Out of the Frying Pan

Adventures of Elwood & Mike

First of all, I want to say thanks for all of the kind comments and great ratings! And, sorry if any of you spit coffee or anything else on your computers! Enough said, time for another story.

This here one is about another one of my childhood characters. This is one of the Adventures of Elwood and Mike. Yep, Elwood was my best friend. Why, we were the ones who started A.S.S. (American Stupid Society), cause I think back on things we did and I’m surprised to still be alive. We had this thing about proving to people that we had nerves of steel (or brains of mush) with some of the stunts we pulled.

First let me describe some of the area we played in for those who have never been there. The Ohio River is called a mighty river because of the undertow. It could pull a man or beast under and they wouldn’t show up for miles, at the locks down Chesapeake way. This was a challenge to us to beat that river. And guess what, we didn’t have a boat. We even got our pictures in the paper for the stunt we pulled that winter.

We walked across the Ohio River when it froze over, by using bricks to see if they fell through the ice, throwing them ahead of us so we would know not to go that way if the bricks broke through (real smart, huh). But that was our kinfolk’s fault for telling us that’s how our ancestors used to cross before they had bridges. Of course, they didn’t tell us to go out and do it, and they also didn’t tell us the wind on the open river was so strong it would knock you down and blow you across the ice, either. But we watched Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins and saw fellows in snow and ice to film critters, so we knew what we were doing. We even had ropes tied to each other so when one fell, the other did too. Nope, we had this thing figured out.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to introduce Timmy, our tag-along friend. Timmy would tag along with us most of the time, and watch us do our great feats of daring from a distance. We thought of him being cowardly at the time. Now I know he was just smarter. Plus he could tell our folks if something happened.

We didn’t have any of that fancy gear the fellows on Mutual of Omaha did, but neither did our ancestors, either. We used what we could find, our walking sticks were the finest frog gigs you could buy at Goldcamps Hardware. In case you never heard of a frog gig (my wife hadn’t), it’s a four-pronged barbed thing that connects to a long pole and you use it when gigging (stabbing) for frogs or fish.

We were ready and we did it. We made two trips across over to Ohio and back to Kentucky. Unbeknownst to us, there was a newspaper reporter down there taking pictures at the time of the rare occasion of the river freezing over, and he caught us on film. We were coming up the bank and there was Timmy and this other fellow. We thought for sure we were in trouble. But the fellow greeted us with a smile instead (he did mention, though, that it was kinda dumb of us to do that). He asked us if we minded if he used us in the paper, and we assured him of course not.

Then it dawned on us that our folks would find out. So just in case, I told him my last name was Elwood’s and he used mine (boy, that would confuse them, huh). Of course we looked at Timmy so he knew to keep his mouth shut. He did. We both got rid of that part of the newspaper before our parents caught it. We thought we got away with it until we went to school and the teachers asked us if it was a misprint of our names in the newspaper.

As far as I knew, it never made it back to my parents, until later in years when my mother brought it up. I was shocked. She didn’t tell Dad but I guess she knew what was done was done. And she knew that whoopins and being told to stay away from Elwood was just a waste of time.

Stay tuned for more Adventures of Elwood and Mike.

P.S. Wow, I’m still alive.