Wednesday, September 5, 2012

A MEMORY I LOVE TO KEEP by Harold Burnett


As a family we played lots of games.  I won’t say competition was vicious, but it could become heated.  For some reason my parents enjoyed a very noisy game called “Pit.”  

The game is based on commodity sales at the Stock Exchange . . . free market capitalism at its best.  Each player is dealt a number of cards with the names and pictures of vegetables on them.  The object of the game is to “corner” a market in one commodity of vegetable by exchanging cards in a noisy screaming match that starts as soon as the dealer finishes dealing and declares, “The Pit Is Open!”
One is allowed to yell out numbers from 1 to 5 indicating the number of cards one is willing to trade.  If two people yell the same number, 3 for example, they would make an exchange of cards.  As son as one has five of the same “commodity” he/she yells, “Corner on ‘______, corn!’” for example.  That round is over and the cards are dealt again and a new pit is opened.  Raucous yelling of numbers fills the air again until a new corner is won.  

My mother, trained in classical voice, would always roll her R’s when yelling “thrrrrrree, thrrrree, thrrree.”  She liked that better than winning.  My father, a Baptist minister, liked to entone or chant all his bids in a deep bass, “ooonnnee, oonnnee, oonnnee.”  All of us kids would scream our numbers at the top of our lungs.  Even the three cocker spaniels loved the noise and excitement of the bidding and would bark and whine and sometimes piddle on the kitchen floor.

We played the game while on vacation in a remote hunting cabin deep in the north woods of New Hampshire.  We had running water but no bathroom.  A two-hole privy about 50 feet behind the house served our needs.  To use the privy at night, we took a flashlight and ventured out back there always aware that a skunk, or a porcupine or even a bear might be sniffing around the neighborhood.  

One night, in the middle of a particularly raucous game of Pit, my little sister, Barbie, age six, needed to use the privy.  The game was going at such a fever pitch that no one wanted to break away to take her.  She really had to go so she took the flashlight and headed out into the dark night.  

Porcupines like to gnaw on wood that human sweat has left tasting salty.  The privy attracted them for a midnight snack.  When Barbie gingerly opened the wooden door, she startled a porcupine gnawing on one of the seats.  The animal jumped toward the open door.  Barbie screamed and threw the flashlight up in the air.  The porcupine had scooted toward the woods, but the flashlight landed right in its path and caused the animal to do an abrupt about face.  Barbie had started to run back toward the cabin screaming wildly because the porcupine was right at her heels trying to escape the flashlight.

My brother had just cornered barley when we heard her screams and we all rushed out onto the porch in time to see her rounding the corner of the cabin neck and neck with a surprisingly agile porcupine.  Barbie leaped up onto the porch.  The porcupine scooted under the porch and everything ended happily.  What a laugh!

My father died of cancer in 1993 unable to speak in his final days.  My mother had a stroke three years later and spent a frustrating ten years trying to form words and express her thoughts.

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