Damn Building with Eddie Harris

 Eddie and me.. what year, heck if I know.

Not to be offensive and just for clarification, we are not cursing a building here.  In fact Eddie and I were wondering up and down the creek (small river with running water) and we decided to build a dam.  Now The Damn Building was not Eddie and me but was what David Harris called our efforts.  How do you spell ooppppsssss?  I guess I just told on David but we were probably around 12 years old and needing something to do and we were structural engineers at an early age.  Actually long before Dave got involved (Dave is short for David so I did not make a mistake) Eddie and I proceeded to gather up every rock we could find and some logs and proceeded to DAM up the creek.  Eureka, it worked.  

Vea and me at her back yard.  (right behind us is where the garden use to be)

The only problem is Dave had some cows down stream from our dam and he did not like that we cut off the running water supply.  Now the way I figured it, that as soon as the water filled up our newly created lake (that might be a stretch since it was about 12 feet wide and about one to two foot tall) there would be running water again.  Doesn't that make sense?  Well, Dave did not think so and when he figured it out he came and broke the dam and that was a DAMN shame as it was a structural success.  

Not to get too mature audience rated we will stop there but it seemed that every time Eddie and I were trying to have a little creative fun, Dave or Bob (Dave's brother) got involved.  Luckily Vea (their mom) had a better sense of humor and generally was supportive of our efforts.  Except the one time Eddie and I took all the mints and peanuts that were for the Home Demonstration Club party at Vea's house.  For those who don't remember, the Home Demonstration Club is where all the farm women would get together to talk about their husbands or their wonderful children, like Eddie and me.  Anyway, as you may know from previous stories, Eddie and I went to the garden and planted the mints and salted peanuts so we could have more later.  One time we planted a bunch of our toy trucks in the garden so we could grow more.  We were not popular for that either.   Oh well, shrug shrug.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• If you don't plant good seed you won't grow anything
• If you don't try you will miss all the HOPE in life, NEVER GIVE UP
• Be an optimist, there might be a truck in there somewhere
• Give a kid a break as long as they are trying to do something good even if it lacks a little bit of knowledge, after all, wisdom comes from experience

Thanks for listening,

gary@thepioneerman.com