They Bite
Just southwest of the Project was an area of grassy rolling hills. It’s covered with parking lots and commercial buildings now with hardly a hint of what was once, to us boys, a huge area to explore. There were groves of mixed birch, poplar and ash along with sections of nearly impenetrable briars and brambles and grape vines left by a farmer many years before. It was nearly thirty years before my time as a child that the city had encroached on that particular farmland and left things to go to seed. When you came to the edge of the old farmland you hit the railroad tracks and just beyond the tracks flowed the Merrimack River. This made for over a quarter of a mile of old farmland between the road bordering the Project and the tracks and at least a mile long in the other direction. To the north was a major street and old brick mill buildings and to the south was a small but interesting woodland before you reached the big cemetery.
My friends and I discovered that the ground in this area was made up of sand banks under a foot or so of dirt. Somewhere along the line somebody got the idea of digging tunnels in the stuff. Before we were done, we had quite a complex of tunnels to play in. Every once in a while a small section would cave in some, but never anything too serious. I do remember one time when I had to back out of an area that collapsed while digging. There was some coughing and lots of sand in my hair, but that was to be expected. The real trouble occurred when we inadvertently dug our way into a very well populated red ant colony and before we realized it, we had red ants in behind all of our clothing, collars, ears and in our hair. The thing about red ants is that they bite and hurt and itch. We were miserable for days and pretty much gave up on our tunneling adventures afterwards. It didn’t matter because the first big rain caused massive collapsing anyway and all that was left was a series of large holes in the ground where our tunnel complex had been. I’ve kept a careful eye out for red ants ever since. It was one of life’s most important lessons. Don’t cohabitate with critters that are into indiscriminate biting.
Do you remember?
Tags: humor, philosophy, random thoughts, reflections
