Oreos

Growing up we had silly house rules for various games, but one set-in-stone rule for life. You do not tell lies. You couldn't water it down and make it a fib, or a story, or any other word which equated with untruths.  Thou Shalt Not Lie.

Liars were punished. Sometimes, just the thought of being punished was dreadful enough to tell the truth, even if you knew you were going to get in trouble anyway for something you did.

One day when my brother and I were about 4 and 6, or maybe 5 and 7, our mother discovered Oreo cookies on the dining room table. The first no-no was that no one asked mom if they could please have a cookie. Egads, the soft yummy filling was missing. Who ate the middle out of the Oreos and left the cookie in plain sight? 

My brother was the closest and he was questioned by Mom. He knew he was innocent, so he threw me under the bus, (a phrase that won't be coined for half a century). 

"She did it." He's pointing at me and I'm wondering what I did.

"Lisa, did you eat the middle out of these cookies and leave the outsides laying here?"

My Mom is looking at me with that scary, mean mom face and I didn't know why.  I hadn't done anything wrong. Therefore, my brother was lying.

"I didn't do it. He did it." I pointed at him to make sure she knew which one of my only brothers I was talking about.

This circular logic revolved around the room a couple of times with mom threatening to get the yardstick and switch us both when my little brother just happened to look at Dad.

Canary feathers were clinging to his lips.  

"Daddy did it," he exclaimed.

Mom apologized to us and asked Dad if he was going to let her punish us.

I never was satisfied with the answer he gave.

Ol' Bill

His short, stiff hair was close to the color of burnt orange or bittersweet Crayolas; the ones in the box of 48. He had a feathery line of longer white hair down his spine from the base of his head to the top of his tail. It was also that orange-y color, with a messy tuft of longer white hair at the tip. His face was white with a smooth pink nose dotted with small black splotches. The outside of his ears was the same color as his body, but the insides had white hair in them. They swiveled and twitched nervously at the least sound. 

He was a little taller than me, but I was only seven years old.  His nose always looked wet because cattle are like dogs when it comes to noses. Sometimes their nose runs like a human, except they don't have a mom to wipe it. One time when I got too close, he swung his head around, and that wet nose got against the school dress my grandma had made for me. I ran to the house and cried until my mother helped me take it off without getting any of those slobbers and other stuff on my skin. My daddy laughed and said it was clean snot since it had never touched the ground.

Ol’ Bill lived in a corral behind the barn with other Hereford steers.  He wasn’t old, but he was special. He had gotten hurt in the truck that delivered the pen of calves to our farm. He limped and didn’t grow much compared to the rest of the herd. When Daddy or Grandpa put silage in the feed bunks, the others pushed and crowded to get all the food they could. Ol’ Bill kept to himself near the fence. Daddy would bring a bucket of the feed and put it on the ground in front of him, while my brother and I reached through the fence and stroked his coarse sides. He didn’t mind that we touched him and we were never afraid that he would hurt us.

I don’t remember if we asked if we could ride Bill, or if Daddy asked us if we would like to try it. On a sunny afternoon after school, the family gathered at the fence where our furry friend was standing in his usual spot. Mom had her Kodak Instamatic camera ready to record the event for posterity.

First, Daddy settled my little brother on Ol’ Bill’s back and stood at the ready to snatch him to safety if the calf reacted badly. He really didn’t react at all. My brother was as tickled as if someone had handed him a new puppy. Mom captured the moment with a grainy picture of his big smile showing he had lost his two front teeth.
 


Then it was my turn. Bill was coaxed closer to the fence where Mom helped my brother step off Bill’s back and I eagerly stepped on. I was surprised. It was nothing like sitting on my pony. His backbone was pronounced and more than a little uncomfortable to sit on. The feather of white hair tracing his spine wasn’t quite long enough to hold onto. The stiff hair prickled my legs through my cotton dress. 

Daddy gave him a tug on the ear, and he took a couple of steps. His thick hide rolled loosely on his body as he moved. I squeezed as tightly as I could with my legs, but that only made the swaying more pronounced. I grabbed for something to hold. Suddenly I understood why people ride horses instead of cattle. 

We begged Mom to take a turn but she smiled and said she was too big to sit on him.

Our initial effort to ride Ol’ Bill was a triumph. Our success yardstick measured the fact that no one got hurt, or ended up on the ground smeared with manure. Dad fashioned a temporary halter out of a length of rope and would occasionally lead us back and forth in the corral at evening feeding time. I think it was to make Bill exercise instead of entertain us. 

