When we lived with my grandfather, he always had a garden in the back yard. He grew a variety of things, cabbages, onions, lettuce, tomatoes and elephant ears. Why he grew elephant ears I have no idea, but he liked them. They were big and green and useless.
We were recruited to help rake, hoe and water this garden. I don’t know if we really were any help at all, but it was required of us. As typical kids we felt it was unfair to require this as we got very little out of it. But Mom and Dad made sure we did our bit.
We did learn another bit of fun as a result of his garden. In the summer it attracted June bugs by the jillions. Grandpa used powders and stuff to try and eradicate them. We kids learned that they were really fun to hit with a baseball bat. We developed our own games and rules regarding the demolition of these flying beasts. We would spend hours out there amusing ourselves.
As we grew up this little bit of fun went away. However, i think it helped all these of us to be fairly good at hitting a softball, a sport I played through grade school, high school, the Marines, and in a church league until I got married.
