CHAPTER XI
This chapter should be entitled, "now I am a man". This story is not one of which I am proud, but is a rather humorous episode enacted during my boyhood days, and it marks the time at which I had grown up.
My father and I were burning trash that had accumulated during the previous winter at the site of a dump some five hundred yards from the house. It was a warm day and the heat from the burning trash pile quickly dehydrated me, so I soon needed a drink.
I proceeded to make my way to the house, and started to enter the kitchen when my sister Ruth, who was busily mopping the kitchen floor, asked me not to walk across the damp floor. I could have gotten a cooler and fresher drink at the well, which was just as close, and as handy as the kitchen tank. But, I was not going to be ordered around, so I proceeded to walk into the kitchen.
My sister told me if I walked on the floor she would strike me with the mop. I did not heed her warning, and continued across the floor, whereupon, she took a "Babe Ruth swing" with the wet mop, and struck me square in the face.
She dropped the mop, sped up the stairs with my sister Mary in close pursuit, and locked the bedroom door behind them. They called to my Dad from the bedroom window and he came to their rescue.
We walked back to the dump site where we had been working. My Dad picked up a barrel stave and informed me he intended to make it difficult for me to forget my folly, and approached
me as if he planned to apply the barrel stay to my backside.
I drew myself rigidly to my full height, and answered I had no intention of receiving a whipping, and he must have lacked a desire to pursue the confrontation, and dropped the stay in the fire, and that day and place, I became a man, and was never punished by whipping again.
There was not much pain in the little tiff, but the Humiliation was colossal.
To be continued