Ol' Bill never wagged his tail or appeared happy to see us like a dog would. He stood by the fence and patiently waited to be fed. We didn't grow up with him. One day the pen of cattle were sold and he was gone. Such are the facts of life on the farm.

UHT OH, ADWIAN

In Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank, the title is a secret signal between a high-ranking Air Force officer at Strategic Air Command in Nebraska, and his brother back home in Florida. It is a bone-chilling warning that nuclear war is impending. When I was growing up, our family had its own code for disaster. Thankfully, we never had to use it because of mushroom clouds on the horizon. My brother was a Boy Scout. He participated in all the mysterious activities Boy Scouts do while sisters stay at home. Cool stuff like wearing a uniform to meetings, camping out, practicing interesting skills, learning to cook over a campfire. It sounded like fun. He came home from one such adventure very excited about a skit two other campers had performed for the entertainment of the troop. I should stop right here and say this skit may have been published exclusively for Scouts in a pamphlet suitable for the age group. Never having been initiated into the arcane world of scouting, I don't know that for certain. Without concrete proof I will give the credit to that prolific writer, ANONYMOUS. Despite the fact the original skit required two performers, my brother decided he could act both parts (three parts, if you counted the off-stage sound effects). He persuaded Mom and Dad to rearrange the dining room into a suitable theater. They good-naturedly pushed the table off to the side and set three straight chairs in a row for the audience, them and me. He began the skit by introducing the characters, Bobby and a goat named Adrian. Bobby couldn't pronounce his R's very well, so Adrian sounded like Adwian. Bobby was leading Adwian on a leash down a railroad track, (wailwoad twack.) You will need to use your imagination to picture my brother acting out both parts. In no particular hurry, they walked along talking about things young boys and goats talk about. Unfortunately, Adwian got his little hoof stuck between two railroad ties. Imagine my little brother bent over walking on his hands, pretending to be the goat Adrian, with his left hand caught in the imaginary ties, then Bobby pantomiming tugging on the leash, trying to get him unstuck. Adwian is a little upset and lets out a couple of half-hearted bleats. "Naa, naaa." "Don't wowwy, Adwian," Bobby says. "I'll get you out.” My brother jumped up and ran around the corner into the kitchen where he made the sound of a far-off train whistle. Back to the dining room (stage). Bobby: Adwian, the twain is coming. Adrian: Struggles to loosen his hoof. Naa! Baa Bobby: Pulls on Adrian's leg and tries to get him loose. Back to the kitchen. Whoooo Whoooo Back to the stage. Adrian: Fights harder to pull his hoof free , but it is still caught. He kicks with his hind legs to increase the leverage. NAAA! WAA! Bobby: Realizing the goat can't get free, he claps his hands to his cheeks and says: "Uht oh, Adwian." He said it with a rising inflection on the Uht and dropped his voice on the oh. Back to the kitchen. WHOOOOO WHOOOOO Chuga-chuga Chuga-chuga WHOOOO WHOOOO Back to the stage. Bobby stares back in horror at the rapidly approaching train. By now the "audience" is contributing to the train sound effects, pretending we can see it chugging through the kitchen, and shouting encouragement to Adrian. Adwian twists his head back as far as it will go, considering his hoof/hand is caught in the railroad ties. He leaps into the air with his hind legs while Bobby pulls with all his strength. BAA WAA BWAA "PULL ADWAIN, PULL!" WHOOOO, WHOOOO, WHOOOO At the last second, Bobby jumps to safety while Adrian goes SPLAT! The train rumbles past, right between my chair and the one my Mom is sitting in. Bobby stands beside the railroad track and surveys the carnage. My little brother almost managed to produce real tears as he wailed, "OH, ADWIAN!" I was mad. A funny skit for kids should have a happy ending. While Mom and Dad applauded, I strode two steps to where the imaginary Adwian lay dead, gave him a good kick and hollered for him to get up. I guess the moral of the story was to stay off railroad tracks. For the rest of our childhood and decades on into adulthood, whenever the situation looked dire, (cattle out, flat tire, forgotten homework, something on the stove boiled over, a sock with a hole in the toe, even if it was only because our move got blocked in a board game) someone in our family would say, "Uht oh, Adwian." My widowed grandmother re-married. One day at a family gathering, her husband burst out, "Who the heck is Adrian?" My brother and I fell all over each other laughing, then had to apologize because he thought we were laughing at him. Here is the link to a variety of age-appropriate skits in case you weren't lucky enough to belong to the Scouts. https://www.boyscouttrail.com/skits.asp