Author: Ronald Guenther
Written: September 25th, 2014

We had fun growing up, it wasn’t all just carrying wood, washing dishes, working to get ready for picnics, cleaning out the swimming pool, milking the cow, that sort of thing. But we were not too sophisticated either.

Brother Bob and I would read something like Robin Hood and then try to mimic them. We read about those neat cudgel fights and decided we would want to try to do that. We noted that Robin Hood and Little John had fought on a foot bridge and so we had knocked down a large alder that we wanted to cut up for wood, but we decided it had other uses as well. We trimmed off all the branches so that it was a nice foot bridge, then we made some cudgels out of branches and then got up on the tree trunk to start our cudgel fight. So the very first hit we made at each other, we cracked our knuckles. That hurt like crazy, we could not figure out how Robin Hood did that but we though about it and gave it another try. Crack, we hit each other’s knuckles again, but this time it really hurt. We never did figure out how to do that, afterwards, we only had virtual cudgel fights, but the younger brothers did figure out how to do that and that is a story for either Uncle Ed or Uncle Don to tell. So often Bob and I would get things more or less going but it was too much work or we did not see how to do it, but the younger brothers all did.

I also used to like to play with the younger brothers. One of the things that I did was teach them to wrestle because I had wrestled in high school, lettered two years. So, then we set up a ladder and tried to figure out who was the champion. Well, I beat all the brothers, I tossed them around, up and down, they would get me into a near pin but never quite pull it off and then I would wrestle Brother Dave. He was a tough customer even though he was the littlest and so I would toss him around, get him into a near pin, he would wiggle out and then he would get me pinned, so Dave was the champ, I was the next contender and to challenge Brother Dave the other brothers had to be me because I was the next contender. Oh, that was tough on the other brothers. Some times we would allow an exhibition match where the brothers got to wrestle Dave but it did not count as a championship bout. So Dave would try to compete, but he was just a little guy and so then I would say, Oh Dave, just let them win, that will make them feel better and he would flop down on his back and the other brothers would jump up and down, No, no, no. But Brother Dave remained the champ, nobody ever beat me who was the next contender and I never beat Dave although I came close a number of times.

We would also like to have track meets. There Brother Bob really was the best. He was faster than I was and could high jump better and pole vault far better. He was a phenomenal athlete. Naturally, we liked to play touch football with the boys that came out to our place and Sister Louise and I would routinely take them because she could catch and even though she was younger than the other boys, she was better at touch football than they were. She was also an excellent athlete, but in those years girls did not compete with other schools and that was a shame. One girl did, Jackie Lou Ford was the number one man on the boys tennis team and the first girl to win a letter at Marshfield High School. She was a super nice girl, I really liked her, but many of the other students thought she was strange. She could also kick the football better than any of the boys. I notice that now there are girls who play on the boys football team and they are kickers. jackie could easily kick fifty yards, I once saw her do it. But that is another story.

Another thing that we liked to do was to go down to the bay. The bay in those years was pretty polluted, but we did not know it and did not pay any attention to it. We would go down there and make up rafts from all the boards and debris down there. One time we made up a neat raft from logs and Bob, Louise and I were down there. Unfortunately, we did not pay close enough attention to the fact that although logs float the water logged part floats down, so when we got the raft afloat and were planning to go out and catch some crabs and fish, the logs rolled to their natural position and we all got wet up to our waists. Everybody could see that we were wet that far up so I had the bright idea that if we got wet all over, nobody would notice the difference. It was summer, the tide was in, the water was warm and so we swam around for a while and then headed up to the house. The folks saw immediately that we were wet, no secret there, but they just laughed, obviously we were dirty so pop took us outside and hosed us down with water so cold it hurt and then had to take a bath. Naturally, Louise being the girl and so was not as dirty as we were went first. Then came Bob and finally it was my turn. That was the way things always went. Mom always had this idea that girls don’t really get dirty and so always got the first bath and so it was there. I must say, given what we went through, I was skeptical of that, but then, mom was mom and it was hard to get through to her that girls in fact get dirty. I do not believe she ever came to that conclusion. To be continued.