Feb. 23, 2003 - 17:01 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

The Blunders Of Bastion

I wonder if all boys are determined to experiment in hydraulic areas ? I sure was. I was a student and joyful observer of the power and action of water. The flow of a streamlet was a subject for deep consideration and conjecture for me.

Helping to make a dam in the stream in the mountains to cool the pop and watermelon, etc. on a family picnic made real a fantasy of mine, if the grown ups had followed my line of thinking there would have been a Johnstown Flood under construction just to cool food and drink.

Maybe it was just me but anything involving water not under strict adult supervision, muddy hands and feet and waves of the delicious stuff going in all directions was more than an attractive nuisance, it was an addiction.

One time my leanings toward disaster got me in real smelly, deep doo-doo. On a Sunday Mom and Dad were doing something that kept their attention focused indoors and I was let out to play, with the usual cautions, "Don't go out of the yard, yadda, yadda, yadda." I had been allowed to irrigate Dad's vegetable garden all along so Mom and Dad weren't alerted when they heard the water being turned on.

What they didn't know was that I had learned from a friend an offshoot of hydraulic mining (didn't even know the terms then). I prepared to drill for oil with visions of a gusher sprouting up in our yard and untold riches in oil coating the landscape. So, I pointed the hose straight down pushing a little, water bringing soil to the top and the hose working its way deeper and deeper. Every now and then I would pull the hose back up and send it down again with the assumption of doing that would clear the hole for further drilling, I thought.

As I went deeper it became more difficult to pull the hose back up, but like some of us young brats, "I knew what I was doing." I had almost a full length of garden hose down hole (25 feet ?) when I discovered that I could no longer pull the hose back up. I don't to this day know whether the hose had curved in an arc or if it was just that I had not enough strength to pull it out. I wiggled it, wobbled it, strummed it and drummed it, strained 'til I felt that my cheeks would burst and my eyes pop out. Finally it became obvious to me that it was a situation I could not solve and worrying about getting in trouble I would have to let Dad know that I had his garden hose wrapped around the center of the earth. It was a given that I was in trouble, degree of punishment unknown at that time.

Grimly, gritting my teeth and cringing at what might happen, I ran to get my Dad. Trying to put as good a face on it as my limited brain would allow I told Dad, "Dad the hose is stuck in the ground." Of course he knew the situation immediately, but not how bad it was. Like a dunce when I ran to the house the water was left running.

Dad slopped around in the mud and water surrounding my arena, pulled, pushed, strained and had no more luck than I had.

He was out there quite a while, Mom noticed him headed in and pulled me to her. If human temper has heat, he was white hot. Seeing Mom clutching her precious son to her bosom he went back out to continue his labors, akin to the work involved in cleaning the Augean stables however the stables in this instance were knee deep in mud (exaggerated a bit) and the river would run continuously until the Pipe Of Doom cleared the ground.

It got dark, Mom cooked a little dinner and called Dad to come in and eat, he didn't - so Mom and I had a bite which I don't suppose either of us enjoyed. I tried to play with my Tootsie cars off in a corner and stay out of sight. Finally Mom said, "Its time for bed honey." That night I went to bed like a greased streak of kid. Hoping beyond hope that Dad would be cooled off by morning. I had never been yanked out of bed to be punished so was playing the odds.

Luckily Monday arrived, Mom let me sleep in and Dad cleaned up, shaved and went to work. Then she got me up, saw that I got dressed and fed me. She turned me out to play saying, "Don't you dare do anything more to make things worse yet." I was the goodest boy in town that day. When Dad came home that night there was no thunder and lightening immediately, which left me shaking in fear of a humdinger of a whipping later. All us boys got whippings when we grossly misbehaved back then, we gritted our teeth, quelled our sobs and went about life.

When I was called to supper I shriveled under Dad's glare, later in the meal he bit off some words in my direction, "Don't you ever, ever do a damn fool thing like that again !" I was happy to go to bed early that night. God bless Mom she got me out of sight and I'm sure that she talked him down from his lofty huff.

So ends another chapter in the serial story of The Blunders Of Bastion . . . . . . . .

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