Thought You’d Gone Crazy or Something

That’s what my younger brother (then 15 years old) said to me (16, dangerous with a car and drivers license) after my dip in the lake. One summer we both got jobs on the local 9 hole public golf course. $1.25 an hour and we were worth almost every penny of it. The course manager had asked us to move an old pick-up truck that had been rusting for years behind the clubhouse. I got in the truck and little bro into the front-end loader. Pick-up is sitting on rims with some rotten rubber still attached that once were tires.

I’m at the steering wheel and bro bangs into the pick-up. My teeth rattle but truck does not budge. He backs up, gets a good run at my earth bound pick-up and knocks hell out of both me and truck. Funny but I notice that now both of my legs are on fire. Look down to see if I’m on fire and see hornets covering my legs from top of sneakers to bottom of cut-off jeans.

I fly out of the truck and hit top speed instantly, running across the golf course towards the nearest lake. I’m getting stung all the way and knocking hornets off of my legs, while batting others out of the air that were buzzing around my head. Dive into the lake and hold my breath for as long as possible. Finally coming up for air to find hundreds, maybe thousands of hornets still circling above my last known position. Take a deep breath and back underwater, again, and again until most of the hornets had returned to their hive underneath the dashboard of the pick-up.

Staggered back to the clubhouse and little bro asks me what happened. Explained to him and he said, “Oh, thought you’d gone crazy or something.”

Club manager gave me the rest of the day off with pay. I was too sick(?) to work anyway, and sat recovering in the AC of the clubhouse for a good long while. Boss-man even gave me a couple of free beers. So not a bad day all in all. Or what we rednecks call – easy money.