Crawdaddin'

The Continuing Adventures of Dammit Boy

My brother Les again ventures into the days of his youth when he neither could spell “responsibility” nor wanted to.

It was hot today. One of those summer days when the heat is resemblant of an oven. The bright, unrelenting sun intent on baking everything under its oppressive heat. Dammit Boy grew weary. An epic battle having taken place. The killing field spread out before him. Blood was splattered everywhere with bodies strewn across the battlefield like raisins on an oatmeal cookie. Dozens if not hundreds of his adversaries dead or dying in the heat. They had kept coming. Controlled by some unseen force unwilling to accept defeat. Sacrificing lives at a rate that would seem unacceptable. Yet they had kept coming and Dammit Boy had continued defending his position. The kill rate was quite high, sometimes two or three with one blow from his mighty weapon. Dammit Boy pondered the situation. Would there be a price to pay for his taking of life on such a massive scale? Are there consequences for …..

“DAMMIT BOY!”

Crap! Dad had snuck up behind me fully dressed in his policeman suit. How the hell did he do that? I had checked earlier and could detect no sounds through the door of his bedroom other than the drone of the Fedders A/C. How could I have been so careless. One never wanted to be around when dad was going to work. He had a habit of throwing orders and chores around like grenades that exploded wreaking havoc on ……

“You get the hose and clean that damn picnic table off. You got ketchup and damn flies everywhere. Come see me when you’re finished. I’ve got to go to work.”

“Okay dad.” He went back inside, no doubt with the intention of terrorizing my brothers with his chore grenades. They were on their own. I promptly jumped the back fence heading toward the bent tree looking for my compadres. I left the bodies of the dead and dying as a warning and deterrence to any further intrusion by the fly air force.

Mikey and Buzzy were sitting halfway up the bent tree. Their legs dangling 10 or 12 feet up. It was considerably cooler in the woods, always a good place to escape the heat and make plans for the day.

The bent tree had become the favorite meeting place for the gang. The tree had grown straight up about 15 or 18 feet and inexplicably turned down and continued to grow all the way to the ground. You could walk up the tree using its limbs as handrails and sit high above the forest floor with room for several people. Many a plan originated from that hallowed place. Today would be no exception.

“Hi guys, what do you want to do today?” I asked. “Don’t know” they replied in unison, then Mikey asked, “Is your mom cooking somethin’ today?” “Probably is but I can’t go back until dad leaves for work” I replied. Buzzy says “Hey, it rained so hard yesterday the ditch filled up all the way to the plum trees in Theresa’s back yard”. Mikey says “Man, that’s a lot of water, let’s go check it out.” The “ditch” was the low area in the neighborhood where all the rain ran down and accumulated creating a veritable river with debris from backyards all along the way. A really hard rain would increase its size considerably where it flowed behind the houses on Queen Mary and further under Flag Chapel Road into the woods beyond. At several places it would pool into nice swimming holes, perfect for a hot summer day. An idea coalesced in my fertile brain; no doubt inspired by my elevated perch in this magical place.

“Let’s go crawdaddin” I suggested. “Mr. Eddie said he’ll give me a nickel for every crawdad I bring him. He uses ‘em for fishing.” “A nickel - are you sure?” said Mikey. “Yeah, if Mr. Eddie says it, you can believe it.” Mr. Eddie was our neighbor and a friend of my dad’s, a really nice man and he loved to fish. “Man, we could catch hundreds” Mikey exclaimed. “We’ll get hundreds of dollars”. Mikey’s math was always wrong but I didn’t correct him so as not to diminish their enthusiasm. “We need something to scoop them up” says Buzzy, “Mom got mad when we used her tennis racket last time.”” Yeah, and dad’s still looking for the rake we used and forgot to bring home” I added. “We need something like a screen”. An idea slowly coalesced into a plan.

“Okay, you guys meet me at the corner, I know where I can get a screen”. The “corner” was another more public meeting place a street over and out of view from our houses. I went to my house, approaching carefully to see if dad’s car was gone, it was. I went in and Mom was baking something, and my brother Glen was out front mowing. Sucker, he got hit by a chore grenade. Sucks to be him. Mom says “hello son, what are you up to?” Mom always called me son, not Dammit Boy like my dad. She didn’t approve of some words. “Why was the ketchup in the backyard on the picnic table?” “Ask Glen, I’m goin crawdaddin”. I didn’t usually lie to Mom so I often employed vagueness, subterfuge and misdirection to avoid lengthy discussion. “Okay” she says, “be home before the streetlights come on. There’s something in the oven that you might like” I quietly procured two screens from the back of the house and headed for the corner. When I arrived, Johnny was also there so the four of us headed down to the ditch for some serious crawdaddin. Those crawdads didn’t stand a chance.

“Nice screens” said Johnny, “where’d you get ‘em?” “They were on the back of the house, we’re not usin ‘em, too hot to open the windows.” We headed down Queen Theresa and cut through the Nichols yard to the ditch.

The ditch was indeed swollen and flowing as much as waist deep in places. We slowly worked our way downstream scooping up crawdads by the dozens. Mikey had brought his mom’s mop bucket, so we collected them in it. We found that the screens worked better by bending them in the middle making it easier to scoop through the mud and debris. They did snag every so often on sticks and other things tearing holes and making them less effective as the day went on, but we managed to capture what had to be hundreds. Mr. Eddie had better have a pocketful of cash!

After an impressive harvesting of crawdads, we headed back to Mr. Eddie’s to show off our catch. He was quite impressed. He proceeded to pick out the big ones that were about 3” or 4” long and explain that the smaller ones weren’t big enough to put on a hook. Crap! A slight miscalculation on my part. He still ended up buying 30 or so and, being the nice man he was, tipped us up to $5 for the batch. Wow, five bucks! Elated with our success, we dropped the hardware in my yard and headed off to Thomas’ Grocery for Nehi Grape sodas, chips and two of their BBQ sandwiches which we split and devoured. I kept the 50 cents left over since it was my idea. Crawdaddin was hard work!

After much discussion and post-operational debriefing including how to grow crawdads and what they eat, everybody headed home. Mikey went with me to see what mom was cooking. As we approached my house, uh-oh, the police car was out front parked crossways blocking the driveway. Dad had come home. My screens were crammed into the garbage can along with the bucket and dozens of dead crawdads. (Who knew crawdads would drown?) Dad was standing in the carport with his hands on his hips (close to his revolver) and emitting the death stare right at me. Mikey says “I gotta go” and disappeared.

“DAMMIT BOY,

What the hell did you do to my window screens!? Dorthy, get out here and look at what your boy did!”

I proceeded to explain my successful money-making adventure and ended up generously offering my 50 cents to pay for the screens. I’m sure he was quite impressed with my ingenious capitalistic endeavor as his face got all red and contorted, he grabbed the 50 cents and jumped in the police car and sped away at what was certainly an unsafe speed for a neighborhood full of children. Mom said, “Come inside and get cleaned up, there’s oatmeal and raisin cookies.” “Cleaned up? I’m clean cause I swam in the ditch today after catchin’ crawdads. Oh mom, ask dad if he knows anyone who would buy crawdads.” Mikey was at the kitchen table already on his second cookie. My mom is a great cook. “That went well”, I proclaimed, “what do you want to do this afternoon?”