Yogi and Susie
How I Spent My Summer Vacation
By
Troy Andrew Smith
Back in ancient times, when I was in Elementary School and no this was not before the invention of chalk, Teachers used to do all they could to mess up a young boy’s summer break. I mean, a guy would suffer through a whole school year, doing math and arithmetic and math and more arithmetic (you might think I wasn’t a good math student; you’d be right) just drudging through that wasteland of time trying to reach one goal and one goal only, SUMMER VACATION!
That glorious time when all a young man had to do was be a kid. If you were a kid growing up in rural Oklahoma this meant, sunny days of riding horses, going swimming, swimming your horse in the pond, eating mulberries and blackberries when they were in season, fishing the ponds, camping out on the pond dam, and many other spur of the moment activities that might include such things as mud fights or going to the drive in picture show when you could talk your folks into going.
Of course, summer’s weren’t all fun and games, especially if you were a boy and lived in the country and had passed the age of twelve, because by then you were supposed to work during the summer. Truth is, most of us had already been required to work during the summers but by the age of twelve you could start doing work that you got paid for. Unless, you were held as an indentured servant by your parents and they claimed that buying your clothes, feeding you, and putting you through school was enough payment for what you did.
What kind of work could a twelve year old boy do, you ask? Well, back then, it could be almost anything all these child labor laws hadn’t been invented yet. What ta heck is he talking about, you might be asking about now? Let me digress here for a second and give a few examples. Feeding the hogs, chickens, cows, dogs, horses and what all, didn’t count, that was just part of your regular ‘chores.’ Besides, they ate all year round so they couldn’t be counted as a summer job anyway. But, by the age of twelve and this is a relative number because some kids were able to get to work earlier and few put it off until way later in life, but by the age of twelve you could start doing things like, lift a bale of hay, drive a tractor good enough to rake hay, and soon your body would betray you and make you big enough and strong enough you could spend your whole summer hauling hay. Still, that was better’n school.
There were a few other flaws with summer. They usually came in the form of insects or as we referred to them, those damned bugs. These came in several shapes and sizes but the most common pests were Mosquitoes, Ticks and Chiggers. Sometimes bumble bees would make their contribution (especially in the hay fields) to your suffering and in North East Oklahoma we also had what was called, “blister bugs.” I’m sure that there was probably a more scientific name for the little black beetle looking bugs with the red spot on their bodies and if I’d spent more time and paid attention more in school, I might be knowing what that name is, but for decades now the term, “blister bug,” has sufficed.
Some years hay fields were fraught full of blister bugs(you like that word fraught? I paid good money for it). It seemed like you couldn’t hardly move without squashing one of them. Hopefully you had your shoes on when you did. When hauling hay, back then it was wire tied bales that were lifted onto the truck bed by a, ‘pop up,’ loader (although sometimes I was the pop up loader) and stacked carefully on as someone else drove. The bales would be lifted from the ground to the small shelf at the top of the loader, where you would then hook ‘em with your hay hooks and, “place” them in the stack. The speed of the bales coming up the loader was directly related to speed the driver of the truck was going. So, if it was you and your hay hauling partner taking turns driving, the speed would be moderate and steady so you didn’t cover up the guy or guys doing the loading. If it was your Dad, Grandpa or Uncle (or any other adult who had an interest in getting his hay into the barn quickly) and it looked like it might be, “fixin’ ta rain,” the speed of the bales coming up the loader would increase dramatically.
Any way, all that said, blister bugs liked to hitch hike on the bales, or hide under the bales, or just meander across the fields in search of some poor soul to bite or get squashed by, that wasn’t wearing protective clothing on the part were the “juice” touched them. That would be were the blister formed. And a nasty blister it was.
Chiggers were the worst menace to summer fun. What’s a Chigger? It’s a tiny, red bug that burrows into your skin and makes a bump similar to a Mosquito bite, lays their eggs (so I’m told. I really can’t say that I’ve ever actually seen a Chigger egg or Chigger hatchlings) and then die. They were so small you didn’t see them coming. You never got the satisfaction of smashing them like you could a Mosquito and they would make you itch so bad they’d drive you crazy. Many a kid has scratched them (the bumps) so much, as to take off their own hide. The worst part about Chiggers is, where they like to bite. The more socially inappropriate the location on your body is to scratch in public, the more perfect it is for Chiggers to make a home there. If you’ve never suffered through a long winded church service with a Chigger or Chiggers making himself a meal in your privates, you have never really known the true meaning of self control.
The real problem with summer though was the last words your Teacher said to the class just before you got out of school the year before. It was usually something like this, “Remember kids, pay attention to what you do this summer because you’ll get to write about it next year.” Yeah, summers were always marred by knowing you were going to have write the dreaded essay, “What I did on My Summer Vacation.” Now, even though I don’t have to do so, I’m going to tell you all what I did for my Summer Vacation this year.
