Incredible Ides of March

This is based on a true story-when my brother, cousin and I got together we always got into some kind of trouble. This particular time we burned down a ball field. Another time we set off a spinkler system all over the park across the street from my cousin's house...



Mary Rose was always looking over her shoulder. She was constantly searching for her shadow, the wind, or in this case her Siamese cat with no tail. She and her twin brother, Bobby, were visiting Sammy, their cousin, on their grandparent’s farm. It was Spring Break and all the school children had a holiday.

Sammy was hurrying the two into the house just as the wind was picking up and droplets were falling. The three were suffering with nothing to do-itis. They were like a devouring pack of locusts as they ransacked the house and found a half empty bottle of wine in the fridge and furiously gulped it down. They copped a pack of “Lucky Strikes” to smoke when they were comfortably secreted in the barn.

“Hey Sammy,” Mary Rose asked, “What are we doing today?”

Sammy was the oldest and wisest of the three. His life was not as much fun when the cousins weren’t around.

“Let’s go to the barn, I know where there are some old firecrackers left over from the Fourth.”

They could just imagine the spectacular fireworks. But they each felt an overwhelming sense of foreboding as they breathed the stale, humid air inside the barn. Creepy shadows were dancing from the single dangling light bulb . The sky had cleared and blue patches were melting through the puffy, scattered clouds. The children found the dusty, musky smelling fireworks and even Coke bottles to use as makeshift rocket launchers. The three Musketeers, with their loot, set off for the ball field across the newly plowed earth.

The day had turned out to be breezy and now the sun was shining brightly. Ever so carefully, the cousins situated the rockets in the Coke bottles. One-by-one the bottles tipped over and spit their contents toward the brittle, knot-infested fence. Each rocket exploded on impact. The entire ball field was in flames. All stared in amazement as the fire lapped up the grass and the pasted on advertisements floated away on the breeze. The three ran back to the relative safety of the grandparents’ house.
Not only were the three smudged from their ordeal but the newly turned soil stuck to the soles of their tennis shoes and left tracks across the living room floor.

The pattern on the rug was not unlike the pattern on their backsides. Aunt Helen was not one to spare the rod and spoil the child.