Mud Puddle Tennis

Saturday mornings on the farm were a wonderful thing. They usually started out with waffles and my moms’ homemade chocolate syrup. She never used a recipe, and to be honest, I don’t know if she really ever learned how to make the syrup right. Every batch was different. One time it would be runny like water, the next it would be so thick you had to pour it on the waffles while it was still boiling or it would set up like concrete. That was the best kind, but be careful, when you’d bit in to it, your teeth would stick together. Hmm,,,, that may have been the plan, to keep us quiet by gluing our mouths shut. The real wonder of this part, she cooked this breakfast for us after being up at five in the morning and spending three hours for the morning milking. Luckily, at this time I wasn’t old enough to be any help with the milking, so I got to sleep late.
After this, if the weather was good, it would be off to the fields or working with the cattle. Or on a really good day, to town.
Bad weather or wintertime would bring another treat, ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Motorcycles racing on ice, Bobsled racing, The end of a stock car race with footage of all the previous wrecks, Demolition Derby, The Harlem Globe Trotters, Evil Knevil, and so many other sports a country boy would never have a chance to see otherwise. Thinking back, we did all these sports on the farm. Might have been a slightly different form, but we did them. An old car hood roped on behind a truck going fifty miles an hour across a pasture. That counts as bobsled racing doesn’t it?
A lot of these new sports would get incorporated into our daily mischief.
The Romanian acrobats, the ones that climb up a rope, stick their foot through a loop and twirl. I wouldn’t try that one myself. How do they do it and not get so dizzy that they fall off the rope? Here is the country version of gymnastics. This one takes two people, one to do it and one to watch.
The first step is by far the hardest. You have to catch an old barn cat. Sounds easy but it isn’t. A barn cat is a testament to survival of the fittest. These animals only slightly tolerate humans, I may be part of the reason. The whole trick to catching one is to find a spot in the hay barn where the sunlight shines in on top of the hay. They like to sleep in these spots and a sleeping cat is the key. You have to be geared up correctly. Once you touch the cat, he’ll be wide awake and fighting mad. My gear consisted of three long-sleeved shirts, a jean jacket, and two pairs of gloves. This can be a little uncomfortable in August in Kansas, but safety first.
Once you do catch the cat, remember, the claws are only the half of it. They have fangs that would scare a cobra and can spin their heads like Linda Blair in the Exorcist.
Now that you have the cat caught, you place it in the bottom of a five gallon bucket which you staged earlier somewhere in Olympic village. Keep one hand holding the cat in the bottom while you grab the bail with the other. Now you spin around as fast as you can holding the cat in the bottom until centrifugal force takes over. You spin until you can’t stay on your feet any longer. Stop, dump the cat out and try to wobble to safety. This is why it takes two people, you’ll end up sitting on your head while your buddy is laughing at the cat walking like it found the hidden jug of corn mash behind the barn.
The final event of the day is mud puddle tennis. This one can be singles or doubles. Out on the farm, the closest thing we had to tennis was badminton. Seemed like everyone had this set and nobody ever played it more than once. Our set was bought for a family reunion at our house and stored away afterwards. I dug it out one day, looking for something to do. The racquet is fairly light weight, whack a baseball and the darn twig between the handle and head snaps off. Hit rocks with it and the strings break.
One problem on the farm, mud daubers. These pesky little critters are always building nests in every building on the farm. They usually don’t sting unless you annoy them. After a rain they spend all there time flying to the puddles to gather more mud for more nests. That’s where mud puddle tennis began. Finally something you could use these weak little racquets for and eradicate the farm of wasps. Doubles is a little more dangerous than singles. If your buddy fouls, he may propel a ticked off wasp in your directions. Yes, I’ve been stung more than once.