Spreading Adder

When my mother was a little girl one of her tasks was to look after her brother. He was considerably younger than her and so it sometimes fell to her to take care of him.

One day she was walking back to her house and her brother, Glenn, was following along behind her. She felt something squish under her feet and she turned around to see what it was. She had stepped on a snake. This snake was called a spreading adder or spread adder. It is also called a hog nose snake.

It seems that this snake is quite an actor. It is mildly venomous but rarely strikes at humans. It will pretend to strike with a closed mouth.

Well, this snake spreads out and from my mother’s perspective has raised up like a cobra. She runs around the snake and grabs her brother and runs to the house.

Garlic Tea

When we were teenagers, one of my sister’s favorite games was to walk up to me when I had a glass of tea and gulp it down. She seemed to always enjoy this. I could almost always expect it to happen. One day when she was home from college I decided to fix her.

I fixed my supper and put my plate on the table. Then I made two glasses of iced tea. One for drinking which I placed on the kitchen floor beside the leg of the chair next to where I would be sitting and the other to go on the table.

Before I placed the glass on the table I added a little something extra. I loaded that glass with garlic salt. I used most of an eight ounce bottle of garlic salt. I stirred the mixture up really good and placed in on the table. I then sat down to eat.

A little while later my mother came in the kitchen and sat down beside me and started talking to me. We were having a great conversation and I heard my sister coming in the door.

She walked up to the table and stood between my mother and me acting like she was really wanting to converse with me.

Shortly I saw that evil grin she got as she reached for my glass of tea. I shouted, “Don’t drink my tea.” She guzzled most of the glass down before the taste actually hit her. She ran to the sink and started spitting out the terrible concoction.

Meanwhile I am rolling in the floor laughing at what had just taken place. My mother was trying to understand what had happened and why I thought it was so funny. When I was finally able to talk I shared it with her and she too found it very funny.

My sister tells the story slightly differently. Her version goes something like this:

I had just walked across two deserts with no food or drink. I had saved a caravan of orphans from a tornado and the last hundred miles of the journey I had my faithful camel, Leon, strapped to my back because he just could not make it on his own.

As approached town I stopped to fix the water pump on a car driven by a group of nuns and I thought to myself how good that water must taste. I had to leave the water though so the nuns could make it to their bingo tournament.

I managed to drag my dehydrated body up the back steps and onto the back porch. I thought to myself, if I can just make it into the kitchen my dear, sweet brother would share a drop or two of his iced tea with me.

This was what kept me going. I dragged myself through the back door and up to the table and then he poured that vile concoction down my throat nearly killing me.

It is up to you which version you choose to believe.

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Cutting the Grass

Probably the summer before the summer we moved from Inman to Iva I cut my leg. Actually my sister cut my leg. My sister and I were supposed to cut the grass.

We had been cutting it at this house for the last three years so I started cutting grass when I was about nine years old. It was my job to cut the back yard and the smaller of the two side yards and my sister’s job to mow the front yard and the larger of the two side yards.
My sister had to be in control of everything. She had decided that I would mow all of my part first.

The normal routine was that I would mow one of my sections then while I rested she would mow one of her sections. Well, I mowed one of mine and then stopped to rest. While I rested I rode my brother’s bike. It just happened to be there. Anyway, I was riding on it when my sister decided she did not want to do her part at that time. So, she told me to do my other part. I would not so she grabbed me and pulled me off of the bike.

There was a jagged edge on the fender and it cut me long and deep. The cut was right in the fold of the knee so when I tried to walk it pulled the skin open further.

My mother loaded me in the car and went in search for a doctor on Wednesday afternoon. Back then almost all doctor’s offices were closed on Wednesday after noon. We went to Doctors’ Memorial Hospital but they did not have an emergency room.

The hospital called a local surgeon and found one who was in his office. The doctors were Hanna, Hull, and Green. My doctor was doctor Green. I received eight stitches and a tetanus shot.

Meanwhile, back at the house, my sister has all of a sudden become the perfect sister to my little brother. She read him stories in the back yard and when my father got home she told him all about how I cut my leg. She of course left out the part where she assisted me.

A few weeks later it was time to have the stitches removed. Two days later I split back open. My mother would not take me back to the doctor so now I have a pretty ugly scar.

Bloody Worms

One time, while living in the house on Dora Drive, my mother was refinishing the kitchen table. She was out on the back porch and had taken a few minutes to warm up a can of Chef Boyardee Spaghetti and Meatballs for my sister Sandra and I.

We were sitting at my sister’s doll table eating our spaghetti when my sister leans over and says, “You are eating bloody worms.” I told her no we weren’t but she insisted that we were. I started to tell my mother but my sister stopped me. She said, “Momma will tell you it is really spaghetti so you will eat it without crying but they are really bloody worms.”  I yelled, “Mama” and my mother replied, “Shut-up and eat your bloody worms.” And people wonder why I grew up warped.