Country Gal

Country Gal by Vanita Blundell 8-29-06
The City Wide Garage Sale gave Jims brother, John and his boys a good excuse to come see us. After the shopping the kids, Jeff, Jennifer and Jason started to talking about what they used to do while we were out of the house. Johns oldest son, Jason and Jeff are close to the same age. So when they came to visit the two boys found all kinds of things to do.
Jennifer was the oldest by five years and she watched out for the boys. I was unaware that she had been running interference for them. She went around and fix what they broke and did not always rat them out if she thought what they were doing was not life threatening. There were a few times that she did tell on them. For instance- they had found some old shot gun shells and they thought that it would be fun to hit the brass ends with hammers. They did not want the adults to know what they were doing so the carried the shells and hammers out under an old tree and was pounding on the ammo. Jennifer did come and tell me what they were doing and we quickly put a stop to that. The old shells were some shells that the previous tenants had left behind and we had no idea that the ammunition was even there. They talked about how they tried to fly by using trash sacks-plywood- boards and paper. It was never successful. And all of the holes they dug in the pasture in their attempt to find China. They dug such big holes that Jennifer had to get a rope to pull them out. She made them fill the holes in as she knew that if we found out about the deep pits the boys would be in big trouble.
Since I was a stay at home mom I thought that I knew most everything that went on in my house. That kind of thinking always gets you into trouble. Did I have a rude awakening! Sometimes we would go to town and leave the kids home for a little while. I found out this weekend that Jeff had broken a lot of my figurines. I had always told my kids that if something got broken it would be alright just tell me and clean up the mess. I knew that accidents would happen. What I did not have any tolerance for was just doing things for no purpose. Such as swinging a bat in the house and hitting balls just to see where they might land. These are the things that Jeff did while we were away. Jennifer would glue the broken objects back together in hopes that I would never notice them. Jim had known that some things had been broken but he thought that I had glued them back together again. I had never noticed them until the kids showed me the cracks. I must say that Jennifer is a darn’ good gluer. Her only defense was that if I knew what she knew, Jeff might not have survived my wrath. And she might have been right.