ME AND JESSE
PORTALS TO ADVENTURE
by
Larry L. Sydow
ME AND JESSE—PORTALS TO ADVENTURE
Copyright © 2022 Larry L.
Sydow
All rights reserved. No
part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic,
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording taping or by any information
storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in
the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of
fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue
in this book are either the products of the author’s imagination or used
fictitiously.
Illustrations were created
by Pat Hittle and used with the artist’s permission.
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to Daniel Sydow, Jesse Lee,
and all kids everywhere with imagination and a driving desire to explore,
investigate, and discover the mysteries of their world.
ME AND JESSE—PORTALS TO ADVENTURE
Foreward by Larry (Dad)
Movies were few and far between. Our greatest mysteries, wars,
fights-to-the-death, Indian raids, flights from head-hunters, and wild game
hunts all took place on our 40-acre jungle, our corn-crib castle, our 10-mile-high
mountain of corncobs, our chicken-coop roof-top fort, or our raging shark and
barracuda infested creek. The adventures
never ended and never became boring.
What follows is a compilation of stories based on
a combination of my experiences and bits and pieces of accounts told by my son,
Danny (Dan today), and his best friend, Jesse.
Collecting their stories has become a challenge. I can compare this collection with making a
cake from scratch. The recipe started
with two mugs of their memories when they were ten-year-olds, a few cups of my
childhood exploits, a tablespoon of yeasty truth, and a whopping tumbler full
of fantasy. Bake that cake for thirty or
forty years in the oven of imagination, and the following narratives emerge.
When the boys were ten, we lived in the small town
of Soldier, Iowa, a “megalopolis” of about 250 people. I was the pastor of the only church in
town—Soldier Lutheran Church. Jesse Lee
lived across the street from us. The
ten-year-old neighbors were so much alike, it would have been easy to think of
them as twins, not especially in looks, but in personalities. Both were exceptionally smart—some said, “too
shrewd for their own good.” They were best friends—most of the time. Jesse was a few weeks older than Danny, but
they were like two peas in a pod. If one
got in trouble, it was an excellent bet they were both in it together.
Sports-wise, the big difference was that Danny cheered for the Michigan
Wolverines, while Jesse cheered for the Green Bay Packers. Go, figure!
Despite their tendency to get into trouble
occasionally, they were good kids. A
phrase heard often was “Me and Jesse” or “Me and Danny.” I will not pretend I remember how ten-year-olds
talk, except the phrases I repeatedly overheard: “Me and Jesse” or “Me and
Danny.”
Dan and Jesse gave me permission to use their
names. The names of other youths and
townspeople are fictitious. The tales
that follow begin with a true story.
Each chapter has some facts and some outrageous fiction. See if you can guess where fact turns to
fantasy.
1–Dad’s Story—The Cave
MY family thought I was the least likely family member
to buy the farm or even a portion of it.
The “home place,” as it was known, was seven miles from Stanton, a small
rural village of 1300—plus or minus a few.
I admit I hated farming in my teen years and could hardly wait to leave
to go to the city. After college, I
married Sue, the love of my life, a sociology major from Ohio. With her encouragement, I continued from
college to seminary and earned my Master of Divinity degree. Dan was born two years after his
brother. It was “the good life.”
Before Dan was born, my parents moved to
town. None of my three brothers or two
sisters were interested in farming the land.
Thankfully, someone was interested in buying the house, and they moved
it to the other side of the village. The
rest of the buildings quickly deteriorated.
Dan’s grandmother and grandfather rented out the farm. A neighbor finally leased the farmable land,
but the other buildings, with no one watching after them, were vandalized and
fell apart from weather, age, and neglect.
When my parents announced they were willing to
sell forty acres of the farm where the buildings had been, I was the first and
only one to make an offer, which they happily accepted. Keeping the land in the family was important,
after all.
By then, the outbuildings,
except for a sad-looking hog barn, the chicken coop's foundation, and the storm
cave entrance, had mostly collapsed from lack of attention and several strong
thunderstorms. (We always referred to
the storm cellar as “the cave.”) The
old creek still meandered through the bottomland and continued to trickle along
from constantly flowing springs. Some
trees I had climbed and played in as a kid had died, leaving tree-skeletons
standing like sentinels. However, many living trees still stood, outlining the
places where the former buildings had been.
