A Saturday Exploit

A Saturday Exploit

I remember Saturday afternoons. They dangled like a carrot at the end of the school week—golden. Dad would be at work. Mom would be occupied with the littles. Saturday meant freedom.

I had seven siblings, and I was blessed to be number five. The middle ones get the least attention which was the way we liked it. Me and my brother, the brother one up from me and number four, we were best friends. He had fun friends, too.

The two of us, plus his friends, always meant adventure.

Like the time we rode the swollen stream on a raft we had concocted out of an old wooden pallet from dad, stuffed with empty milk bags blown up with air. In those days, milk came in two or three-gallon milk bags ready to stick into the stainless-steel milk dispenser. We, kids, would vie for those empty milk bags for just such a purpose.

Like the time we explored the attic bent double, walking on the boards laid down between the rafters. Then the time we decided to make a flying leap on the fluffy pink insulation, that looked, oh, so soft, and plummeted through the ceiling tiles of the living room beneath, not too much worse for wear.

Like the time our parents were having a night out, and we decided to make our babysitter a surprise by mixing her a drink. Mixing all right. We pulled out all my dad’s opened hard liquor bottles and did the equivalent of sand-and-water play in the tall water glasses my mom kept on the high shelf. We were genuinely trying to be hospitable.

Like the time we decided to be explorers and claim land for our country. Our mom said our expedition could leave at 6:00 a.m. But my always over-enthusiastic brother woke me up shortly after midnight, and we set off in a blizzard up the hillside behind our house, only to be discovered hours later by a neighbor, miles from home. My brother had not yet learned to read a clock face. The neighbor had followed the bobbing lights of our flashlights thinking perhaps it was somebody up to no good. (How surprised he was to find two kids seven and eight years old in a snowbank in the dark of night.) My exhausted parents had slept through the earnest departure of this weighty expedition.  

Or like the time we rode the pigs:

Our neighbor, Joel, had a barn and a bunch of animals as a hobby—a few horses, cows, some sheep. He also had a concrete pig sty with a hefty wooden fence with slats you could climb on. We used to hang around his place and climb the fence and study the enormous sows, often sleeping in the late spring sun, flies buzzing everywhere—over the putrid trough and around their ears and noses.

The stench was gross, but the pig sty was a destination.

Previously, we had even made a secret club house in a section of an empty sty. The fact that we weren’t supposed to be there only added to the fun.

The farmer, Joel, who owned the place wasn’t mean, but he was bossy, loud, and intimidating to some, even some adults. But to us kids, he added a sense of bravado to our exploits.

This Saturday afternoon, my brother, his friend Barney, and I had come with a mission in mind.

The great big two-story barn was a stone’s throw from the pigs, and we knew where the tack room was, upstairs near the hay mow. We threw our bikes down in the long grass outside the barn and tiptoed in. We were, after all, trespassers.

Trespassers will be persecuted. We knew we were good readers, and those signs were everywhere around these parts.

My brother and his friend, Barney, hefted the small saddle belonging to the Shetland pony off the hook. It wasn’t too heavy. We were eight and nine years old, and as we carried it, the belly strap dragged through the dust.

It was the boys’ idea, and I thought my role was mere spectator sport.

As usual, the sows were sleeping. There were four of them in that sty, and as I climbed the fence, I was eying which candidate would make the best ride.

Meanwhile, the boys entered softly through the gate, which made a little clack as they undid the latch, leather saddle over arms, bright and eager. Once through the gate, they stepped stealthily towards the first sow. All four beasts were on their sides, touching one another, back to stomach, hairy and fleshy. Fatty bacon and hams in the making—maybe even some pickled pigs’ feet.

The next moment passed like a flash. The boy-team thrust the saddle on sow number one while simultaneously, the hulking beast honked its snout, stood, blinked its piggy eyes and instinctively lunged for the open gate. A way too fat body on its skinny little trotters.

The boys yelled for me, the innocent fence sitter, to leap aboard. Only I had that perfect vantage point from the top fence rail. And I did. It was sheer impulse, sheer adrenaline rush. Like leaping off a high rope swing into an unknown abyss but knowing the abyss was in fact a racing roller coaster ride taking you flying upside down and inside out of curves and chutes which would leave you stomach-less.

I was aboard! The saddle rocked right and left, as the belly strap dangled unattached and useless in the haste.  I catapulted down the bank, through the muddy spring pasture, and toward a stream which marked the border of the farm. On either side of me and behind thundered the other sows in a deafening ruckus.

I was dumped halfway across the pasture and as I stood, fairly shaken, I saw and heard the farmer screaming curses at the disappearing back tires of my brother and friend, skidding out of view around a bend in the country road.

I gathered my wits, waded the stream, and headed for home another way.