Chapter 68
Now, we didn’t think about our little ventures as STEALING! Oh, no! My Grannie told me if I stole the ole devil would come right up out of the ground, catch me by the ankles, and drag me straight down to shovel coal. No, siree! This child wasn’t brought up to be doin’ no stealin’!!
It was a pure game. Why else did the farmers guard the fields with rock salt loaded guns and set bear traps in the fields? It was just to set forth a challenge for us!
So, we’d turn off the car lights at least a mile back down the dirt country road.
Most usually we’d cut the motor and drift into our final parking place.
Always we’d take this one special friend with us.
It was her daddy’s or her daddy’s friend who owned the patches we liked to raid.
She knew where all the traps were and where her dad parked to WATCH!
Then the hunt was on! “Hey, look at this big one,” someone would whisper too loud.
“Sh-h-h”, the rest of us would make enough noise to wake a bear in December.
Then we’d thump it QUIETLY, decide whether or not it was green, and go on to the next one.
After five minutes, which lasted three hours, the trunk would be full, and we’d be on the way to the river.
The boys always split the melons ceremoniously with their pocketknives which probably hadn’t been washed since the afternoon FFA trip to someone’s farm.
One time I remember well This farmer had gotten quite belligerent about his melons, so the boys BORROWED his sign that read WATERMELONS FOR SALE.
But since that might be misconstrued as theft—we couldn’t eat the sign—we decided that we really should give it back.
But it was all of three miles back out to the farm and the gas tank was getting dangerously close to being empty.
So not to think of ourselves as thieves, we put the sign in the chief-of-police’s car.
Often wondered if he returned our sign for us? !?!?!