I have to admit I was a wild youngster. When you put curiosity, adventurous and no fear along with a tiny bit of common sense you have a bad combination. Especially in a 4 year old country boy. There were many words beginning with that 6th letter in the alphabet I was not supposed to say. Especially if sister or mother was listening. I did use them on my kindergarten teacher and that did not help my situation at all. I just looked at it as being fully educated on the use of the English language. Dad used many of those words when describing a bad day. It was normal for me to copy any adult I happen to think of at any given moment. This was just fuel for the imagination. Imagination was one of my biggest tools in those days. But there were a few F words that became quite useful. In the late 40’s and early 50’s food was scarce. I can’t really say we starved, but there were times the table was a bit bare. I always wondered why brother and I was not sat close to the beginning of the table. We had hollow legs that needed to be filled with fuel. More than once mother complained about our hollow legs. She even tried in vain to fill them up once. That did not work. After two pans of biscuits and a dozen baked potatoes she sent us packing. We were skinny little toe heads. Always running like the wind and most usually chasing something. This could have been a tire rolling down the hill or  a woodchuck that had the misfortune of showing up. These were our toys on sunny days. Then along came the word “Free”.   I can’t remember seeing many things sitting out beside the road labeled  “Free for the taking”.   Most folks in those days knew people that needed things. But when things went out the door, they were indeed worn out. Still, some family took them because they were better than what they had. You hardly ever saw a house that was torn town and put into a dumpster to be hauled away. Word would go out someone wanted a building torn down and like a swarm of ants people came to get what they could. Some folks were indeed ungrateful and took only the best. Our crowd took everything we could load into the truck. If it was wood, we could use it to build or for firewood. Nothing was wasted. This was the beginning of my training to be a packrat. You never know when you may need that funny looking crooked piece of metal. In the truck it went.

The other word we liked was fishing. Now fishing was almost like free food. One time dad bought one of those coupes that had a rumble seat. It was a fun and exciting car. But you just could not take nine or ten kids fishing in that car. They didn’t let me sit in the rumble seat often. I guess sitting still was not one of my talents. Dad ended up getting rid of that car and buying a vehicle a bit more useful. I think it was a Chevy.  A Chevy dump truck.  Now all of us could go fishing and sit in the back seat. We could even pick up some of the neighbor folks who needed free food. Someone had heard that fishing was great at Mt. Blue Pond and away we would go. We were like a swarm of locust descending upon a field. Now, if ya thinking we had fancy poles, get that idea out of your head. That is one of the first things we did when we arrived. Cut yourself a fishing pole and put some sort of line on it. For us there was no such thing as choices of what type of line to use. It just had to hold the fish when pulling it in. Sometimes, we even had a real hook to use. We would fish until the adults got tired of us watching us then back into the truck we went. It was days such as this that was almost like a Thanksgiving holiday. There was laughter food and friendship. This is something this world needs more of now. So lets all jump into the back of a dump truck and go fishing. This time, I get to sit in the front though.  I may even drive if they let me.

Ken White mountainman  COB