Throwing Stuff — Story Three

I think it’s time we included Lee in this, don’t you? Two brief recollections come to mind.

First, there was the time he threw a rock at a squirrel and knocked it out. It was an incredible shot. He was standing in the yard one Sunday afternoon and noticed a squirrel on the ground near the other end of the driveway…perhaps 90 feet away. He thought, “I might as well throw at it,” and reached down and picked up a piece of gravel. But then the squirrel bolted for the woods. With a fast reflex throw, Lee slung the rock ahead of the sprinting rodent and popped it in the head! Uncertain as to its exact physical state, he put it under a milk crate, for observation and to shield it from our pets. A while later, the squirrel awakened, most likely with a capybara-sized headache. Unimpressed with its cubic infirmary, the squirrel paniced, or “went berserk” as Ray Stevens put it, and was released without making a followup appointment.

And second: Lee had a friend named Chris who lived at the other end of a long agricultural field from us. Chris and Lee were about the same age, but we all played together sometimes. At his house were several plum trees that were loaded down with big, red fruit, 2 – 2.5 inches across. I don’t remember how it started, but we were there one summer day and a plum war broke out. The over-ripe ones were scattered everywhere on the ground, and those were our prime ammunition. Upon contact with their target, they would splatter into a sticky, smelly, insect-attracting “wound”. We pounded each other with them. The best (that is, nastiest) plums were so squishy and putrid with gagslime that the thrower could only lob them softly toward the enemy; otherwise they erupted in the thrower’s hand and made him dance around in a grossed-out way at what he had done to himself. A hit on the head that got such juices into the enemy’s hair was the best, although, officially, I think I remember face and head to be off limits — we didn’t want to hit anyone in the eye…that would have gotten us into trouble. When it was over, we had to wash ourselves off completely with the hose in the yard. Chris actually had to take off his clothes before going back in the house; at least we could dry off while walking back home across the field. Conversation with Lee reveals that this activity was something he and Chris embarked upon several times, and with some degree of methodology to it.

Here’s a bonus account that I remembered. When Daddy was a boy, there were lots of different farm animals around, and his mother (Eunice, my grandmother) kept some guineas for a while. One day a guinea got in the garden where it didn’t need to be, and young Steve Allen (as relatives back in those black-and-white years called him) was insturucted to catch the guinea and remove it from the garden. [Let me pause here and opine that telling someone to “catch a guinea” sounds rather like a good way to get them out of your hair for the rest of the day. This very swift and agile running bird may not have been the most pressing aggravation in Grandmother’s mind, that day, if you catch my meaning!]

I don’t know how long the chase lasted, but it ended when Daddy threw a rock at the bird, hitting it in the head, killing it. His explanation was that he didn’t mean to kill it, but just knock it out so he could catch it. His siblings, showing standard sibling-style support, eventually enhanced the story, saying it was Grandmother’s favorite guinea.

So, you see, I am an amateur among all-stars. To throw and hit a slow-moving Victor is not that impressive compared to nailing a running squirrel at 30 yards or connecting with the tiny head of a guinea bobbing and weaving through a vegetable garden. There is in throwing, as in life, always something more to which to aspire.

One story remains.