First off, as an Adult, summer vacations tend to be much shorter than they used to be as a kid. Usually they are from one to two weeks. I hear some rich people get three weeks of vacation but I’ve never managed to get to that level of high living. Mine this year was three days plus the weekend. The other problem with Vacations as an Adult is the, TIME SPEED FACTOR. The TSF is the rule of physics that states, the older you get the faster time flies. In other words for every three days you have to do the things you want to do, it feels like you just got to do it for a day and it was gone.
Our vacation started on a Friday. Since Susie was an active part of the vacation experience, I will be making reference to OUR vacation from here on out. No, we did not have Friday off from work but since we planned to drive from L.A. to Northern Colorado and wanted as much time as we could squeeze out in Colorado, we’d decided we would leave as soon as we got off work.
My three favorite women in the world; Deb, Susie and Tawna
As luck would have it, I got off later than planned. I was then thrown into the famous L.A., Friday afternoon, rush hour traffic. For those that have never had the experience, there are two things you should be aware of. First there is no way you can rush doing anything in the rush hour traffic or as we refer to it, the 405 parking lot (the number being different depending on which freeway you are sitting on). The second factor is; all of the other rats who are trying to get off of the ship at the same time. During the week, rush hour starts around 3:30 p.m. and worsens as the evening progresses. On Friday’s it starts about noon for the out bound, traffic (everyone is trying to leave L.A. to be someplace else on the weekends).
By the time I had arrived at home, we live forty five minutes north of downtown L.A. when in normal traffic, so it only took me nearly three hours to get home on this particular Friday. So, by the time I got home I was feeling the pressure to get started for Colorado.
Why were we going to Colorado? We were going to meet my two Daughters and their families. I have two girls with my Son in the middle. Dustin couldn’t make this mini family reunion but both daughters could. That meant, five of my seven granddaughters were going to be there as well; that’s a whole lot of fun a grandpa doesn’t want to miss.
All of that is great and I’m sure you can understand why I wanted to get going, but there is more to the story. The key word here is meet. My youngest Daughter I’ve known all of her life but I’d never met my oldest Daughter before. I’d only seen her one other time when she was eighteen months old. That is a whole ‘nother story that I’ll never write just because there is too much pain involved for all of the participants. So, now I was going to finally get to meet my 36 year old Daughter and her husband and kids. I was a little anxious you might say.
A Happy old Cuss.
So… I rush home through three hours of rush hour traffic, by the way that Time Speed Factor does not apply to rush hour traffic. There, three hours only seems like twelve. I get home and need to hook the pickup to the horse trailer before I can go. No, we weren’t taking the horses with us but brush fires are a major concern in Southern California nearly year round. Since my very good neighbors, who have one horse, were going to feed and water my two while I was gone and they didn’t own a horse trailer, I wanted them to have access to mine in case of a fire evacuation.
I back up to the trailer and start to crank the tongue down onto the ball hitch. Since I’m normally fairly resistant to working harder than I need to, some may call that being lazy, I refer to it as industriously efficient, I hate to crank on a trailer jack for any longer than I have to, to hook or unhook the trailer. Solution is to put a wooden block under the wheel of the trailer jack so you only have to crank the jack about half as much as you would normally.
On this particular day though, almost as soon as I touched the jack handle, the trailer jumped off the block and landed on my right foot, right where the middle toes connect to the main part of the foot. Fortunately I was on dirt and not pavement, because it mashed my foot into the dirt. Unfortunately it was hard packed dirt. Did it hurt? HELL YES IT HURT! I’m not sure what the tongue weight is on that trailer but I do know I’ve tried several times to move it or lift it by hand and couldn’t budge it.
It is truly amazing how many thoughts can go through a person’s mind when extreme physical pain is involved. My first thought was, “are my toes cut off?” I realized that since I had a wheel on the bottom of the jack they probably hadn’t been cut off. Then I concerned my concentration on how I was to free myself before they were mashed off. I had my cell phone in my pocket but was busy using both hands to try and hold some of the weight off of my foot. I did run the options through my mind of A) calling Susie, who was in the house and didn’t know I was home yet, but since I didn’t think there was a whole lot she could do but call 911.
B) I thought maybe I’d just cut her out of the middle and call 911 myself. The problem there was, I’d have to wait on the dispatcher to contact a response team and for them to drive up the mountain to where I was standing. That seemed like a process that would take entirely too long.
C) I thought about cranking the jack off my foot but realized the further the jack went up the more the trailer would tip towards me and the more weight would be put on my foot. That option was out.
D) Chewing my toes off like a coyote in a trap seemed a little extreme; mainly because I’m not that flexible, so I finally decided on plan E.
