A Taste of Young Tender Val

Yesterday the land of Backroads was drenched with a downpour that lasted all the live-long day. A downpour so steady and forceful that the students were kept inside the main building, and not allowed to traipse across the parking lot to their technology building. A downpour of epic proportions. A downpour that necessitated an announcement to the pupils that those driving should avoid a certain road, because it was underwater. A downpour that rerouted the placid creek that runs behind Val's homestead and beside the gravel road so that water was flowing down the gravel road. Where CARS belong!

But let’s not talk about the weather. Let’s talk about what a good father Hick is to his boys. Always wanting them to have the best of everything. To have things he did not have as a youngster. Like when Genius was 4, and Hick bought him a two-man go-kart from Walmart. Or when he was 10, and Hick gave him the $300 Toyota Tercel with a manual transmission, and let him drive his brother around the acreage.

Around that same time, Hick declared that a boy needs a clubhouse. That might have been because Genius asked for a clubhouse. I’m sure that was it. He had been to a birthday party, and his buddies whipped up an instant clubhouse. Let's revisit those early years, when Val was a sweet young thing with a foolish notion to become a writer. Way back on April 19, 2005, on her very first super secret blog, where Val stuck to just the facts, Ma'am…the tale went a little something like this:

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Redneck Kids' Clubhouse

My son went to a birthday party a couple weeks ago, and the
kids started putting sticks and leaves on top of some big rocks
to make a clubhouse. When he came home, he asked his dad
to bring him some big rocks up from the creek to make a club-
house. Of course that would be too much work, so his dad
told him he knew just the place. I didn't think any more about
it, and both boys and their dad went out to play.

They came back in about an hour later, all excited. "Dad
found us this great place for our clubhouse! Come look!"
So I went outside, about 50 yards from our front porch,
and saw the "clubhouse." It was one of our sinkholes.

Oh, we have two sinkholes, a large one and a small one.
This was the small one, but still a sinkhole. Now I'm not
sure if you know what a sinkhole is, but in this area it is
where the underground water has eroded away the rock
and left an opening between the surface of the earth and
the underground water table. In other words, it is like a
cave with the top eroded away. Sometimes there is water
in the bottom, sometimes not. In our big sinkhole, you can
drop a rock and eventually hear it splash. It is about 50
yards past the small sinkhole.

I, of course, had a few words to say about this new clubhouse.
Number one being that it isn't safe to play in a sinkhole. My
husband said I was overreacting: "It has a dirt floor." Yeah,
for now. How do we know it is finished collapsing? Maybe
that is just the roof that fell in and got stuck, and it's going to
collapse again.

The kids were happy as could be. They have a cool clubhouse.
They had covered the top with sticks. So it kind of looks like
some primitive trap that unsuspecting animals fall into and land on
pointy sticks. I do not like this idea of using a sinkhole for a
clubhouse.

"What am I going to do when one of them falls through to the
water and gets washed along in that underground river? I can't
save him, and by the time I call for help he'll be miles away."

My husband still thinks I'm overreacting. My mother says to
dress them in life jackets and tie a rope on them before they
go out to play. Now that's a good idea.

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Yep. That was Early Val. I hope nobody suffers a bout of dehydration after reading such a dry take on a father's misguided love. But if they did, we can fix that! Momentarily.

Here are some photos of the original clubhouse, from 2005.

That's the entrance. Every little boy's fantasy of a secret hideout, perhaps a place to find or store a chest of pirate treasure.

If you're gonna have a clubhouse, you've gotta camouflage the top. Something natural-looking, like a pile of random tree limbs with cut marks that might have fallen there. Hey. It could happen.

What a cool hangout! IF YOU DON'T MIND DYING!!! Hick's choice of clubhouse design leaves a bit to be desired.

So anyhoo...when I talked to Hick last night on the phone, when he was briefly trapped in our enclave by a raging wet-weather creek that was flooding a little concrete bridge on the gravel road...he shared a bit of news with me.

"I have never seen this much rain in such a short time. I don't know what was living in that sinkhole behind the barbershop, but it ain't livin' there no more. That thing is full of water."

EXACTLY! It might have taken 10 years, minus 10 days...but Val's point has been proven.

A SINKHOLE AIN'T NO PLACE TO PUT A KIDS' CLUBHOUSE.
You'd think that would go without saying, now wouldn't you?