In answer to Pamela's challenge there is one thing that ranks higher than anything else. It cost nothing, yet it was satisfying, and incredibly titillating with just enough danger to make it irresistible to any kid. It was stealing watermelons! Now I know we do not have any of these in Minnesota, so you have to be imaginative. Guess what we have that is almost as good a thing, and it is the perfect season for it. (I imagined this while driving by a pumpkin field about a week ago). Stealing pumpkins!
Driving by at just about sundown made me remember the excitement when you crawled down the row and took them from just under the window of a farmer with a shotgun. There is nothing to equal the adrenalin when a shotgun goes off and you didn't get hit. Gives you a whole new appreciation of athletics and running. Carl Lewis would choke to death in the dust left behind me, if he lived thru the flying dirt clods. Afterwards every thing tastes better, feels better and you just feel totally alive, CAUSE YOU ARE. It also gives you incredible stories to share years later with your siblings who may be along on the nefarious raid. I know most of us try to teach our children that such things are wrong and to not go in harms way, but if you asked an imaginative child I bet that child, (after a little imagining), would agree with me. Pamela's post just got the little devil working again. So I hope no children are reading this. But if they are, just north of the City in Anoka County there are some pretty good fields, and just south of the river I spotted another one. So you kids with cars remember, keep your head down, wear dark clothes, never ever look directly at a farmer (your eyes and face shine even in moonlight), when the farmer starts shooting RUN, (even if he is not shooting at you), and if caught remember you were just taking a walk when that fool with the shotgun showed up. Remember kids, stealing watermelons or pumpkins is like hunting, and you need to be ethical. Never take more than you can use, do not be destructive to the environment or the farmers produce, shut all gates you go through. This last keeps the farmers from using something worse than a shotgun with light birdshot. MOST IMPORTANT - Never ever relate stories about being shot at around your mother. (Mothers just do not have perspective about such things) Teach children such ethics; it will stick with them thru life. It did me, though I don't think Mama ever knew. Jim Graham, Ventura Village - and once upon a night a lurker in the hot moonlit fields of Tomato Bottom. _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
