This is a story about a couple of hillbilly redneck kids growing up in the 60's and 70's on a remote farm in the Texas Hill Country. They had about a hundred acres to roam, ride horses, fish in the tanks, swim in moss bottom creeks. They hunted for chicken eggs, tended a garden and cared for the animals: goats, cows, pigs, chickens.

Homemade vanilla ice cream with blackberries steeped in sugar was a favorite summer time treat as was cherry tomatoes they'd pop in their mouths, then spit the seeds through their teeth. They captured horney toads and put them in Prince Albert cans, or old matchbooks. With mason jars in hand they spread out across the pasture and captured fire flies dancing in the night, or red ants from opposing colonies and then they'd meetup in the back yard at their hound-dog Sam's old dog house to hold ant wars. When the fierce battles were over the children pinched the survivors in half to watch their bodies run in circles.

They smoked grape vine, or cedar bark, in cardboard pen holders and played hot wheels in a clearing surrounded by wild flowers and a grove of Spanish oak and cedar trees.They dropped rocks from atop the hen house onto the rooster's head, because it made him 'walk funny', and they shot cheap arrows at the thick shell of an armadillo trapped inside an old rusty horse trailer, that is until their mamma caught them and took a fly swatter to their legs and made them let him go.

The boy, Kevin, got a pair of deer skin chaps and a Daniel Boone ring tail cap for Christmas one year – made out of their own spoils –and a bullwhip he stood in the front yard constantly popping as loud as he could pop it. His little sister, two years younger, got a baby doll with huge blue eyes that closed when you laid her down and opened when you picked her up. Her mamma sewed dresses for the baby doll.

The storeroom of the carport was alive with the sounds of a rock tumbler, or the reloader machine for placing gun powder in shell casings; at times it reeked of shrimp left in the tackle box.

Summer nights were often filled with midnight snacks of raw peeled potatoes sprinkled with salt, or chocolate and banana Moon (Astronaut) bars made popular by the fact we had just landed on the moon for the first time. If they were lucky cold fried chicken was in the frig with a tall glass of lime koolaid syrupy sweet. Entertainment was a movie before all of the stations signed off for the night; hopefully a Jerry Lewis movie. Most summer nights were steamy hot; freezing cold in the winters - a fireplace and heating blankets the only source of heat.

The only valid reason to miss church was to study for a test, or if they were enrolled in a hunting safety course, for example – or, of course, were out hunting . . . otherwise they were in attendance every time the doors were open.

They bottle fed baby animals with glass coke bottles and a rubber nipple or an eye dropper, depending the the animals such as the young of squirrels and coons, kid goats and piglets or orphaned fawns. On any given day you might find a litter of bobcats in a freshly dug post hole, or discover that the ornery old horse named Blanket had once again run the kids underneath a low limb and deposited them into an ant bed . . . .or you might find them standing at the front door with a milk mustache watching a tornado tear through the landscape up on the hill.

They shucked corn on the front porch, robbed bee hives of their honey, picked ticks off the dogs and popped them in the fireplace by holding them over the flames on the fireplace shovel . . . . and every now and again you'd find one of them on top of the roof spinning the antenna while the other watched for the tv signal to come in clearer. They pealed pecans until their fingers were stained green and rode the tractor into town five miles away to mow the football field for a Friday night game.

As perfect as it may all sound they could never drop their guard because on any given day you might find a snake in the garden. Let's just say it wasn't a matter of IF, it was a matter of WHEN it would rear it's ugly head and strike. 

 Though they didn't have many store bought toys the little girl had Car Crash Barbie and a Bucky Backaroo in her wooden toy box with pink trim; she remembered them fondly. More often than not though you would find arrowheads, cobalt blue medicine jars and Prince Albert tin cans (excavated with a little red pick from an abandoned hotel dump out on their property) or a pocket full of bebees and rocks, or the corpse of a frog gripped too tightly in her little hand.

Now, you may be thinking, "Wait, what? Car Crash Barbie? Is there such a thing?" No, Car Crash Barbie was a figment of the little girl's imagination. She would pick her scabs and dab tissues in the blood and wrap them around her Barbie's head and body and leave the doll abandoned, totally naked, on top of her dresser – the makeshift hospital - for days, if not weeks. But what do you expect from a little girl who slept with her football and watched the night lights dance off the popcorn blown ceiling as she pretended they were camera flashes as the crown stood to their feet in a winning frenzy, cheering her on while she ran the football in for the winning touchdown? This was her childhood dream; to be a pro ball player. That's why the teacher's were always telling her it was unladylike to spit like a man, but she would do it anyway when the teacher wasn't looking, because ball players spat all the time, didn't they?

When they visited their grandma they sometimes ate chicken fried squirrel with homemade gravy and chocolate fried pies, and all of the scraps went into a bucket beneath the kitchen sink for the hogs. Their granddaddy had a fake ear to replace the one he lost to skin cancer which he kept in the frig. When no one was looking they'd stick their fingers in the frig to poke it and pinch it, and giggle. Kevin actually stuck it to his forehead once and ran around the house on a stick horse just a hootin' and hollerin'.

Once when they were mad at their Dad the little sister secretly stuck Fonzi's –(her black cat's) paw in his cottage cheese, and laughed with devilish delight when he ate it. Sometimes they would pee their britches because they didn't want to stop playing to come into the house, and their mom had to threaten them with bodily harm to get them out of the trees to brush their teeth.They spent freezing New Year's Eve's in the back of an old pickup truck with a rabbit call, .22 rifles and a spot light, many times getting more of a thrill out of shining the light in spiders' eyes than a raccoon they had up a tree. They were hunting on their own with loaded rifles well before their pre-teens; it was just their way of life.

Aaaaaah , the innocence of youth . . . . So simple and carefree. But we all know that not all that glitters is gold . . .and so often we have no idea what is going on right next door to us, and we don't see the snake in the garden.