A Return

In the countryside around Armadillo Creek, at the end of winter, as spring took over, things began to turn green. Then quite before anyone realized it, Summertime had crept in. This return to summertime was a most pleasant time of year. School was out for a few months. The plants had been planted. Hopefully enough rain had come to make things grow. And it was time to relax a little, before having to go help pull the weeds, or do something else that seemed an awful lot like work.

Little Johnny Miller lived in the last house on the old dirt road, down the valley, before the National Forest took over. Often only one or two cars a day would pass by the old house, including the mail truck which would drive miles and miles of back roads to connect remote houses to the rest of the world. In the quiet, early summertime evenings, Johnny Miller would say, "C'mon Momma, it's time to go for a walk." If she wouldn't go, he'd usually find a brother or sister, or perhaps even Dad if he wasn't working on something....

And off they'd go. In one direction, they could walk up and over the Little Hill to the Big Hill. These summertime walks were pleasant, and they'd watch for deer out in the pastures, for tracks in the sand along the roadside, tadpoles and baby frogs living in the pools of water in the roadside ditches, which were constantly wet, fed by springs and pooling up before spilling into the culvert under the road and then under the fence into the pastureland beyond.

Or maybe they'd go the other direction, and walk down past the old House Place, where some person, long ago, had a home. Mimosa trees were in the yard of that old homeplace, growing along the road, and more growing up next to the stone foundations of what had once been someone's dream. Johnny Miller loved those big pink blossoms. They didn't smell as nice as some flowers... And he supposed they were messy when the flowers began to drop off into the yard. And hundreds of bees would often swarm around the trees, trying for their share of the nectar.

But the big pink and white blossoms would add color to his already colorful world. And once they were gone, the beanpods left behind would grow, and they made fun playthings... even if you couldn't eat the "beans" inside. These trees didn't grow that large, but were plenty large enough, and usually low enough, to be able to climb up into if Mom wasn't watching too closely.

Across the road from the old house place were two persimmon trees. These big fruits were edible, when ripe, although Johnny didn't ever spend a lot of time eating them. Edible didn't really equal tasty, although they were definitely something to try. When Johnnys cousins would be visiting, sometimes they'd stop at the old persimmon trees, and Johnny, or his brother Tommy, would talk one of the cousins into eating a green persimmon.

Now THAT was an adventure. Let's just say that if you've never had the pleasure of eating a green persimmon, you should really try it sometime. Or not. Green persimmons were about the mouth-puckering-up-est thing that Johnny had ever bitten into. They'd instantly turn your mouth inside out - or at least, it tasted like it.

Usually, after stopping at the mimosa trees, and maybe the persimmon trees, they'd continue on till the road really got up in the woods a ways... Where the hard packed red clay was perfect for leaving black marks with bicycle tires (which Johnny and Tommy had fun doing when they were a bit older). But there were other treats ahead, as well.

For just past the packed red clay, before and after you crested the hill, groups of huckleberry bushes stretched off into the forest. For the most part, Johnny, and if he came along, Tommy, would just pick the wild blueberries right off of the bushes and stuff them in their mouths. When the skins of the berries were a true blue color, sometimes a lighter blue but often such a deep blue that they appeared black, the taste was fairly sweet. But when they'd grab a berry not quite so ripe, either a deep purple or even still holding a reddish tint, the taste would be tart, and make their mouths warp a little, and they'd squint their eyes and grit their teeth as their taste buds went crazy with delight.

If they did happen to bring along a bucket to put the berries in, they could bring a quart of them back home, where Momma Miller could bake a nice pie for the family.... But usually, there was too much eating "at the bush" to even consider saving some for a pie... Such is the enthusiasm of youth - loving the here and now so much that the lure of that tasty pie would fade into oblivion.

Sometimes, Johnny and his Momma, or Johnny and Tommy, or Johnny and one of the older siblings - it didn't matter so much to Johnny who walked with him as long as he could go for a walk - would walk down the side lane, off the main road, down the hill and the rough, rocky road, to the creek beyond. Sometimes down here, they'd pause and pick blackberries off wild blackberry bushes. This was a tasty treat, but much different from the huckleberries.

The huckleberries were small in diameter from bb=sized all the way up to perhaps a quarter inch in diameter - and thus it took some time to pick enough of them to make a pie or something similar with. However, the wild blackberries tended to be much, much larger. Often, they'd be a half-inch or more in diameter, and would fill a bucket rather quickly.

These tasty treats, too, would be eaten right from the vine, but it was easier to get your fill of them and start hitting the bucket instead of your mouth. As a result, the Miller household usually saw more blackberry cobblers and pies than they did huckleberry pies. The only problems anyone had with the blackberries were that, first of all, the berries grew on sticker-bushes. That is to say, blackberry bushes, unlike the huckleberries, were covered in sharp barbs that would rip a kid's skin open if they weren't careful.

This didn't very much bother the Miller kids, since they'd just wipe off any blood onto their pants leg and keep on picking... But the really nasty thing they had to watch out for was chiggers. For some reason, these tiny little red pests, almost invisible to the naked eye, loved to lurk in the blackberry bushes, just waiting to jump on unsuspecting berry pickers and leave them with itchy red welps by the time they arrived at home, where alcohol or something similar, followed by a good scrub, could be used to kill them off.

When the days grew too hot for berry picking, and no one really felt like adventuring down the road very much, unless it was to the swimming hole in the creek beyond, sometimes Johnny and Tommy would play in the old dirt-floored shed, where their Dad's tractor would be parked. In the dirt and dust of the shed, Johnny knew that he could find treasures that would be missed by most kids.

There were creatures lurking there that most would never suspect. The only sign of their presence would be little trails in the dust, and cone-shaped depressions in the sand. Tommy taught Johnny to say:

Doodlebug, doodlebug, come up and get a grain of corn.
Your house is burning up.

Or they'd chant other version which went something like this:

Doodlebug, doodlebug,
Come out of your hole;
Your house is on fire,
And your children will burn.

The sound of their voices, and the push of their breaths above the delicate dust or sand walls of the doodlebug's burrow, would cause the sand to trickle down into the hole, alerting the tiny doodlebug that invaders were present. If they persisted, usually the doodlebug would stick his tiny pincers through the sand at the bottom of the pit, looking for prey (which should have been ants), and they'd talk to him...

If the doodlebug refused to come out, sometimes they'd grab a blade of grass, or a small stick, and poke around in the hole till the doodlebug was uncovered, and then innocently torment the poor thing. Eventually they'd tire of playing with the creature and return to other pursuits.

Another pastime that they could do for hours without ever leaving the yard, was to hunt locust shells. Johnny Miller's Dad called these creatures locusts... Many people refer to them as cicadas. All Johnny knew was that they lived there, in the zillions, and he could usually find the dried, crispy skins left behind by the insects as they molted and grew. He could spend hours lining these shells up and playing army with them, as if some monster army had been created from some murky nightmare. When the war was done, the combatants could be destroyed with just a few swats of his hand, the skins reduced to dust - but there was no loss there, because dozens more of them could be found in other trees around the yard.

It is true that around the Miller Homestead, and around the Armadillo Creek area, a return to summertime meant a fair share of work, what with cutting hay and raising livestock and vegetables and the like... But the best part of summer for young Johnny Miller was all the fun to be found in the out-of-doors on a hot summer day, without ever having to leave this place called home.