Monday, May 26, 2008

My Cousin and the Movies

My cousin and the movies By David Shriver
When I was about seven years old my cousin Allen was 10.Being much older than myself he of course was allowed to do a lot more than me; and one of the things he got to do, was go to the movies with his friends. This worked out pretty well, as the next week at some point ,I would get a complete rundown and vivid description of what went on in which ever movie he happened to go to that week. Well actually I guess he kind of acted out certain scenes for realism sake Not saying he got to go to a movie every week;, no we were just farm kids ,maybe once a month if he was lucky. I think the first movie I remember hearing about was Robin Hood .Allen was really impressed by the scene where Robin Hood fought Friar Tuck on the log with poles Kind of like pugal sticks. Well Allen had to show me so we found a couple of good sized pugal sticks in the woods and started battling. It didn't take long for me to be losing big time and when I went home with mashed fingers and a knot on the back of my head ;My mom wouldn't let me play with him for a week.
The next movie as I recall was Ben Hur ;Of course everyone knows about the chariot race well seems we had a John Deere grain drill with a wood platform on the back intended for use to stand on while filling the drill from sacks of grain. But also it was a cool place to ride for a couple of farm kids. Well Allen has a great idea ;lets get some gypsum weeds, and we can have the battle of the grain drill while my Uncle is pulling it across the field. Gypsum weeds are these weeds that grow in the Mississippi river bottom with big ole thorny balls on them the size of golf balls. Needless to say it didn't take one trip across the field to produce a bloody mess in the loser of the battle, and when I went home my mom was ticked I wasn't allowed to play with my cousin for two weeks.
Then Allen and his friends went to see Tarzan I should have stayed away. Over at Allen's house he had a barn with two hay mows; one on each side ,with an area in the middle large enough to park tractors and equipment .There were two ropes hanging from the center beam So Allen has this great Idea , we could each grab a rope, One get in one hay mow the other in the other hay mow swing over to the other side with one little addition. We would try to knock the other one off on our way across. As my older cousin out weighed me by probably 80 lbs You can only guess the outcome .But I survived that and High School football, College football, and Viet Nam I guess all the preparation for life's hard knocks paid off. Today my cousin Allen is the pastor of a church in Missoula Montana Still helping people make preparations for life however I don't think he goes to many movies anymore Thank God.

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