Springtime

Johnny Miller was once a toddler. As a toddler, stumbling around the farm, there were lots of times where the family worked out of doors, and he loved gardening, and letting his little toes wiggle in the fresh-turned dirt, after his Daddy finished plowing, when the seeds were being planted.

They had a strawberry patch, and he'd go pick nice, big, juicy strawberries and eat them, there, no thoughts of washing them ever crossing his mind. Other fruits and vegetables were abundant, too, and he'd watch his Dad cut up a big, red, onion, and eat it as a side with a bowl of pinto beans. Johnny couldn't handle the spiciness, too well, but he'd try his best to eat them, too.

In the warm spring and summer evenings, along about the time that Rockford Files was coming on, Little Johnny would go grab his Mommy's hand, and tell her, it's time to go for a walk. Later, he would grow to like the Rockford Files, but for now, the thoughts of people shooting people and stuff like that, just didn't much agree with him. He’d much rather go walking.

They'd walk up the road, he barefooted, helping his Mom look for "flat tires", which would be pieces of baling wire, or nails, or old rusty horseshoe-halves, anything that could puncture a tire. If they left the house and went one way, there was an old "house-place" where some long-ago relative had once lived, but which was now just a rock foundation, and across the fence, the peak of the roof of an old barn, barely sticking up out of the leaf-covered patch of woods.

The house-place was one of Johnny's favorite places. As the first sign of spring, there'd be tons of daffodils, which had once lined someone's yard. There were also bushes of different sorts, and a small pond, where there was nothing but small, Punkinseed Perch, which were fun to catch with a fishing pole, once he was a little older, but which weren't big enough to keep.

On past the house-place, where the woods started getting thicker, wild huckleberry bushes grew, right next to the road, and they'd spent quite a bit of time picking them. These, like the strawberries at home, were delightful, the blue juice dribbling down his chin and staining his fingers, as he picked them and ate them by the handfuls.

Going the other direction, from the house, where the road was at a low spot, there was a broad, shallow ditch, and in the springtime, he could go down, day by day, and watch as the strands of jelly-like frog eggs turned suddenly into tadpoles, which, later, started growing legs, and losing their tales, and magically, became little, tiny frogs.

The frogs would liven up as darkness grew near, and for a few hours each evening, they, in conjunction with the locusts, which he would later learn are called cicadas in some parts of the world, would create a musical symphony that'd drown out all other sounds. And, as they quieted down, the whippoorwills in the treetops nearby would call out in the still night air. And if you sat outside, when there was a breeze, it'd rustle through the treetops, a constant, roaring sound which grew deeper as the breeze grew stronger. It sounded for all the world like cars on the highway, but there were none of those, anywhere near.