A Day in a Boy’s Life The year is 1949 on a Saturday morning. The place is my grandparent’s house in Ardmore, Oklahoma. “Richey, Richey, wake up”. I was wondering if I was dreaming when a hand touched my shoulder. “Richey, you wanted to get up early today”. As I opened my eyes I saw my grandmother standing beside my bed. Granddad had already gotten out of bed. You see I use to sleep with my granddad in the back screened-in bedroom. I found my clothes and scrambled into them and slipped on my shoes. Grandmother had already cooked breakfast and was making me a plate of eggs, biscuits and gravy, sausage and a glass of milk with ice in it. Grandmother knew I liked ice in my milk. Granddad came in and sat down. He asked me why I wanted to get up early on a Saturday morning. I told him that Billy Ray, my cousin, and I am going hunting. Grandmother wiped her mouth and said; “Now Richey, you be careful with that new BB gun”. Grandmother, how many times are you going to tell me that, I said. . She said, “As many times as I feel like it. You know this is the first time we are letting you shoot it without granddad being with you. And, don’t shoot it until you are away from any houses. We don’t want to have to pay for any broken windows. Granddad said, “You have to do your chores before you go”. Okay, granddad, but can I be excused so I can start them? Grandmother looked at my plate and said, “You can go when you finish your sausage, you know sausage doesn’t grow on trees”. I finished my breakfast and ran to the barn. I grabbed the chicken feed scoop, dipped it into the feed and ran to the chicken yard. As I scattered the feed on the ground for the chickens, I saw the rooster sizing me up. I hate that mean old rooster. I crept my way to the gate and escaped. I knew I had to gather the eggs before I went hunting, so when the rooster was occupied scrapping the ground for the feed, I snuck into the chicken coop. As I was collecting the eggs from the nests, I heard something behind me. I turned around and was face to beak with the rooster. He had me cornered. I screamed for granddad. I was told that if I stood still the rooster wouldn’t bother me, so I was as frozen as a statue. Granddad walked into the coop and started laughing. “Richey, when are you going to learn that you are bigger than that rooster”, he asked. “Well granddad, I know I am bigger, but I don’t have those spurs like that old rooster.” When I was safely out of the chicken yard, I turned around and stuck my tongue out at the rooster. He scratched at the ground like a bull. I knew he was telling me; next time I’ll get you. With my chores done, I asked granddad if he would take me to Aunt Alma’s house. You see Billy Ray stays at his grandmother’s house some too. He asked me if I was ready. I told him that I had my sack lunch, my BB gun, and extra BB’s and I was ready to go. I climbed into his old truck and we were off. Billy Ray was waiting in the front yard when we pulled into the driveway. I jumped out and grabbed my stuff out of the back of the pickup. I waved at granddad as he pulled away. Billy Ray grabbed his BB gun and a bag of something I couldn’t tell what. As we were starting into the field, Aunt Alma opened the screen door and yelled, “You boys be careful with those BB guns.” I turned to Billy Ray and said, “You would think we are just kids, the way they worry about us”, after all, we are 7 years old. The field next to Aunt Alma’s house is about 10 acres and has a lot of trees with a stock tank in the middle. We reached the first stand of trees and loaded our BB guns. My first shot scattered a bunch of sparrows. Billy Ray shot at a lizard. My next shot brought down a sparrow and I went running for it. I was so proud. I had shot my first game and before Billy Ray had gotten anything. I picked the dead bird up and told Billy Ray that some wildcat will have an easy meal tonight. We sat under a tree and watched 2 horny toads sitting by a red anthill. As an ant walked by them, they would grab it with their mouth and eat it. Billy Ray wanted to know if I wanted to catch the horny toads. I said, “Nah, there’s a thousand of them around. We will get some after we finish hunting.” About noon, we decided that we would eat lunch. As we sat there eating our sandwiches and drinking water from our canteens, we started talking about what else we wanted to do. Billy Ray grabbed his sack and pulled out some twine and some bacon. He said, “We could do some crawdad fishing.” We found some nice sized limbs that I cut off with my pocketknife. We attached the twine to the pole and went to the stock tank. We tied a small washer on the twine about 5 inches from the bottom and then tied some bacon on the end. We were ready to catch us some of those big blue pinchers. I let my bait lay on the bottom for about 2 minutes and started to pull it up real slow. Sure enough, I had two crawdads hanging onto the bacon as I moved it to the shore. Billy Ray had one on his line too. We used Billy Ray’s sack to keep our crawdads. After 30 minutes we had a mess of them. Billy Ray asked me if I wanted to go sell them at the Pack-A-Sack bait shop. I told him that I would rather eat them for supper. Aunt Alma could cook crawdads like nobody’s business. By now, the sun was overhead and it was getting hot. We decided to go back to Aunt Alma’s house and play marbles. On the way back we passed through Uncle