CHAPTER THREE   -- and I promise you, this is the last one ! ! !

 Spring time in Oklahoma offered quite a lot of fun things ... bird nests to discover and explore, fishing to do and lots of other neat stuff.

     It happened that my Dad stacked fence posts in a large pile out by the hay shed and one fine morning, we kids found that a nest of bumble bees was located under the posts.  Now, Pardner, that just wouldn't do at all ...... the question for us kids was what to do about this problem.  Just in case you don't know, bumble bees are able to sting something on the order of hornets when annoyed ....... and Neighbor, these were about to be annoyed.

    We soon found that if a post were moved just slightly, only a few bees would come out to see what the problem was ..... if you moved a post a lot, the air got absolutely full of the buggers instantly and all of them ready for business, too.  So the grand plan was to get some small boards and gently wiggle a post --- then baseball swing at the bees that came out...
Gosh, it was going swell .... a bumble bee isn't a world class flyer and as they buzzed around, you could knock 'em over left center field fence ..... good fun it was.  My little brother and I had slayed a dozen or so when we noticed that you didn't even have to move a post anymore to stir 'em up .... Actually, it was imperative to keep swinging to stay even with 'em.  Then it got to the point, we were sorta fighting 'em off ..... then they overwhelmed us ..... dang, I had a fairly good straw hat on so just took it off and whacked a few with it for some relief.  Did I mention we were back-peddling pretty fast, too ...... Well, really, to tell the truth, we were running like hell.  Finally outrun the things and I put my hat on ... one of the rascals was in the hat from one of my wild swings and bit me square on the head.  I reached up to brush him off, and he bit again on the thumb and was stuck in my hair.  Oh Durn .. at all risk, I grabbed him and threw him on the ground along with a fair amount of my hair.  Then run some more.   My left eye swelled shut and my thumb wouldn't fit in a 2 inch pipe ... plus it hurt like the devil ..... Dad came by and said "I thought I told you guys to leave those bees alone".   Bees are still in Dad's post as far as I know.

    Now my Granpa "Pappy" had a few hives of honey bees, too.  He could go open the top of the hive and check on his bees and never get a sting at all ..... I think the bees liked him or something.  Once in a while, he would even open the top of a hive and break off a little piece of honeycomb for each of us kids to eat ... never a sting .... don't know how he did it.  But there was a cow tank just across the road from the hives and the bees went there often for a drink of water .....

    Only problem was, this was us kids' swimming tank, too.  Normally, if you just stayed a bit quiet, the bees would drink and fly away.  However, it was kinda fun to splash water on 'em when they crawled down the side of the tank to drink ... actually, you could wet 'em up good and they would fall in the water ..... So we were swimming and wetting bees and having fun one hot ol' July afternoon ..... but the bees got mad.  Worse yet, they went to the hive and got reinforcements and we got stung a couple of times each .....  not a problem, we just ducked under water and up for air and under water again and so on.  Heck of it was, soon we were underwater more than most fish and it was getting serious .. a couple more stings each and we decided to make a run for it.  We decided to head down the road since the pasture had sand burrs in it ... so on the count of three, we hauled it under the fence and down the road with a gob of bees right behind us ...... Forgot to mention, we didn't have clothes on -- NONE.  Only a few cars a day came by our house, but wouldn't you know, ol' Ms. Foster would come by in her '37 Plymouth on her way home from town.  You could hear her car a mile away because she only used second gear ... said high gear made the car go too fast ..... so she ran it in second with the RPM's around 5,000 it seemed.  Sounded like a 747 taking off.  But what to do ... us naked as jaybirds, running for our lives and Ms. Foster coming down the road.  Hell, there was nothing else to do ... we just waved at her and kept on going.  She later told my Mom .. she said "Well, I swan".... whatever that means .....

   Now I got in a fight at school that year ..... it was the last day of school, too and we just had to appear in the morning and get our report cards.  Then out to play on the school ground 'til the bus came by to take us home for the summer vacation....

    Well, me and Jimmy Loucks disagreed over whether he was out or safe at first.  One thing led to another and as eight year olds normally do, we took our case to fist court over at Knuckle Junction.  I was doing fairly well, but Jimmy got in a couple of dandies and I had a nose bleed... but you shoulda seen him.  Don't really know how it would have turned out, since the next thing we know, here's a couple of big old No. 12 white and brown wing tip shoes in front of us .... Oh Damn, the Principle, Mr. Green (actually we called him Mr. Gang Green, but dang carefully, mind you).  He grabbed me and Jimmy by the back of our collars and yanked us clear off the ground and marched us both off toward the school.  Mr. Gang was about seven feet tall and skinny as a starved snake .... as he strode toward the school with one of our shirt collars in each hand, my shirt was about to choke me to death and I was still mad at Jim.  So I took one more hellofa swing at Jim across the front of Mr. Gang Green .. I missed but when Jimmy swung back, we tripped the Principle and he fell all over both of us for fully five minutes.  There was a hell of a pile of elbows, knees, kids and giant on the ground.  Gang skinned his right elbow and tore a hole in the knee of his khaki britches .... he was in no good mood.  Right then, I wished I hadn't took another swipe at Jim ..... on into the school and certain death.  He made us go to the bathroom and wash up then sat us down in his office.  Said he was going to call our folks, but out in the country where we lived there was no phones.. ha, ha.  So he gave us a stern lecture and sentenced us to 'NO recesses' for three months -- next fall, since this was the last day of school.  Had to sit there 'til the bus came, too.  Went all the way thru school with Jimmy and we were good friends ever since.  I still think he was 'out' at first base though.