It may have been a foolish purchase to some, but to me, it was a part of
my story.
I vaguely remembered moving there when I was
four. The old house seemed enormous,
with lots of rooms, all heated in the cold Nebraska winters by a single oil
burner in the kitchen. The upstairs only
received heat when my parents propped open the door to the stairs. There were registers on the upstairs floor
that connected with the downstairs ceiling.
They only allowed a little heat to rise and the sound of the radio to
filter up to children who were supposed to be sleeping. Through the registers, we caught portions of
“Fibber McGee and Molly,” “Amos and Andy,” or “The Lone Ranger rides again!”
My parents bought the farmhouse with 150 acres of
decent farmland when they were married. It was a couple of miles from the
homeplace where my grandparents had lived.
Mom and Dad planted fruit trees by the dozens before they moved there,
creating a forest of trees around the house's south, west, and north sides.
Many of the fantastic varieties of mulberries–from the small red and purple
ones to the very large, very sweet, thumb-sized berries—were still producing
when my kids were little.
Retreats to the now-deserted farm were my “unwind
time.” Coming out for a few days always
jogged my memories of my “growing up periods.”
I recognized the skeleton of a dead tree south of where the house had
been as the last remnant of the apple tree I climbed to fetch golden delicious
apples in late summer. Cherry and wild
plum trees, raspberry and gooseberry bushes provided more sweet treats at other
times. We picked the tart chokecherries
along the fence line by the bushels for making jelly while carefully avoiding
stinging nettles and poison ivy. My idyllic
memories made it seem like we had fresh fruit from the middle of the hot, muggy
summers until harvest in September, before the first frost, each ripening in
its own season.
What captured my imagination was the forest of
elm, oak, and maple trees south of the house.
My parents hadn’t planted them.
Nature did. They filled the gully
with a canopy of green shade, which, as a child, seemed so big and deep it
practically went down to the center of the earth.
This gulley was the location of many wars with
renegade Indians, bank robbers, cut-throat murderers, and child-stealing gypsies,
all of which required fights of bloody combat, leaving me mortally wounded more
times than I could count. One afternoon
alone, I died horrible deaths at least five times. But, on the other hand, I
studied to fight with sabers and swords and learned to shoot rifles, shotguns,
bazookas, and missile launchers. I also
had a handy “Buck Rogers Ray Gun” I bought by saving my allowance. It came in handy for fighting some vicious killers
and an occasional alien visiting from Mars.
These woods were host to many venomous serpents,
ferocious lions, tigers, panthers, and wolves. Each creature lurked behind
bushes and fallen trees, waiting to attack.
They required constant vigilance and split-second responses. The raging river (almost always dry as a bone
unless it was raining) hosted child-eating barracuda, alligators, boa
constrictors, and feisty swordfish.
I could follow that canyon of adventure down
through the barbed-wire barricade. It passed through a barren,
rattlesnake-infested desert. If you
survived the desert, you still had to pass through “no-man's-land.” It was a
(cow patty) minefield littered with explosives.
That led to a mysterious meandering river and additional wild jungles
and tribes of headhunters.
It was here where I remember being attacked by
herds of buffalo, being charged by several bull elephants, and threatened with
deadly violence by an enormous giant beast whose fangs were as large and sharp
as the teeth of a hay sweep.
There were other mysteries about this place that
drew me back, even as an adult. They were mysteries I never reconciled as a
kid. I still believe they were not
entirely imaginary. They were things I
hadn’t dreamed up for fun.
My father built the cave
(storm cave) that was scary for me as a child. It was one of those great mysteries of my
childhood. Even as a grownup, the cave
was deeper than any human-made cave I ever explored. It still gave me a certain strange feeling
of…. I can’t put my finger on that
feeling. Is it dread, or fear, or what?
The mystery to me, as a child, was what was
lurking in the deep, dark depths of that cave.
I knew—I didn’t know how—but I knew there were things in
that darkness that no five or six-year-old kid ever wanted to encounter–alone!
Despite assurances to the contrary, my imagination
convinced me. Eyes watched me when I
went down there to get potatoes or jars of canned food for my mom. I could never remember why I checked it
out. To this day, it gives me chills
remembering.