Walter’s watermelon patch. We looked at each other and said, “yeah”. We picked the smallest one we saw and ran for the barn. Billy Ray took the crawdads to Aunt Alma and came out with a big old butcher knife. We sliced that watermelon into two pieces and had our fill. We didn’t know what we wanted to do next. We spied the grape vine and decided to have us a smoke. We each broke off a piece of the dried grape vine. Billy Ray produced the matches and we lit up. Course we didn’t inhale. We just sucked the smoke into our mouths and blew it out. We thought we were hot stuff back then. I asked Billy Ray if he had any money. He said, “Nah. Why, what do you want to buy?” “I kinda would like a coke” I said. Billy Ray said that we could go get some of his empty coke bottles and trade them in. Back then a boy would collect all the coke bottles he could find and store them in a secret place for emergency money. You could get 2 cents for each bottle when you turned them in to the store. We grabbed an arm full and headed to the corner grocery store. It was about 2 blocks away. When we crossed over the railroad tracks we heard a train coming. We put the bottles on the ground and waved at the conductor when the train passed. After picking up our bottles we continued to the store. When we got to the store, I pulled the screen door open and said hi to Mr. Pate. He looked at us and said.” What will it be this time, a coke or some candy?” We told him we were thirsty because we had drunk all our water from our canteens. We each pulled a Grapette Soda from the soda chest. Mr. Pate said that we had 4 cents change as he gave us our coins. We went outside and sat on the steps and drank our Grapette. We didn’t want to have to pay for the deposit, so we put the empties in the wood rack inside the front door and left. Billy Ray started walking with a purpose. I said, “Hey wait up. Where ya going?” He said, “You’ll see.” We started walking down the railroad track for about a block. Billy Ray then went off to the side of the tracks and started looking for something. He said, “Here it is” as he picked up a flattened penny. You see he had placed it on the tracks early that morning before I had gotten there. I looked at that penny and said, “I’m gong to put both my pennies on the track for the next train. And I did. We ran back to the store and asked Mr. Pate what time it was. He said “two o-clock”. Billy Ray and I ran back to Aunt Alma’s house and waited on Granddad to pick us up. We didn’t want to be late. We were going with granddad to feed the pigs. Granddad had a pigpen out on a country road about a mile from Aunt Alma’s. When granddad pulled into the driveway, we piled into the back of the pickup. Granddad said “Don’t let the slop spill on you. Your grandmother would pinch my ear off if I brought you home smelling like a pig pen.” When we arrived at the pigpen, Billy Ray and I jumped out of the pickup and climbed up on the wood railing around the pigpen. We watched as granddad dumped the slop into the troughs. Those pigs started eating and one of the larger pigs actually climbed into the trough to eat. We held our nose as granddad poured the second bucket of slop. I asked granddad how in the world pigs could eat that stuff. It even had maggots crawling in it. He said that the pigs didn’t care the maggots were like dessert to them. On the way back to Aunt Alma’s granddad stopped at a snow cone stand and bought us each a snow cone. I got a rainbow and Billy Ray got a pineapple one. After granddad told Aunt Alma that Billy Ray was going to go with us to run some errands, we arrived downtown. All three of us went into the bank and stood in line with granddad so he could put some money in the bank. When it was his turn, the teller gave Billy Ray and I a handful of rubber bands. He knew that we liked to make tanks with them. The next stop was the drug store where granddad bought some medicine. He bought us an Archie and Friends comic book. One more stop before we went home and that was the icehouse. We loved the icehouse because they would let us go into the room where they cut the ice and grab a handful of shaved ice to eat. It always smelled good in there and it felt good in there on a hot day. We arrived home and went into the kitchen where grandmother was churning butter. She asked us if we had fun. We told her that we shot some birds, went crawdad fishing and everything. I asked her if I could eat dinner with Billy Ray. She said I could and off we went to explore the back yard. That evening Aunt Alma had cooked our crawdads and we ate every one of them. It was dark when I got back to grandmother and granddads house. They were sitting in the front yard talking. I pulled up a chair and sat with them. I saw a lightning bug and ran to get my jar. I chased and caught a bunch. When I thought I had enough for a night-light, I sat back down. Grandmother said that it was getting late and if we wanted to get to church on time tomorrow, we needed to go to bed. As I climbed into bed, I placed my “night light” on the ledge by the bed. As I was staring at those lightning bugs, I fell asleep. I will always remember the time I spent with my grandparents in Ardmore. I wish that kids today could experience those innocent times when life was at a much slower pace and kids could go hunting on their own and their parents would not worry about the trouble that kids face today.