E) TA HECK WITH THIS. I had the handle held with both hands, got my left leg securely under me and I lifted that damned trailer off my foot! The effect of that lift was to free my foot and then collapse across the trailer tongue and try very hard to catch up to some air. Once I had my lungs re-inflated and my eyes un-crossed, I went ahead and jacked up the trailer and hooked it up to the truck. After all, I still needed it hooked up before I left. Then I started to walk up to the house.
For those that have never been there, we live on a fairly steep mountain side and the trailer was parked about thirty yards below the house. I got about ten of those yards covered when a massive Charley Horse (cramp) tied my left hamstring (the one I’d used to lift with) into a crippling knot. Now, see if you can visualize this, I’m walking up the hill with one mashed foot on the right and my left leg is cramped up to the point of not moving. I’m using one hand to operate my left leg as I lurch and stagger trying to keep the weight off of my right foot, towards the house. If there had been anyone around to watch, I’m sure they would’ve thought I was soused to the gills in the middle of the afternoon.
It took several minutes to get to the house and make my way into the kitchen where Susie was hard at work packing for the expedition, at least that’s what it looked like. Susie, bless her, always is prepared. Just in case we should wind up stranded in the worst blizzard to hit the desert in the month of June, in the history of the world, Susie will have packed enough food, water and blankets to, not only get us through, but six other people as well. This is not a criticism, it is just to give you an idea of how intense she is when she’s working on a project. She never looked at me… for awhile.
I am working my boot off of my injured foot, gingerly, when Susie finally looks at me and asks, “You okay?”
“Yeah, just dropped the horse trailer on my foot.”
“What?”
“Just dropped the horse trailer on my foot.”
“Is there something I can get you?” she asks and she starts across the kitchen to me.
“Some ice might be good,” I say.
God bless Susie, she is always taking care of me but sometimes she gets a little overly enthusiastic; this might’ve been one of those times. She turns to go get the ice, in a hurry, and trips over the boot I have just taken off. She does a ‘header’ into our dining room and lands on her knee (the one she just had surgery on a few months before). She hobbles back into the kitchen and says…
“Maybe we should think about…”
“We’re going!”
“Okay.”
After both of us taking a few Advil and me putting ice on my foot for about half an hour, I got my moccasins on, loaded the car and we went. Susie hobbling on her left leg, me my right. The rest of the trip, when we got out of the car it took several steps to sort of loosen up for both of us. So, we really did look like a pair of OLD people, each in, need of a walker. We would both laugh at ourselves every damn time.
Dustin, Kim and the girls, wish you were here.
The one problem with California (okay there may be more than one) is you have to cross the Mohave Dessert to go anywhere to the East. That means you either are going through Needles or Las Vegas. We had to go through Vegas. It’s about 150 – 160 miles from Barstow to Vegas, depending on where you start counting. We were about ten miles from Barstow. Susie was driving, letting me recuperate some and I made the statement, we’re really making good time… Kiss of death!
Less than a minute later the traffic stops. We creep, stop, creep, stop all the way through Barstow. We figure there must be a wreck and we keep thinking we’ll get past it. Creep, stop, creep, stop… We get out the other side of Barstow… Creep, stop, creep, stop… We pass Yermo… Creep, stop, creep, stop… We get to a rest stop and because of the rate of speed we’ve been traveling our Las Vegas pit stop is now due… The rest stop is packed full of people.
As Susie is waiting in line at the little girls room she gets in a conversation with a young girl who informs her, there is an event going on in Vegas for the next three days; that is what all the traffic is about. When Susie asks what kind of event the girl becomes evasive and just keeps saying an event.
Since the men’s line was shorter than the women’s, it usually is, I was standing outside on this lovely evening watching the sun set on the dessert and a solid line of cars and semis, feeling the throbbing of my toes and was just glad to still have them, no matter what color they were turning.
Now, back when I was assembled, the factory workers at the body shop, forgot to add about six inches of height to me. To make matters worse, they added probably that much or more extra bulk, shall we say, around my middle. My arms have always been a couple of inches too short to reach whatever I needed to reach. I was losing my hair in high school but making up for it now by growing extra out of my ears. I was never the best looking or most popular male in the room, unless it is a room with mostly females… But! I was blessed with very good eyesight. My hearing may be shot, but my eyes still work just fine.
So, as I stood there waiting on Susie, I noticed that almost all of the people, besides us, were young. The other thing I noticed was that the girls almost all had on short, very short, skirts. Why I noticed this I’m not sure, it probably had something to do with my heightened awareness caused by the throbbing of my foot. Since there was a very stiff evening breeze blowing, it became apparent that many of the young women were not wearing anything under those short skirts. Again, I’m not sure why I noticed this but I just thought I’d pass along the observation… for whatever it is worth.
