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I was on
the roof again.
I was there
because of a Hi-Bounce rubber ball.
The ball
was made by Spalding. I??™d throw it against the house
and play catch with myself. I??™d bounce it off the
house until my mother would call me in for dinner.
Sometimes
an errant toss would cause the ball to become lodged
in an eaves trough.
I??™d get the
ladder and climb up onto the roof to retrieve the
ball.
My big feet
were not always kind to the roof. I broke a couple of
shingles. This caused a leak in the roof. My father
complained that the leak was so bad that when it
rained it took him an hour-and-a-half to finish a bowl
of soup.
My parents
had gone to town, making the questionable decision to
leave me home alone.
I thought
I??™d surprise them by fixing the roof. I??™d climbed
onto the roof with some leftover shingles, a handful
of bent nails and a claw hammer missing one claw.
I had
quickly grown weary of the task. You might say that I
no longer wanted to fish in that pond. I reached into
my pocket and pulled out a biscuit my mother had
made. I??™d poked a hole into it and filled the cavity
with honey. I removed the wax paper that held this
tasty morsel and hunkered down on the roof to enjoy my
treat.
There was a
nice breeze blowing. The windmill clattered in the
distance and the sheets hanging on the clothesline
popped in the wind. From my vantage point, I admired
the symmetry of our lilac-lined yard.
I polished
off the biscuit and honey and began whistling while I
didn??™t work. I was thankful that I was a boy as I had
been told more than once that no one liked whistling
girls or crowing hens.
It was then
that I saw the car coming up our drive. A plume of
steam was coming from the radiator. A leaky radiator
come to boil was a routine disaster in those bygone
days.
Seeing
visitors took the tired right out of me and I
scrambled down the ladder.
The driver
asked if he might have some water for his radiator,
complaining that the car was no account and had always
been so. He wished out loud that new cars weren??™t
more than a normal person could afford.
I fetched a
pail of water and watched as the man poured it slowly
into his radiator.
He looked
at one of our Allis-Chalmers tractors and told me that
he had one just like it. He loved that tractor. He
said that if he had a choice of losing an arm or
losing that tractor, he reckoned he??™d get used to
driving the tractor one-handed.
His wife
was watching our chickens pursuing grasshoppers in the
yard. The chickens liked to keep moving as the
resident chicken hawk was faster than a speeding
pullet.
Our
chickens were free-roaming cluckers that enjoyed
nothing more than scratching in the dirt and taking a
bath in the dust.
???Do you
ever sell the eggs???? the lady asked. ???There??™s nothing
quite like fresh eggs.???
This was in
the day when eggs, bacon and sun were good for us.
We did sell
eggs. My parents had just taken a couple of cases of
the hen fruit to Sibilrud??™s Grocery in town.
Sibilrud??™s bought the eggs by giving the Batts credit
that we turned into food from the Grocery??™s shelves.
The lady
added that if I would sell her some, she??™d give me a
dollar for a dozen.
A whole
dollar!
I told her
that I was sure I could scare up a dozen and headed
for the chicken house to check with the girls.
I reached
under each hen and came up with 11 eggs and a few
pecks from the hens for my trouble.
I washed
the eggs and put them in a used egg carton. I told
the lady that if she wouldn??™t mid waiting, I??™d have
the 12th egg shortly as I had put a number
of hens to work on the project.
She didn??™t
mind waiting and her husband added that he would just
as soon be where he was as where he was going.
Ten minutes
later, I heard the proud cackling of an egg-laying
hen. I quickly gathered the egg and gave it to the
woman. I apologized for the wait.
She paid me
an extra 25 cents for the overtime the hens had
worked.
?©Al Batt 2005
71622 325 St.
Hartland, MN 56042
Snoeowl@aol.com |
