My cousin, Wayne, had caught a fairly nice catfish from our new pond and I was somewhat jealous. Even though I had caught my fair share of catfish from our pond, I had been cautioned by my dad not to catch too many of them since the pond had just been established for a short time.

I finally needled and pestered poor Wayne to the point that I put him to tears and he threw the fish back while crying. Sorry, Wayne, that it took me over fifty years to apologize!

Wayne is a couple of years older than I am and he and I used to have annual summer stayovers at each other’s home. He lived in the city and I lived in the country. I didn’t think any of this was planned, but I always thought it was odd that his mom’s maiden name was Parker and they lived on Parker Road in Houston.

Each summer for several years Wayne and I would exchange weeks together at each other’s home. I enjoyed my stay with him for several reasons. First of all, I felt it was odd to have a neighbor so close to your own house you could hear them talking when they walked outside. Since Wayne is older than me, he was also real lucky because he got to go places on the street I never used to be able to go.

If my memory serves me correctly, we were able to actually go just a few blocks down the street to a grocery store named Clayton’s and buy candy. There was also some kind of pit a few blocks from his home behind a school building and we could go skip rocks across the water.

I was not accustomed to the city life and the daily activity and the buzz of cars and people put me in a strange world a few days each year.

His dad worked in a rubber factory. As a little boy I wondered what he did in a rubber factory. I saw him come home one day all covered in rubber dust and never realized anybody could get dirtier at work than my little brother Keith could get while playing outside. He told my mom one day he was “walking dirt” because he was covered from head to toe with mud.

Wayne’s mom ran a beauty shop on the side of their home. As a cotton top, blonde headed little boy I always wished I could have black hair. I can still remember the time Aunt Merle put a black rinse in my hair hoping to grant me my wish only to have my hair turn gray.

One summer while visiting them I can remember my family had arrived to pick me up. All of the city utilities such as sewer and water were directed to the front of the house in the city ditch. The front yard was plush with green St. Augustine grass and the grass had matted itself over the front ditch that gave an appearance of solid ground.

My sister Gail (Gall Bladder to me) was always a buzz of activity. She was a small, petite little thing and was always jumping and hopping around. I can still remember her and our cousin Debbie dancing around in the front yard as we were loading in our car when suddenly, we heard this loud plop. As we gazed into the ditch, we saw that Gail had fallen feet first like a Popsicle into this sewer ditch.

Her little curly, blond head from her waist up was standing upright in this ditch. Her pretty little pink dress had gently spread itself out in a perfect circumference on the surface of the grass and all we saw was the top half of her body sticking out of the grass. Of course, when we all realized she was okay, we had a good laugh at her expense. As she was pulled from the ditch, I can still see her little black patent leather shoes, pink socks and bony, skinny legs full of this black smelly goo!

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