Susie finished waiting in line and we got back into the car and into the creep, stop traffic. It stayed that way all the way through to Nevada. At Primm, Nevada, Susie’s nerves had had enough of the traffic as well as, she had other pressing issues on her mind. We made another pit stop ( when you travel with a woman who’s bladder is the size of an acorn, you make a lot of pit stops).
When we left Primm, I was driving, creep, stop, creep, stop. We finally got to LV and couldn’t wait to get past the event. Since we, being old duffers and not into what’s in at the time, we didn’t know what the event was, let alone where it was being held. We kept reading the different signs and billboards advertising the different acts and events in the casinos and hoping they would be the ‘event.’ Wrong! Now the traffic was more like stop, creeeeep, stop, creeeep. We were in the express lanes too, by the way.
Usually going past Vegas takes me ten to fifteen minutes at the most. One hour and ten minutes later we got to the other side of Vegas where the race track is located. Now the traffic was more like; creep, watch two people nearly hit each other trying to cut over three lanes of solid traffic to the exit. Creep, watch another car cut into the exit line by ramming his opponent. Creep, slam on the brakes because the traffic in front of you just did. Creep, watch another idiot rear end the car in front of them. Creep, watch the cops arrest some kid on the shoulder of the road. Creep, well you get the idea. Finally we got clear of Vegas and the RAVE event.
I’ve never been to a Rave… nor do I want to go to one. There was literally acres of cars already parked there and thousands more cars trying to get in. That’s way too many people in one spot for me, unless of course I was one of the performers. I defiantly feel the promoters owe me now and should put me in the next event; but if not, then I feel I owe the RAVE promoters… something.
By the time we had made it to Mesquite, Susie was done. We got a nice room at Falcon Ridge, slept well and was on the road by 6:30 the next morning. This was all well and good except for the fact we had planned to be at least up into Utah if not Colorado the night before. Still, as we drove along without a care or problem and started making really good time I said, “We ought to be there by 2:00.” Kiss of Death!
We went around the curve, up on the high planes of Utah, and there it was… road construction! This was a Saturday and there was no one working but the speed limit was drastically reduced with those flashing signs reminding you that they, the State of Utah, is going to stick it to you twice as bad if you get a ticket for speeding in their construction zone. There was also high winds.
What’s high winds got to do with anything? The winds were blowing so hard that the cones and barrels, the Highway Department uses to mark off the lanes, were blowing over and into the traffic causing it to look and feel more like an obstacle course than a highway. More time lost.
Onward and upward, I always say, we made it to Grand Junction, Colorado. My foot although never really hurting, would take spells of throbbing or itching, which added more color to the trip, shall we say.
After yet another pit stop, I study the map and decide we’ll still make it to Estes Park before dark. Unfortunately, I state this out loud and the travel Gods once again, saw it to be their duty to slap me down. Massive road construction! The kind where there is only one lane of traffic going each way and you’re practically knocking the outside mirrors off of the on coming cars and trucks with yours. The speed limit was 30mph for the next twelve miles. But, and there is always a Butt, this one happened to be driving a blue Prius. To make matters worse, our featured butt of the day, was a big, so big I don’t know how he fit into the Prius in the first place, fat guy who was playing the part of tour guide for his passengers. He was doing twenty miles per decade, pointing out all of the high water running through the Colorado River (the river was at flood stage so there was lots of water for him to point to), leading the miles long line of backed up traffic.
Maybe he was suicidal? Maybe he was just oblivious of all other traffic behind him? Maybe he was just an insufferable prick? I don’t know, but I would doubt that he has ever had as many people wanting to kill him, ever before in his life, as he had that day. Unless, of course, he just travels the country looking for construction areas where he can perform his duties as combination tour guide and road blocker.
Finally we got around him and figured to be in Estes Park by eight… Another eight miles of construction, this time without the tour guide, at thirty miles an hour. So it went, all the way across the State of Colorado. The good part is, Susie and I travel well together and after awhile we just laughed… a while later we were numb… later it was just a grudge match against the traffic Gods to get to Jellystone Park (not kidding, that’s where we were headed)…
At ten thirty that night, we got to our destination.
The rest of the trip was great, except for the sore toes, knees, hamstring cramps, and headaches that were shared between Susie and myself. The Granddaughters were precious, they love their Papa Troy (Pops) and Grandma Susie and we love them. My youngest Daughter Deb and me have always been very close to each other and we are always glad to spend time together. The only blemish, was the fact my Son couldn’t be there and we all missed him and his, but that’s the way life is sometimes. Still, it was worth it, the foot, the traffic, the headaches, they all became nothing when I finally for the first time in her life and mine, got to put my arms around my oldest Daughter, Tawna and hug her. I would gladly do it all again.
I am very proud of all three of my kids; all seven of my Granddaughters (yes, no boys), their spouses and their Grandma Susie. There is not a bad one in the bunch… I’m a lucky man.
An even happier old cuss
That was how I spent my summer vacation.
