A No Bull Bull Story

Little boys are all about 'dangerous fun'. It's what they do prepping for more/better/faster 'dangerous fun' as pre-teens, teens and "adults".

When I was a kid we had pretty relaxed boundaries - geographic, temporal and dynamic - for these learning activities. When regular chores and assigned work (x no. of vegetable rows hoed and the lawn mowed) were in the can we were pretty much left to our own um...devices to do what we wanted to if we got home not too long after dark. With a plan, during the summer, we could even camp out overnight. Oan, Jimmy Chapman and I did that once when I was about eight.

We went down to May Creek, crossed it and climbed a hill the other side 'til we came to a large fenced (three strand barbwire; we wondered why it was such a tough fence, usual was two) rough pasture with old growth stumps and a few scrawny trees. This would be in the vicinity of the ridge between the creek, below Kennydale School , and what is now Newcastle. This pasture appeared to be empty, no cows or horses in sight, and the farmhouse wasn't visible. So we decided it was a good spot to camp.

We lugged and skinnied our considerable equipment load into the field and set up under one of the few trees which was, luckily, not too far inside the perimeter and set up our stuff. I built a little fire and was showing the guys how to make a fried egg sandwich when we realized the pasture was NOT empty.

In fact it suddenly seemed very full, what with the huge Holstein bull steadily advancing on us from over a small rise, which turned out to be a false summit we had erroneously assumed was the top of our field. He'd been there all the time, probably just biding his time, we just couldn't see him, and now he was coming to investigate.

We decided to leave. I still have a memory and image in my mind of the clumsy scramble out of there, but especially of the incredible jumbled multi-hued heap of clothes, ropes, sleeping bags, egged frying pan etc. piled just (barely) outside that fence. Thus, we learned why it was a three strander.