Thursday, August 03, 2006
Snakes And Snails, And The Alligator Tale.
It was war time, around 1942. We had moved from Jasper,Texas to Houston. My father was in the Navy, helping fight the war, and Mom and me and brothers and sisters just tried to get through those years. We did what children do, explored the world around us, and looked for ways to keep from being bored.
But an eight year old can only search for so much tin foil in discarded cigarette packages, or gather newspapers to take to fire stations, where they gave you a little money for them. You could gather discarded glass soda pop bottles, and get a few cents for them, but you had to be careful they could break.
Anyone whose lived in Southeast Texas knows there are lots of things children can get into there. Not far from Louisiana, even Houston has swampy areas. I never searched for snakes, just hoped I didn't happen upon one, especially water moccasins. Often, after a rain, little slimy things would show up and crawl around on sidewalks, or the ground, like they were in a hurry to get somewhere.
I don't know how my sister and I learned we could make them disappear, like magic by pouring salt on them. Mom couldn't figure out why table salt kept disappearing, and after I helped my sister dispose of the dead slug bodies, I tried to not feel like I was a murderer, but worried more about getting that slimy stuff off my hands.
About the alligator though, or it may have been a crocodile, my sister and I also liked fishing, for bass or catfish, like grownups did, but that required more elaborate equipment than a cane and some string, and then we had to find crawfish and try to make them be still while we stabbed them with safety pins we borrowed from little brother's diapers. We needed the crawfish to not die, but squirm and do little backover flips, to attract the fish we were sure we would catch.
But even after all that preparation, and feeling more guilty than I had about salting the slugs, we still didn't catch even one fish. So we did the next best thing. we found stuff to throw into the pond, rocks, tiny pieces of tree limbs, whatever was there, except we didn't throw trash into the water. We may have been slug and crawfish murderers, but we were not litterbugs.
We had pretty well cleared the bank of the pond, and were about ready to find something more interesting to do, when my sister noticed something poking up out of the edge of the water.
We sidled up a little closer, and just about plopped into the water with it. It was that alligator or crocodile the family still talks about. Boredom quickly liftd as we found more things to throw, at it.
I had heard grownups talk about alligators in Florida growing as tall as grownup men. Some said they could swallow a small child in one gulp. We had to make sure it was not still alive.
After it just lay there quite a while, not moving at all, we decided it was safe to
capture it. That meant a sneaky trip back home to get clothes line, because we knew Mom would not let us take part of hers. She was upset enough about diaper pins disappearing. It was still war time, and metal things were scarce. Adults worried about things like that.
My sister and I just needed to get the line around the creature's neck, and drag it someplace we could hide it, until we figured out what to do with it.
On the way home, we came up with a plan. We pulled it along the edge of the woods because that kept dirt and sand off it, and we noticed that when someone walked by and saw what it was, they threw their arms up into the air, and ran screaming right ahead of us.
After we pulled the creature up close, then back again a few times, that wasn't much fun anymore, so we decided we would dig a big hole in the yard, and put a little water in it so the gator would slide back and forth, and charge everybody a nickel a piece to come see it. That didn't last long enough to make even a quarter between the two of us, but we had a lot of fun, until Mom saw what we were doing, and made us drag the poor critter back to where we got it. The most fun of it was when we scared people nearly to death as they walked by the side of the road and saw it wiggle.
That old pond had real fish in it. We knew that was true because once in a while we saw one flounce right up out of it into the air. But we caught something bigger, the alligator.
But an eight year old can only search for so much tin foil in discarded cigarette packages, or gather newspapers to take to fire stations, where they gave you a little money for them. You could gather discarded glass soda pop bottles, and get a few cents for them, but you had to be careful they could break.
Anyone whose lived in Southeast Texas knows there are lots of things children can get into there. Not far from Louisiana, even Houston has swampy areas. I never searched for snakes, just hoped I didn't happen upon one, especially water moccasins. Often, after a rain, little slimy things would show up and crawl around on sidewalks, or the ground, like they were in a hurry to get somewhere.
I don't know how my sister and I learned we could make them disappear, like magic by pouring salt on them. Mom couldn't figure out why table salt kept disappearing, and after I helped my sister dispose of the dead slug bodies, I tried to not feel like I was a murderer, but worried more about getting that slimy stuff off my hands.
About the alligator though, or it may have been a crocodile, my sister and I also liked fishing, for bass or catfish, like grownups did, but that required more elaborate equipment than a cane and some string, and then we had to find crawfish and try to make them be still while we stabbed them with safety pins we borrowed from little brother's diapers. We needed the crawfish to not die, but squirm and do little backover flips, to attract the fish we were sure we would catch.
But even after all that preparation, and feeling more guilty than I had about salting the slugs, we still didn't catch even one fish. So we did the next best thing. we found stuff to throw into the pond, rocks, tiny pieces of tree limbs, whatever was there, except we didn't throw trash into the water. We may have been slug and crawfish murderers, but we were not litterbugs.
We had pretty well cleared the bank of the pond, and were about ready to find something more interesting to do, when my sister noticed something poking up out of the edge of the water.
We sidled up a little closer, and just about plopped into the water with it. It was that alligator or crocodile the family still talks about. Boredom quickly liftd as we found more things to throw, at it.
I had heard grownups talk about alligators in Florida growing as tall as grownup men. Some said they could swallow a small child in one gulp. We had to make sure it was not still alive.
After it just lay there quite a while, not moving at all, we decided it was safe to
capture it. That meant a sneaky trip back home to get clothes line, because we knew Mom would not let us take part of hers. She was upset enough about diaper pins disappearing. It was still war time, and metal things were scarce. Adults worried about things like that.
My sister and I just needed to get the line around the creature's neck, and drag it someplace we could hide it, until we figured out what to do with it.
On the way home, we came up with a plan. We pulled it along the edge of the woods because that kept dirt and sand off it, and we noticed that when someone walked by and saw what it was, they threw their arms up into the air, and ran screaming right ahead of us.
After we pulled the creature up close, then back again a few times, that wasn't much fun anymore, so we decided we would dig a big hole in the yard, and put a little water in it so the gator would slide back and forth, and charge everybody a nickel a piece to come see it. That didn't last long enough to make even a quarter between the two of us, but we had a lot of fun, until Mom saw what we were doing, and made us drag the poor critter back to where we got it. The most fun of it was when we scared people nearly to death as they walked by the side of the road and saw it wiggle.
That old pond had real fish in it. We knew that was true because once in a while we saw one flounce right up out of it into the air. But we caught something bigger, the alligator.
