Steal the Bacon

Sunday morning I had the occasion to scamper about 15’ or so. Wanting to readjust a sprinkler’s spray pattern, I hustled in, made the change, and hustled back out of range. In retrospect, given how hot and humid the morning air, not sure why I thought it worth dodging a few drops of water. 

For the sake of accuracy, I did not scurry. One does not scurry at 235 pounds. A scampering it was, short-ish strides, no time for long ones. 

The mini-dash made me think back to playing hours and hours of Steal the Bacon. In the hierarchy of playground battles, Steal the Bacon was topped only by fierce 2-square and 4-square contests that might last an entire recess period.

That scene stirred the memory of the hot sand sticking to our sweaty skin when we would dive for a ball. These struggles, by the way, took place in St. Petersburg, FL in early 60s. Ambitiously we would draw the roughly 8’x8’ boxes that made the generally sedate children’s game an athletic battle royale. 

Steal the Bacon, however, kept us on our feet mostly. A shell, a can, a soda bottle, a baseball, something to place on the ground between the competitors. We would move in cautiously—sometimes feinting a grab of the target to get our opponent to make a premature stab—the basic rules to steal the bacon and retreat to our safe line. Or get tagged. Simple, but nuanced. Guile, quickness, a sure hand, all to be advantaged. 

Snatch the bacon, scamper home. 

The heat of that sand in my mind dredged up trips to the beach as a child. I hated wearing the little rubber flip flops, and so I would hotfoot it from the car across the sun-fried parking lots onto the searing white powdery sand—quick steps, fast fast fast, down finally to the wet sand and into the water. 

I’m telling you, you had to move out or lose the skin on the bottom of your feet.

Which—and this makes me laugh—brought to mind my one record-setting athletic moment. In junior high p.e., various basic track and field events would be timed or measured, the records to be maintained for all to see for all time.

Well, maybe not for all time.

But for some years I held the record for the shuttle run, a short dash to grab an eraser, return to the mark, back to grab another, and then home to run through the line like the end of any footrace. 

I don’t remember the distance, but all those hundreds of games of Steal the Bacon, all those painful runs to the Gulf, those were the underpinnings of my sporting glory. Perhaps, if the Eton playing fields produced victory at Waterloo, then surely the hot Florida sand my path to victory. 

And by way of the last vestiges of muscle memory, my dry run Sunday morning. Laurel crown not included.

Way Back in the Day

Oh, you remember this social gambit. If you could have dinner with anyone, or three or five, from the past, who would it be and why goes the inquiry. Because is not an answer. Okay, I threw that restriction into the mix.

So back you reach, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I, and Cleopatra. Now that is a game gang of throne-sitters.

Or, Ho Chi Minh, Thomas Paine, and Spartacus. No, you go figure.

Marie Curie, Marie Laveau, and Marie Antoinette. Go ahead, laugh. And, one more, Marie Callender. Laugh. Out. Loud.

Me? Seriously? Well, I would change to the other game. Literally me, back in time, not having so-and-so break bread with me around the patio table.

Diogenes? Further back. Narmer? You think going back 5,000 years is some kind of way-back travel?

No, I’m looking for a warm meal—hippopotamus perhaps—around 200 million years ago with a small band of Homo erectus, maybe at Koobi Fora in what is now Kenya.

But I’m not there for the cookout, I’m there because this early relative apparently lacked the anatomy necessary for speech.

Yes, I’ve gone back to visit, hoping to be there when H e with several companions happen to catch a clear night where they can look up and see the sky awash with millions of stars. I want to hear that very particular human utterance voiced for the first time: Ahhh. 

Their mouths agape, perhaps they unconsciously reach out to one another, do they exchange looks—baffled, curious, surprised? Do their faces register astonishment as we see on the face of a child’s first experience of an overwhelming sense of something beyond their comprehension? 

I go too far. I wield a vocabulary 10 million generations in the making. No, I have gone back to witness a vocalizing, not a verbalizing. To share the unspoken, to connect via experience without the analyses and extrapolations inherent now in human language.

Just being, in the moment. No science. No dogma. In awe, back in the day.

Envying My Neighbors' Hammock at Windy Hill in Lyman, South Carolina

Across the way the neighbors’ hammock sways,

unencumbered,

work and school the reason why.

Beneath their porch roof it awaits,

while I shade my eyes with a broad-brimmed hat

in the midday sun.

Beyond the tree line, a red-shouldered hawk calls.

My dog hunkers down behind the shed.

I, chores to attend, gather tools and wire,

the garden fence next on the list.

Hands full, I stop—a pause, really,

thinking of how I might

ease myself along through the rest of the afternoon.

But, at my back: Time!

One last glance over my shoulder, then onward.

Growing Seasons

Within the past two weeks, we here in USDA zone 7b witnessed quite the growth spurt in plants and trees. The leafing out nearly complete, and then the newest greening as if somehow the vegetation was spiked by some super-secret alchemy—most likely just more sun and plenty of rain. Warmer, too.

I more easily notice the change in the neighbors’ trees and bushes. A quickening that brings fresh leafy greens to the end of branches and stems. Only when I am next door to I appreciate more fully what is going on on my side of the fences. 

An evening conversation last week called up my stint with 6-8-year-olds in a 2^nd/3^rd class I taught in ’79-’80. I noted how I needed to generate a whole different level of patience than my 26-year-old-self brought through that classroom door. And pronto.

Then we switched the focus to the high-schoolers. I voted for juniors as my favorite students purely from the standpoint of teaching, the changes that took place, the second semester blossoming for so many. Maybe the driving more, the dating, maybe working, but something seemed to happen post-holiday break that shot them forward.

Of course, the seniors offered their own rewards—not only academically—reality checks were coming due for them, the countdowns to a finality, a last walk out the door, a bigger beginning looming. Great stuff.

More and more, and not so much as a joke, I speak of this being my 3^rd growing season here. Not such a bad way to ground where one stands.

On both sides next door, two kids each. They range from 5-9. Most folks know what kinds of changes I have seen in them with the passing seasons. 

Often I see parents post photos of kids for a birthday and include pictures from previous years, and often the commentary runs along the lines of “Slow down” or “Growing up so fast”. Yep, they are weeds. In a good way. 

Somewhere along the way—can’t give credit where due, unfortunately—someone offered up this thought as a perfect gift for a child: Take your time. A kind gesture to the child, no doubt. A plaintive phrase for parents perhaps.

But, it’s growing season.