April's Life Adventures

Friday, September 16, 2005

An Eventful Summer

I have a favorite summer from my childhood. This was not the year of a trip to Europe or some other exotic location. No, this was the summer that my family lived in a cramped 17 foot trailer,(all except for my brother who was at an exotic location...). Our Dad had found work in California for the summer and didn't want to leave us all home, so he found a Horse Ranch where we could all stay together. This provided us all with endless adventures at the beach, with the horses, and about anywhere else that we could easily reach by car.

There were other kids on the ranch as well. Another trailer full of icky yucky boys had the same arrangement as our family. We would play with them, but mostly out of desperation. Across the street from the ranch was the most delectable and large orange orchard. It was endless (at least to an 8 year old it was). The smell of ripe oranges would waft across the street and we would all be tantalized and teased by the scent.

One day, we convinced my mother to allow us to go out and play, she needed time to regain her sanity and we needed to create mischief. Our goal on this particular day was the orchard. We had to cross a very busy two lane highway to get there, but we managed to run across without any incident. We consumed many tasty oranges before deciding to head back to the ranch. The icky yucky boys thought that throwing oranges at each other sounded like fun, and an all out war started up. I was pretty scared of the boys, as they were all older than I was, so I pretty much hid from them the entire time. As we headed toward the highway, one of the boys threw one last orange. This bright projectile happened to hit the windshield of a passing semi truck. The driver was of course angry about this, and hit his breaks and the loud horn to show his ire.

Now as a parent, I can only imagine what must have gone through our mother's head when she heard that horn and screeching breaks. They all thought that one of us had been run over by a semi truck. All parents ran towards the highway as we attempted to scatter back into the orchard to hide from the truck driver.

The boy in question was severely dealt with. He had quite the punishment, but I felt that we were all in trouble that day. We were told that we were never again to go into that orchard. It was the most harsh punishment that I could have imagined for an infraction of someone else. I didn't throw a single orange, yet I was banned from that sweet smelling grove. I am sure that the owner of the oranges was not saddened by our new rule. However, if we crept close enough to the highway and the wind was blowing just right, we could inhale that sweet aroma that I will forever remember from my stay in California.

Posted by April_Mommy :: 7:57 PM :: 5 comments