The banks of the Mad River in Ohio- – now there’s a place I’ll get back to one day. The place that introduced me to human behavior that ranged from the struggle to the victory.
Being one of five girls in a family of seven children made my weekly Friday battle pretty tough to argue. Granted, mom always made sure we girls got baton and ballet lessons, but my mind was on the big outdoors: Camping, fishing – stuff the guys did every weekend. Thus, the Friday struggle.
The Serrer family had eleven kids, eight of them boys. Weekly, dad and Bud Serrer would pack up the boys for a night of fishing, gigging, campfires and “guy” stuff. My “equal rights” sense of justice ticked away at an early age.
My Friday afternoon ritual would begin as soon as dad walked in the door from work. “Dad, can I go too?…………I promise I’ll be good……..I love to fish………IT’S NOT FAIR! More often than not, I’d end up smashed between the boys in the back of the station wagon as the adventure began. Aha! The Victory.
I always loved the campsites we’d pick. They were so primitive, with the skeletal tree roots reaching off the bank to the water. That’s where the turtle holes were. We always had a turtle hook with us. It was a rush when dad would stick that handle in the hole and come out with a very ticked off snapping turtle. We’d all gather around for the beheading. After the head was cut off, dad would tease “the head” with a stick and it would always snap at that stick and hang on. This was like a scene out of a very low budget horror flick. I mean, a head that would strike out and bite – cut me a break! But it really did happen, and it never ceased to amaze us. It also reassured dad that we’d never pick one up. More than once we saw the “teasing stick” get cut in half by an angry turtle head.
If luck held out, I’d get to be part of the frog brigade. The grand leaders would get to wear miner’s lights on their heads. The rest of us would follow their orders. “Crawl on your bellies with your chin dragging in the sand….. peer out over the shallow bank and look for frog eyes sticking out of the water.” I don’t know if all of this hullabaloo was necessary, but it sure was fun, especially during the full moon. When we’d spot one, we’d raise our hand straight up until our leader would catch the signal. We’d then point to the unsuspecting victim moonbathing in its sluggish carelessness. Out of nowhere the gig would fly towards its target with the frog guru of the week attached to the other end of the pole. If the stride were successful the yuckiest part would then occur. The frog would be pulled off the gig and conked on the head with a hammer. Upon impact, its tongue would pop out of its mouth and hang off to one side. That’s how we knew they were dead. The weird part was, their eyes would still be staring at us. When we had a burlap sack full of frogs, it was time to fish.
I did like fishing, but couldn’t keep still for too long at that age. I remember one time, Joey Serrer was also feeling antsy. We started playing in the sand next to the fire along the bank of the river. We’d cup our hands together, fill them with sand and then let the sand run through the center of our hands like an hourglass. We decided that the motion of the sand as it ran down and out looked like a cat’s hind end. For a split second I thought I might be struck by lightening – little Catholic girls weren’t supposed to think this way. I had their attention then, I let every one of those boys in on our “nasty” discovery. Before the evening was over, all eleven of us kids were sitting around the fire with sand running through our hands, making obscene sounds and laughing our heads off. Dad and Mr. Serrer just sat off in the shadows, shaking their heads from side to side with huge grins on their faces.
One particular starry night, after we’d curled up in our sleeping bags, the vision of that darn frog with its tongue hanging out, staring at me, lingered on and on. I got the willies, but figured if I just closed my eyes real tight – wrinkling my nose and squeezing double hard, that gruesome sight would go away. Well my brother, Mike, obviously wondered what all my face action was about. He came over and knelt beside me without making a sound. He lowered his head real close and I became aware of a presence. After mustering the courage, I opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was two huge eyes staring down and I was sure Froggy had come to claim me as his victim. I let out a scream of terror, which scared the hide off Mike, we busted heads in the tangle, I got loose and ran like a crazed dog. Before long I heard an uproar of laughter from camp. Everyone was up and shrieking like loons!
Then it hit me – the grim realization that I had wet my pants in fear. “Oh great! How am I going to get around this one? I had to think fast………. And that I did! I laughed with them as I slowly sauntered back to camp with my feathers ruffled. But, lo and behold, from the corner of my eye I spotted a pair of eyes staring up from the surface of the water. I leapt in and I’ll be darned if that froggy didn’t slip right through my fingers. At least that’s what I told all of them. I had to get wet somehow to bypass the mortification of my little accident. I mean, really, never, ever in a million years would I ever be able to live that one down.
My brothers called me last month to let me know our old high school was having a class reunion. They suggested we look up those Serrer boys and get together for a nostalgic campout on the Mad River. They planned the event for a full moon evening, when we could re-enact our childhood follies. I agreed to come and in the interim decided it was time to fess up to what really happened that fateful night.
But alas, when the time came, my better sense took a strong hold on me. Times change, but the people hadn’t. They were all still heathens, and as we all sat around the camp fire reminiscing, I decided, “Ah, maybe I won’t.” With this gang, some things are better off left alone. After all, I had worked so hard to maintain my dignity so they wouldn’t “girl-tease” me, I surely wasn’t going to let go of it now.
