Explorations along the Trail

 

Growing up in Wright Florida was the best!

One of my best friends growing up along Hurlburt Road was Danny Blackman. For the longest time Danny and I explored all the trails leading off of Hurlburt Road. We always found a new trail to follow into a different area of the woods. Most of the time we were just exploring and to find what we could along the trail. Most of the time is was leaves, mushrooms and an occassional form of wildlife. Such as a bird or possibly a deer if we were lucky. The best was just being out exploring and having a friend with you!

 As I think back on our life in this beautiful corner of the world, one of the treasures was living right next door to our Uncle Red and Aunt Virgie. Our homes were always open to one another regardless of the time of day. The cousins were always going in and out of each others houses looking for one another. Red and Virgie had about ten acres and our home had two acres, so we had plenty of room to roam around and find interesting things to do.

Red and Virgie had three boys and one girl and mom and dad had three boys and two girls. So most of the time it was easy to find someone to play and have fun with.

Red was a mechanic and worked with heavy equipment on Eglin Air Force base and dad was a carpenter and worked all over the county building houses, stores and other commercial buildings. Both of their careers afforded both of them to have an abundance of tools and materials to provide young boys with plenty of equipment to build just about anything our young minds could come up with!

Several episodes of playing in Uncle Red's yard led to disastrious  endings. One such time, the boys, Buddy, Johnny and Andy. took two sawhorses and laid a length of 2 inch pipe across the sawhorses and then took a short length of 1/2 or 3/4 inch galvanized pipe and slid it inside the larger pipe. We called this "game", Up Periscope. Each time we would slide the smaller pipe through the larger one we would say, "Up Periscope!" So, each boy would take turns peering through the periscope and another boy at the other end would slide the smaller pipe down the larger pipe. When it came to my turn, Buddy was on the other ending sliding the pipe. This time, Buddy added a little extra effort in the slide and the smaller pipe made it all the way to the end I was peering into. The pipe collided with my forehead resulting in blood spurting everywhere. I wound up at Dr. Caldwell's office for a couple of stitches.

Another afternoon wound up with an argument. Who knows what it was about, but I was angry a Buddy for something. I grabbed a glass coke bottle, which there was usually a good supply laying around, and began to chase Buddy. I finally got to a place I was able to draw a bead on Buddy and let the coke bottle fly. Buddy being very agile, duck quickly and the bottle flew past his head. However, Johnny unfortunately was standing behind Buddy and was not paying close attention to the action happening around him. John was facing directly at me at the bottle came hurdling towards him. He had no time to react and the bottle caught him squarely on his jaw. The impact created a gash from the corner of his lip to the bottom of his jaw. As Johnny grabbed his face and began to cry, I starred running around yelling, "It's Buddy's fault, he ducked!" What in the world was I thinking! Well, we wound up with another trip to Dr. Caldwell's office and Johnny got quite a few stitches. I sure I wound up with a sore bottom when everything settled down!

Dr. Caldwell made the comment several times that the Howard boys were held together with cat guts!



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