RAINY DAY AT HERMAN JUNCTION: POST #12

I loved rainy days at Herman Junction. For one thing it meant that there would be no work in the cotton patch if it was raining. I loved to lay in the bed and listen to the rain dripping off the house into a big wash tub sitting under the edge of the house catching rain water for Mom to wash clothes in. If I had been normal I could have slept late but I have never been able to sleep late in my life. The old saying, "Early to bed and early to rise" has certainly been true of me.

Since we didn't have a TV we had to manufacture something to do and that was not really a hard thing to do. We could always go to Booie's house and watch TV with the Woods kids and that was enjoyble. If the Burn's family happened to be there we could sit and listen to them play music and I loved that too. The big house was built high enough off the ground that sometimes we could crawl under the house and sit and play marbles. It was a great time to have corn cob fights because the cobs were good and wet. We could always put on our roller skates and have fun skating and trying to figure out new moves. That is, if they weren't already worn out. It is amazing what can come out of the head of a youngster who has no TV to watch or electronic games to play. If someone had said 'Nintendo' in those days Harvel would have probably popped him thinking that he was trying to speak Mexican.

One of my favorite things to do was to just watch some of the older brothers and some neighbor guys draw a big circle on the ground and all of them get in there and see who could stay in the longest with all the others trying to throw the rest of them out. Now, that was quite a tussle. Or, they might get on top of that storm celler and see who could stay up there the longest and be declared the King Of The Hill.

We had a big front porch and a big back porch so we could sit on the porch and be sheltered from the rain and just watch it rain or play some game or another. Of course, it wasn't long until I was out in the rain jumping in mud puddles and making a mess of myself. Mom was standing yelling at me to stay out of the mud but I was already in it! We have gone out in the road between our house and Booie's and the mud was just right to slide barefoot in it. You could back up a little distance and run and slide for a good ways in the mud. I wonder now what would have happened if we had hit a piece of glass or a splinter off an old piece of a board. I hurt just thinking about that.

Of course when Linda and I got a bicycle for Christmas to share, one of us could ride the bicycle up and down the road. Every time that I got on it she wanted it too. Ain't that just like a little sister?

If it had rained a lot, the ditch in front of our house was full of water and Booie would bring his fish net down and throw it in the ditch and catch fish. I cannot imagine now us eating those fish but we did. The fish had come up that ditch out of the Big Bay Ditch about a quarter of a mile from the house.

I've always loved a rainy day but there is none better than the days at Herman Junction and that is what made everything well at Herman Junction.