I'm writing another book, this one about a boy growing up on a small farm in the 1940s. His name is Orvie and these are his stories.
Dad docks my allowance a nickel for
every Colorado potato grub he finds Ya see, if I can find and squash all the orange
bunches of, what-a-ya-call-it, eggs, I guess, before they hatch there won’t be
any of those red things hatching out which is what eats the potato leaves. You
wouldn’t believe how much they can eat and how fast they grow. Why I’ve seen it
where there was just stems left. That was before Dad had the idea of hiring me
to go after ‘em. I can spot the eggs easy enough, they’re bright orange, but it
sure would be easier if they laid ‘em on top of the leaves. I gotta to pull
back every plant on both sides to check for the buggers. Once they hatch the
bastards head for the top of the plant to eat where, of course, they are easy for
Dad to spot and he checks the patch every day.
My dad isn’t a bad guy. If I do a
real good job on the egg clusters once a week in normal weather and twice a
week if it is nasty hot, I can kill all of them before they hatch. Besides, I
can tell when dad is getting ready to do his tour of the gardens and get out
there ahead of him just squashing any grubs that I missed. He usually leaves
his inspection of the potato rows ‘til last and I don’t think he counts all the
ones he sees. I’ve seen him squash a few without saying anything or docking my
pay.
I gotta tell ya, that is tedious
work though--bending and looking under the leaves. I try to keep my mind off
the heat and the mosquitoes. Mostly I think about Ginny. She’s not my
girlfriend. I don’t even talk to her ‘sept maybe “hi”; but she just pops in my
mind a lot. She’s on my school bus and I try to work it out so I’m right behind
her when we get on the bus coming home and on a really good day I’ll be able to
sit behind her; that way, when I’m getting into my seat, I can bend over real
close and smell her hair. Gosh, I can smell it now.
She lives on a horse farm nearly
five miles away. Last week I rode my bike over to her house, well, to the end
of her lane. Her house is down a long lane and all their fields have white
fences around them. I was hoping I would see her; maybe she would be out
brushing her horse and I could just ride down her lane and say “hi.” No luck. I
just sat there on my bike rocking back and forth wishing I could at least catch
a glimpse of her. She has the most wonderful really blond hair.
I get paid for picking cucumber beetles. That’s the allowance
that gets taken out of. Pretty good allowance, I’d say. It only took me two
years to save up for my bike. I’m saving up for a car now. I don’t get docked
for any cucumber beetles my dad finds. They’re a lot trickier because you can’t
see their eggs and when they are grubs, that’s before they turn into beetles,
they are underground. Worst of all potato beetles don’t hardly ever try to get
away so they’re easy to squash but when cucumber beetles see me they usually
stop moving but as soon as I move toward them they fly or drop or run. Ya gotta
wonder how they know I’m after them; and why do they do different things? And
how am I going to get down this row without being bored out ‘a my tree?
When I’m not thinking about Ginny I
get to thinking about the beetles. I’ve got this game I play with the ‘em; I
pretend they’re my friends in another life. Well, it’s not exactly another life
it’s like if life was a pinball game? I would be the pinball? But I’d also be
playing the pinball game but as the pinball I wouldn’t really know that
someone, actually myself, would be playing the game. Awe, well, I hope you get
it. Now in this game it’s not just me and my pinball. In this game I am the
star of the show but my friends can also come into the game as different
characters.
So my friends are watching me in
the game in the cucumber patch, like they are hanging around the pinball
machine, and one of them says, “Let’s go play hid and seek with Orvie.”
“Count me in! I’m going to freeze
when he comes along so he won’t see me,” says another.
“That won’t work. Have you
forgotten the yellow stripes on your back? You’d have a better chance if you
dropped off the leaf.”
“I’m going to do a Peter Pan and
fly away,” says a fourth.
Got to admit that’s a pretty good
strategy but the one I hate the most is: “I’m going to run down the stem. If he
tries to squash me, the spikes on the stem will hurt like hell.” Now you see,
that’s not real friendly.
I wouldn’t exactly say that hide
and seek (and thinking of Ginny and a car) make the job fun but it does help
pass the time plus now I’m wondering if instinct really is something like that.
I haven’t heard of a better idea.
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