TexasJerseyMilker
Well-known member
I thought it would be fun to start a discussion about childhood (and adult) watermelon thefts, orchard raids and suchlike.
OK. One summer when I was 13 I got to go back to Texas and spend time with my cousins. There was a guy down the road from grandma's house who had a truck patch. There was one really huge watermelon out in the middle you could see it from the road. My cousins and some of their friends and I decided to take it. There was about 5 kids. At dark we all crawled under the mesh fence and went on our hands and knees through the vines, closer and closer. The huge watermelon was shining in the moonlight. Suddenly dogs barking, the porch light came on, a man's voice yelling and a shotgun blast. We ran like a turned over bucket of mice but on the way out someone got a smaller melon. It was still warm from the sun and really sweet.
When I was a kid the people next door had a pet sheep. We used to tease this sheep from the top of the wooden fence. If you fell in there that sheep was really mean and would ram you. We all had an irrational hatred of that sheep. We would pick green grapes to throw and imbed them into the sheeps wool. It looked like the sheep was covered with green ticks. Later that summer I was out messing around at night, climbed into Mrs Heinrick's vegetable garden and operated on her ripe tomatos. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to cut holes and put some of my mom's saccharin pills inside each tomato.
Mrs Heinricks did not like us kids. There was a big tree right on the fenceline. The wood fence divided the property and also the tree. We would climb up in the tree and tease her son and she would come out screaming. So she painted the limbs of the tree with tar. We got buckets of sand and covered the tar and climbed up anyway.
Another time in Texas, my cousin Mike and I got some firecrackers around 4th of July. This was a classic old southern small hick one street town. The main street had stores with overhanging porches and black folks would sit in chairs in front of the stores. We climbed up on the roofs and tossed fire crackers down there and yelling Snake! You can imagine the commotion. So we got bored and left. We thought it would be fun to climb up in a tree, go out on a limb and drop firecrackers on a big nest of red ants on the ground below. Suddenly we were stinging and burning all over. It was horrible. The only way to get down was through the mass of red ants that covered the trunk and branch we were on so we dropped out of the tree into the nest This stuff may not seem very funny but it sure was to a kid (later).
When I was a 6 or 7 year old kid we lived near an artichoke field. Mom would send us out with sacks to get artichokes. She always told me to look out for snakes and not to mess with them. So of course I looked for snakes and messed with them.
OK. One summer when I was 13 I got to go back to Texas and spend time with my cousins. There was a guy down the road from grandma's house who had a truck patch. There was one really huge watermelon out in the middle you could see it from the road. My cousins and some of their friends and I decided to take it. There was about 5 kids. At dark we all crawled under the mesh fence and went on our hands and knees through the vines, closer and closer. The huge watermelon was shining in the moonlight. Suddenly dogs barking, the porch light came on, a man's voice yelling and a shotgun blast. We ran like a turned over bucket of mice but on the way out someone got a smaller melon. It was still warm from the sun and really sweet.
When I was a kid the people next door had a pet sheep. We used to tease this sheep from the top of the wooden fence. If you fell in there that sheep was really mean and would ram you. We all had an irrational hatred of that sheep. We would pick green grapes to throw and imbed them into the sheeps wool. It looked like the sheep was covered with green ticks. Later that summer I was out messing around at night, climbed into Mrs Heinrick's vegetable garden and operated on her ripe tomatos. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to cut holes and put some of my mom's saccharin pills inside each tomato.
Mrs Heinricks did not like us kids. There was a big tree right on the fenceline. The wood fence divided the property and also the tree. We would climb up in the tree and tease her son and she would come out screaming. So she painted the limbs of the tree with tar. We got buckets of sand and covered the tar and climbed up anyway.
Another time in Texas, my cousin Mike and I got some firecrackers around 4th of July. This was a classic old southern small hick one street town. The main street had stores with overhanging porches and black folks would sit in chairs in front of the stores. We climbed up on the roofs and tossed fire crackers down there and yelling Snake! You can imagine the commotion. So we got bored and left. We thought it would be fun to climb up in a tree, go out on a limb and drop firecrackers on a big nest of red ants on the ground below. Suddenly we were stinging and burning all over. It was horrible. The only way to get down was through the mass of red ants that covered the trunk and branch we were on so we dropped out of the tree into the nest This stuff may not seem very funny but it sure was to a kid (later).
When I was a 6 or 7 year old kid we lived near an artichoke field. Mom would send us out with sacks to get artichokes. She always told me to look out for snakes and not to mess with them. So of course I looked for snakes and messed with them.