The Big Bad Wolf
Being a new blogger (is that even a fair term yet? perhaps I haven’t earned that badge and I’m still a just a wannabe for a few more posts), I’ve been scouring the net for any advice for people new to the blogosphere and have found some great resources. One is Lorelle VanFossen’s site where she actually has a Blogging Challenge. I’ve been following it for the last few days and trying to follow her challenges at my own pace. Today I’m up to the “Personal Blogging - Tell Us a Story” challenge, so I’ve been trying to think of a story. I read through the comments on her post and noticed a touching one from tbirdonawire about her grandmother that brought back a fond memory for me of my grandmother. While I hadn’t really planned on posting anything mushy on my blog, I’ll do it just this once with a childhood memory.
When I was just a boy of maybe four or five, we lived in Oklahoma City. I had grandparents in Pampa, Texas and in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. One summer, my parents took me to Pampa to stay with my grandmother, “Mamer,” and my grandfather, “Papa.” I was there with my cousin Delores, who was a few years older than I and always was one of my favorite people.
My grandparents lived in a fairly rural area, surrounded by farmland and oil rigs. The house seemed huge to me back then and had a wonderful crawlspace under the porch that I could spend hours playing in. Today I would be afraid of the spiders, of course, but back then, it was my own personal hideaway. The house had a cellar, of course, which one needs living in the heartland where tornadoes can be commonplace. There was a garden where we went out and picked fresh green beans for dinner. And Mamer always had those orange circus peanuts and candied orange slices. I could gorge myself on those things!
Some days, Mamer would give Delores and I a few dollars and we would walk to town to get something from the store. My favorite was when would get a bag of 3Musketeers, the little FunSize ones that were two bites, not the tiny square ones like they have today. When we would get back home, we would throw the candy bars into the freezer for later. We passed a pond on the way to and from the store and we made plans to swim in it one day.
I remember Delores and I made a “haunted house” in the cellar. We took Kleenex and balled one up, then covered it with another one and tied it with a string to make a tissue ghost. We made quite a few of them and hung them up around the cellar. It was just silly stuff like that, but we had to have Mamer and Papa come see our haunted house. Very fond memories.
I think it was the same trip, though memories from forty years ago are, perhaps, a bit muddled now, that one of the neighbors sheep was mauled by what they thought was a wolf. The whole town turned out so that the “men folk” could go hunt the wolf. The women and children all stayed behind at one of the ranches. I remember sitting on Mamer’s lap, listening to all of the ladies chatting about various things, but mostly about the wolf. You see, I was just a little boy. The only wolf that I had ever seen was the one that tried to eat the Three Little Pigs. He walked upright and wore pants and a hat. And, it seemed like he was fairly clever. Frankly, I was pretty scared that he just might be sneak enough to catch some unsuspecting child unaware and carry them off so he could boil them in that pot in his lair. (Hey, I love Disney but there is some scary stuff there when you really think about it!)
The men were out for what seemed like hours but came back empty handed. They finally decided that the sheep must have caught its leg in some barbed wire. I can’t tell you how relieved I was. None the less, I hardly slept that night watching the curtains blow in the wind from the open window, wondering if I might see that that that red hat poke through the sheers at any moment.
Too quickly that time ended and I returned to the city with my folks. My grandparents moved to Oklahoma City, then we moved to Denver. I did get to see them periodically, they even came and stayed with my sister and I one time when my dad won a trip to Spain, but that summer in Pampa will always be my fondest memory of them, and one of the fondest of my childhood. My grandparents both passed quite a while ago and I have long since lost touch with Delores, but my dad does keep me updated with what she is up to from time to time. I wonder if she still remembers that summer?
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