Daddy and Mama would occassionlly make a trip into town to do some much needed shopping or business at the bank.
No, not to deposit money into the bank because we never had any money, but to humbly ask to borrow some money so we could plant crops so we could give the money to the bank after the crops were sold.
Banks loved folks like my Daddy.
Circulate the money to make money.
See how it worked?
We stayed at home alone and loved it.
Here is why.
So Daddy had roofed our big old barn with sheets of the shiniest aluminum he could find. Certain times of the day traffic coming over the hill at the sawdust pile heading south could be blinded by the reflection of the sun on Daddy's barn roof to cause ditch diving.
The barn roof was very steep because it had a big old hay loft. Then the roof slanted down to slope less to the leanto truck shed on the side facing our house.
Daddy was very protective of his building roofs because of leakage possibility.
Rain on the house roof with holes would cause useage of Mama's cook pots. Holes in the smokehouse would cause our hams and sausage to sour and ruin. Meatless meals were deemed bland and sad.
Rain seeping into the chicken house caused the chickens to look soggy and stink like wet chickens.
Rain seeping into the outhouse caused, well just a worse mess.
So Daddy taught us pride of ownership in always being aware of holy roofs.
Roofs were put on top of all his buildings to protect the contents inside.
Pride of ownership!
Anyway, we talked about how much fun it would be to climb to the top of the barn roof, sit down on our butt to slide to the truck shed and slow to fall into a big old pile of pinestraw.
" Boy Howdy !"
So we raked piles of pinestraw for days on end. We being really smart Smith kids piled it as near as possible to the side of the truck shed just waiting for the moment when Daddy and Mama took a day trip into Atmore to do business.
We made a magnificent straw house to play in the meantime. Daddy warned us that we would need this pile of straw to use in banking sweet potatoes soon and just know that is why he was allowing the straw to be placed there near the barnside.
" Daddy can't know about our plans to have the highest slide this side of Barnum & Bailey Circus."
" Oh, nuh uh".
" They gonna be gone all day tomorrow."
So Daddy and Mama leave the lane heading for business in Atmore.
We all get busy moving our epic straw house to make an epic pile of pinestraw for cushioning our epic fall from the truck shed roof.
Humpy got dibs on the first slide.
Using Daddy's saw horse, we all crawled up on the truck shed roof to gingerly crawl and slip back and claw and crawl to the apex of that barn roof. We surely must have looked like a gang of monkeys sitting along the ridge of the roof waiting our turn to slide down.
Humpy chose the middle panel to take his maiden slide.
He went down like a greased zipper to slow enough at the slope of the truck shed side to allow himself to get deposited just at the far edge of the straw pile.
" Dadgum, that was hard."
"We gotta move our pile a bit".
"Yeah, Daddy will beat our butts if we break a bone".
With some adjustments to accommodate the force of our tumbling bodies, we used that slick barn roof slide for hours of sheer delight.
Late afternoon we tired of all the climbing and body slaming into the pinestraw pile. We laid and talked about how we could improve things next time, but we better put the sawhorse back in the shed and try to make our strawhouse look like a strawhouse again.
" Daddy ain't dumb and he will know if rules have been broken".
The strawhouse was rearraigned to a reasonable looking mess.
Daddy and Mama rolls into the lane.
We all gather on the porch to wait and see if they brought us some sticks of peppermint.
Daddy looks right at his beautiful shiny aluminum barn roof and with great restraint says,
"Somebody has been on the barn roof".
In uninson we went,
"Huh!"
The middle panel was slick shined like a new Christmas dime.
" Dadgum !".
Daddy made a remark I never have forgotton when he told us about covering our misdeeds.
" Walk Out Backwards And Sweep Out Your Tracks"
Wish we had.................
