Dick's Hideaway

Dick MacKenzie - www.dickshideaway.com

A boyhood memory

    An afternoon of reflection at my lakeside bar. A fair amount of clutter - not uncommon for a Saturday afternoon at camp, but not likely a photo winner in any kind of formal showcase.
    I’m so tickled with the concept. It’s a great space saver on the deck, elevates the seating above rails of the don’t-let-me-fall-over-the-edge-and-crash-onto-the-ground vision-destroying safety feature mandated in the building code, and allows one of the prettiest and most comforting views this side of heaven.
    I spent several hours here today after accepting half a dozen stings from an angry horde of flying scorpions that infused strange visions and boyhood good memories as I dreamed upon the water.
    Chainsaw at full throttle, trees falling in a perfect pattern as I cleared brush in the bush, a red hot coal burned the tender part of my forearm where it crooks by the elbow.
    Immediately the coal turned into a big black wasp, which I forgot as the red hot coal at the corner of my eye came front and center.
    Mary said she heard the F word before she saw me crashing through the woods, glasses in one hand, the other flailing frantically in arcs bigger than the circuit of the sun.
    I sat at the lakeside bar, surprisingly unhurt, despite six stings to my eye, cheek, jaw, neck, and arm, all down the right side.
After a few minutes, feeling fine, but with a few tender spots, I went back to the lonely chainsaw, still purring on the ground two hundred yards down the trail. “If I had been attacked by a bear, which is the fear of many people, a howling chainsaw would be a mighty welcome, and probably effective, partner, but it’s more of a hindrance than a help with a wasp stinging my eye,” I thought, and went back to my brush clearing.
    Later, relaxing at the bar, after checking the security camera I had passed on the sprint to the cabin, that showed nothing but the trailing gasp of my butt in high gear dashing fast and disappearing from that 10 second video clip, I wondered what I would choose if asked my most memorable childhood moment. I don’t know why I wondered that.
    I think the magic moment may have been the serene December night when I was 12 years old, and my older 13-year-old beautiful girlfriend hugged me and kissed, a long, warm, tight, glowing lip message, as clouds of snowflakes, big as stars and gentle as duckling down settled silently over us.