From Tree to Tree

Across the street from us in Larry Bell Park was a ravine that was about the length of a  football field that stopped at Manget Creek, just below the softball field.  The ravine was a long deep ditch line with trees.  As a kid I like to go in it when I wanted to be alone and think.  It was also a good place to play.  Over a period of time I learned of one slim tree there I could climb up near the top, get it weaving back and forth with shifting my weight and with enough swinging it leaned over to a similar shape tree and I grab onto that tree straighten my legs out and the tree I was in would spring back in shape and I from the top of the second tree shimmy  down, mission accomplished. 

Of course approval or showing off was always a priority and I wanted to show my friends Gene Sanges and Tony Hester.   One day while playing in the ravine with Gene and Tony I did my old trick, I climbed up the tree I was well acquainted with the intentions of swinging over to the neighboring tree.  I didn't make it to the second tree.  When I got the first tree weaving back and forth with my weight the tree snapped and down I fell.

It knocked me out cold.  Tony and Gene thought I was just playing possum.  Tony went and got his wagon and they carried me to his back yard.  They told me if I did not get up they were going to take all my clothes off in front of Tony's sisters Peggy and Lula.

I did not get up and they took my clothes off.

Then they thought I was dead.  

They loaded me back in the wagon and carried me to my house.  It must have been on a weekend, my parents and sister were not there.

They carried me into my bedroom and put me in my bed, threw my clothes on the bed too, and left.

When my family came home there I was out cold, naked in bed.

I'm sure that was a shock to them.

Ironically, I did not know it at the time, but with my uncle, Daddy's brother W.C. was young he did the same trick on the same property, and was knocked out.  He was in a coma for weeks.

Several years ago Tony's mother died.  I went to the funeral home to pay my respect.  Tony was not there yet but his two sisters Peggy and Lula were.   The whole time we talked I wonder if they were thinking the same thing I was, seeing me in the buff.   That subject went unsaid as we talked about old times.