The other day Linda was standing out on the back deck. I noticed she was looking intently at something up in a tree. "Sam," she called, "come look at this." I walked out to see what she was looking at. She pointed at a maple tree in the back yard. There on a limb, about fifteen feet up, was a large hornet's nest.
It is a beautiful nest with a nice symmetrical shape. I hope to bring it down when the weather gets colder and display it in the house. Or if Linda isn't open to that idea, I reckon I can put it somewhere in my shop. When pointing it out to different family members, the most common response has been, "Scary!"
The sight of this hornet's nest brought back some memories from my boyhood days when we boys spent so much time playing together. My maternal grandmother's younger brother, Bill Nolan, lived nearby, and his youngest son, Joey, was my age. Joey, along with my younger brother, Bruce, and I often roamed the woods and spent many hours doing things that 10-to-12 year old boys enjoy doing. Bruce and I had built ourselves a tree house behind the barn where we lived and we loved to play in that tree house.
One day we discovered a really neat thing. We found an old gallon can of leftover varnish. Further investigation proved the varnish to be highly flammable. We lit that can on fire and, wow, did we ever have ourselves a fire! Well, being boys, it was only natural to think of cooking something over the fire. So we got some Irish potatoes and sharpened a couple of sticks. We held the potatoes over the fire and were actually able to cook the potatoes. Or, I should say we partially cooked them. They were still pretty undone in the center. But we ate them and thought they were pretty good, even though they had a strong chemical taste. We could have called them "blackened potatoes." The burning varnish gave off a black, probably toxic, smoke that stained the potatoes and imparted a strong flavor to them, but not in a good way, if you get my meaning. I'm surprised we lived over some of our escapades. At any rate, I'm sure those potatoes were probably poisonous.
It didn't take us long to share our discovery with Joey. So the next time he was over we decided to cook some more potatoes. This time we thought we would cook the potatoes on the ground since we were afraid we might start a fire up in our tree house. That varnish burned really hot. In fact, it roared, almost like a blow torch.
We took our varnish can and potatoes to the lean-to on the back side of our barn. At one time we had raised chickens in there so there were some old nest boxes on the back wall of the barn. We lit our varnish can and were just getting started with our cookout when all of a sudden the air was filled with yellow jackets. Unbeknownst to us, those yellow jackets had built a huge nest in one of the old hen nest boxes. The noxious black smoke from our infamous varnish can had aroused them to the attack. And attack they did! They came at us from all sides. We split three different ways. Bruce ran one way out of the open side of the lean-to while Joey ran the other. I made a critical mistake by diving under the sidewall of the lean-to which was about a foot off the ground. I don't know how much skin I scrapped off my back, but it felt like most of it must have been left on the bottom of that sidewall.
We all ran screaming to the house, swatting at yellow jackets all the way. Those yellow jackets got in our hair and under our T-shirts and stung us all over our bodies. Mother quick got the alcohol and a ball of cotton and did what she could to soothe our wounds. My back was on fire from having a large area of the skin scrapped off. Between the yellow jacket stings and the scraps on my back, I was in misery the rest of that day. Mother was horrified that we had been playing with fire and eating potatoes cooked over varnish.
"I can't believe you boys could do that," she said, "don't you know that stuff is poison? Not to mention the fact that y'all could have burned our barn down!"
I think she was shook up with all the stings and scrapes. I had a total of 18 stings on my body. I think I was the worst. Joey and Bruce had both gotten out faster than I had, but they each had their own share of stings. I think that was the last time we cooked any potatoes over varnish. Of course, knowing us, we probably went on to bigger and better things from there.
Sam Byrnes is a Gentry-area resident and weekly contributor to the Eagle Observer. He may be contacted by email at [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author.
Editorial on 11/04/2015