. When the owner went back to wait on him, I slipped two of the rum tipped cigars into my coat pocket. We left and went across the street to Ostrom’s Grocery store and picked up a pack of free advertising matches and on the way home we fired up those stogies with that sweet taste of rum on the tip and smoked them. By the time I got home I was very dizzy and I was sick at my stomach. I went into the house and puked and I decided the life of crime had its draw backs and in the end I paid the price for my bad deed.

 

This guy looks like he feels about the way I did after smoking that rum tipped cigar so long ago. 

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When I was in the Boy Scouts, we often went on excursions in the woods with no supervision. We always carried one of those metal waterproof match holders because that was just part of “being prepared.” If we spotted a old dead grapevine, we always stopped and broke off a few cigarette sized branches. The grape vine was hollow and if you lit it, it would smolder until it was all burned. We founded that if you lit one end, you could draw smoke into your mouth by sucking on opposite end. So we had Instant grapevine cigarettes. Of course the grapevine smoke smelled bad and choked you up with every puff, but we felt like we were he men if we could stand it. Later we figured out that dried elm root made a much better smoke because it was porous so the root acted like a big filter filtering out all of the nasty particulates and made for a pretty smooth smoke.

 

I think some of my troop have been smoking grapevine today. They’re a little green colored.

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There was a sandlot baseball field down behind my house where we had a baseball game with a lot of the neighborhood boys. In left field, there was a canyon drop off down to a creek. If you hit one over the edge of that drop off, it was an automatic home run. We often played until it got too dark to see. One summer night we were playing, and we noticed that there was a peach tree in the back yard of one of the houses adjacent to the field. The tree was just loaded with bright red peaches. I was one of the smaller guys then and one of the older guys suggested that they lift me over the fence with the bat bag and fill it up with those peaches so we could have a snack. It got dark and over I went. I loaded the bag with about 40 peaches and brought them out. Feeling pretty proud of myself for securing the peaches, I sat down and ate 5 of those peaches right down on the ball field. I swear those were the best tasting peaches I have ever eaten. We noticed that the owner just let the peaches fall off the tree and rot, so I didn’t feel so bad about taking his peaches.

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Hey guys those peaches really look good on that tree over there. Let’s send little Billy over the fence to get some when it gets dark.

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My cousin Scott and I often walked from his house over to our maternal grandmother Aurora Bell’s house. We often went the long way along the road instead of cutting through the oil storage area. Along that road was a house about 200 yards from the road that had about 60 guinea foul that roamed in the weeds between the road and the house. They would often lay eggs in the weeds and go off and leave them and they would lay there and rot in the sun. Scott and I often hunted for those rotten egg prizes and usually were able to find two or three. When the eggs rotted, they produced hydrogen sulfide gas inside the shell and pressured up inside. When you threw them they would explode stinking really bad and throwing the rotten egg goop everywhere. There was a couple of cranky guys houses we targeted when we found some of those rotten eggs. We would throw the egg, watch it explode on the porch and then run like crazy. On one occasion, I was throwing one of the rotten eggs and the force of my fingers on the egg caused it to explode in my own hand throwing that smelly goop all over me. We went to my grandmothers house and she stripped me down naked outside and threw me in the tub and washed my stinky clothes. That was the end of my rotten egg throwing days.

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Hey Scott, here’s a Guinea nest, let’s see if the eggs are rotten.

 

 

A rotten guinea egg makes a pretty big stinky mess when it explodes throwing smelly goop all over.

 

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Thanks for reading Sneaking Around,
Bill