Vitality Stories

Bonnie in her finery

How a snake and an apple created a perfect day

Pranks and picnics

Bonnie shares:

I remember one prank I pulled on my mother in 1945 just before my tenth birthday, and she got so upset with me I didn’t dare go near her almost a whole day.

We had a small field my dad plowed every spring so my mother could plant her garden. In this field, or parts of it, there were snake dens. They were not poisonous snakes. They were garter snakes. I used to take my dog, Rex, and we’d dig around in the mounds and when we found a den, we would open it up and dig out the snakes, and I’d tell Rex to “Sick ‘Em,” and he did. But one day we dug a den up and there were a bunch of baby snakes so I gathered a few snakes in my hand to show them to my mother.

When I’d left, she’d been hanging clothes on the line, but by the time I got there, she had gone into the house for a minute. So what I did was mix the snakes in with the wet clothes so when she pulled out a piece of clothing the snakes would fall out.

Oh, if you think I wasn’t in trouble… She screamed and hollered, and I took off like a bat out of hell. I waited two hours, and when I went to the house she met me at the door, waving her broom and yelling, “Bonnie Lou, get out of here or I’ll get you.”

I did what any smart girl would do. I got out of there. Again.

Boy, I was hungry, but I didn’t go home. I went out in the woods where we had wild apple trees. I picked a nice big apple. We also had wild grape vines so I picked a bunch, and Rex and I sat down and had a picnic.

The prank definitely didn’t go over well with my mother. In fact, she never forgot it. Every so often we’d talk about it. She laughed about it in the end, but she sure didn’t laugh in the beginning.

~ Bonnie