Sunday, September 03, 2006

Off To The Races


This turtle scooting through the rain reminds me of my childhood. I can faintly remember when I was five years old, my father and a couple of his cousins took me to the turtle races. First we went out and caught a turtle and proceeded to the turtle race.

The turtle race started as turtles were placed under a washtub in the middle of a large circle. When all the turtles were placed the washtub was raised and the race was on. In the first heat, the first turtle to cross the finish line was deemed the winner. In the second heat, which took much longer, the last turtle to cross the circle was deemed the winner. My turtle won both heats. I must have been a natural turtle racer.

One reason that my memory is so foggy is due to the fact that my father thought it would be funny to set me up as a bartender dispensing beer from the keg for the beer drinkers. Being young and curious, I partook of the keg as readily as filling up cups when no one was looking. When I was finally caught, I was pretty looped. Dad tells the story of how he drove me around for hours trying (unsuccessfully), to sober me up before having to take me home and face the wrath of my mother.

3 Comments:

Blogger yellowdoggranny said...

what a cool memory...i think every kid in texas tried to copy the grown ups by drinking beer..my cousin and i would sit in the big swivel chair of our granddad's and as our parents thought pretend to drink 'like daddy red'..they thought we were drinking coke and pretending to be drunk...we had found his stash and were drunker than cooter brown...then we would spin the chair..we threw up for a week...
i was almost 35 years old before i could smell whiskey and not gag...

1:47 PM  
Blogger Louisiana said...

hi. the wonderful mimi emailed me a link of your blog so i can enjoy the beautiful pic. i kinda have this huge thing for turtles. i would love to live in a place i could just see this little ones around. it would make my heart so happy. just yesterday we went to the one pet store in town that sells box turtles (to visit them, we do that with all pets, the 5 kids and i love animals) and get this, on sale they were $650...a bit more for the ones that grow pretty big ones. Also, the aquatic ones are illegical to sell but not illegical to have, ????? yikes...


anyways, thank you for making my evening...it was a great post and an awesome picture. sweet dreams.

9:36 PM  
Blogger :P fuzzbox said...

Granny, if it happened today someone would probably call CPS.

Chana, when I was young, you could trade in a soft shelled turtle to the bootlegger for a case of beer. He claimed that a soft shelled turtle had seven different types of meat on it. They are hard to come by around here though. Now a box turtle for 650 would buy a lot of beer.

Ranea, with a keg of beer handy it is a lot of fun.

Mimi, at times he is still paying the price of that little indescretion. He was busted big time.

11:07 PM  

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