Away From Home

Somewhere along about his tenth year, Johnny Miller got to spend a couple of weeks with some of his family, around a hundred miles from home. Whereas Armadillo Creek had a population of around a thousand, give or take, in the 1980 census, the border city near where his Grandparents lived was more like forty or fifty thousand, maybe.

His grandparents were actually living across the state line, on a few acres of land they owned over there. He learned a bit about using a riding mower that summer. Pop would always let the youngsters help take care of the place, as long as they'd take care of his stuff. Up till then, he'd only ever used a push mower, and use it he had! And fixed it on occasion.

When you didn't have a lot of money, you made do. Sometimes that meant taking a carburetor apart, cleaning it, and if you had to, replacing the gasket with some thin pieces of cardboard, cut off a box or a notebook cover. It probably wouldn’t be the best repair possible, but it cost nothing, and the mower would run fine till the next time it broke.

But Pop and Granny had a real riding mower. Parked it in the shed, and everything! He'd get to do circles around their ten or twelve acres of land. Pop'd say, now, make sure you "overlap" your last circle. Of course, this really wasn't any different than using the push mower, just faster, and you got to steer it, just like a car!

One night, Pop and Gran's church had a nice dinner. It was a fairly big church, over in the city, and they had dining tables set up with all kinds of fixings. It was almost like a family reunion, only more so. He did pretty good, and didn't embarrass himself too much, till desert came. He had noticed folks putting whipped topping from the dishes on the center of the table on their potatoes, and thought, there's some strange folks around here. But when dessert came, he had his big slice of pie, and decided, now's my time! He got him a big spoonful of the whipped topping and started to put it on his pie, when his grandparents stopped him.

He couldn't understand that. Till they explained that it wasn't whipped topping at all, but sour cream. Now, THAT was a new one on him! He'd never heard of such a thing. He never did grow to like sour cream all that much - something just wasn't right about something that looked like whipped topping being put on taters and all.

After a week with his grandparents, Johnny went and spent a couple of days across the state line in the city with his aunt and cousins. They lived in apartment and had a pool and everything! Johnny had never been in a real pool before. Of course, he'd been "swimming" many times, but that was going down to the creek, or to the river, and wading around awhile. Or as a treat, he'd get to go to the swimming area over on the lake. But never a pool!

He wasn't too tall, yet, but found he could just keep his nose above water, even if he pushed away from the wall on the deep end. It wasn't really that deep. What he learned, the hard way, though, was that out in the middle of the deep end, by where the drain was, it was just a little, teeny bit deeper. Just enough to cause him to suck in some water in his nose, which he had managed, to that point, to keep above the water.

When that happened, Johnny, who didn't really know how to swim, panicked. He fought to stay up, but it was no good. If he'd remained calm, he could probably have made it back to the edge by walking, but, well, that's ifs for ya. As it was, his older brother Randy, who was living in the city now, too, happened to walk over to the pool about that time and saw him. He was dressed, blue jeans and all, but jumped right in there and pulled him to safety.

That summer, Johnny also got to spend a few days with his sister Ann. She was the youngest of the older three kids, but about ten years older than Johnny. She was young and single and a Mom, and was working and going to school here. By the time he went to her apartment, he'd been gone from home for almost two weeks. He had a blast playing with all the kids there in the neighborhood, but homesickness was about to overcome him.

He felt plumb sick, and went to bed for a while. When the neighbor kids came over to play, he couldn't go out. They decided to do him a favor though. One of them rode his bicycle down the street to the Long John Silvers, or maybe his parents had gone there. Anyhow, he brought Johnny back a basket of "crispy critters".

Now, Johnny'd had plenty of fried food before, so this wasn't that new. He had never eaten someplace like Long Johns, but, chunks of batter, fried in all that grease, well, it was crispy and crunchy and not all that bad. He didn't get to finish the basket though. All that grease hit the already upset stomach, and the two didn't mix at all.

On the good side, the sickness that came and went cleared out the homesick for the last day or two of his stay. He played and ran and had a good time. When all was said and done, Johnny'd had a fine time in the city, and at Pop and Grans. But, boy, was he ever glad to get back home to Armadillo Creek, and Mom and Dad.