On one of my trips to the cave, when I was six,
the afternoon sun spilled down into the cave and lit it all the way to the back
wall. I carried a broom with me,
planning to use it as a weapon if anything attacked. Fortunately, nothing did, so I used the broom
to sweep the dusty dirt floor, backing my way to the steps and out. That afternoon, I played nearby and watched
the cave door to make certain no one else entered. Unfortunately, I had to go
into the house for supper, but that was OK.
There were no other people who could go down those steps and walk on the
soft dusty floor during that time.
I was not about to enter the abyss alone, even
with a flashlight. Whatever was down
there never attacked when there was more than one person. Not that anything had ever grabbed anyone I
knew of and dragged them into some secret passage, but I was not taking any
chances.
After supper, I quietly negotiated with my
sister. It was expensive! In the end, I had to bribe her with a piece
of left-over Christmas candy, one of my GI Joe soldiers with a broken gun, and
my secret Flash Gordon code ring, just to get her to go with me. Cautiously, as the sun was setting, I led the
way down what seemed like a mile of steep, concrete steps, flashlight in hand,
like a club I could use as a last resort.
What I found sent cold chills down my spine and
tremors of fear through my entire body, almost paralyzing me. As I suspected, odd footprints on the dusty
floor moved away from the cave’s far wall, turned around, and went back. The
large, unusual prints disappeared at the base of the wall as if whoever…
whatever… had walked right through the solid brick wall! One footprint was only the heel of a shoe.
Part of me wanted to push on the bricks to see if
there was a secret door, but the six-year-old part of me lost his nerve. As fast as I could move, I pulled my sister
up the steps and out the door to safety, slamming and turning the latch on the
door behind us.
I hadn’t told my parents or sister about my
experiment. I left my sister thinking I
was just playing another stupid imaginary game.
Vowing to never be in that cave by myself ever, it took me a long time
to stop shaking. I even avoided playing
close to the cave for several days.
Another mystery from that night that still puzzles
me to this day had to do with time. My
sister and I had been in the cave, what seemed to me at the time to be only a
few seconds. When we came out, the sun
had fully set! It was pitch black, and
Dad was yelling for my sister and me at the back steps. “Did you two get lost? It’s been an hour since you went outside with
the flashlight. What took so long?”
Neither my sister nor I ever knew the answers to
those questions. It was several weeks
later when I confided in my dad, who just shook his head and smiled in
disbelief, saying, “Let’s check it out.”
He took me down into the cave. It
had been long enough that the strange footprints were mixed with lots of
others. We both pushed on the back wall,
discovering that every brick was solidly mortared in place.
“See,” my father said, “there is nothing there. So,
those footprints must have just been your imagination.”
As I surveyed the remnants of the farm that had
played such an important role in helping me grow up, many other mysterious
places drew me back. The deep,
mysterious hole near the barn and the “off-limits” part of the creek were
barely visible in the moonlight. Each
drew me like a magnet to investigate, but at the same time, they repelled
me. But, as an adult, like invisible
fingers, they beckoned me. I admit I had
a wild imagination that created many of my adventures.
However, the disappearing “junk” thrown into the
old silage pit made me wonder if there was a hidden chamber underneath. It was one of only a few places on the farm
where my parents forbade me to play. The
silage pit was close to the cattle barn, almost midway between the cave and the
creek. It seemed to me, as a kid, to
swallow up anything tossed or dropped into it.
As one of those “off-limits” places, it was doubly enticing. When I was five, I remember bravely crawling
on my belly, peering into the pit. When
I was supposed to be taking a nap with the younger kids, a force that I can’t
describe to this day drew me to the pit.
That day, a movement deep within the pit startled
me. I withdrew to avoid being seen by…
it. It could have been a rat or a
raccoon, but the only glimpse I had of it made it appear almost, but not quite,
human? Part of me needed to scream and
run to the house. But the curious part
of me wanted to find out what it was.
Nothing would cause me to dare
to crawl down into the pit lest something might swallow me. I waited and watched.
I never got the chance. “Larry!” I heard my mother call. It was that tone of voice I learned never to
ignore. The consequences would prove
painful. I’d have to come back another
time, even though, or especially
since it was one of the three “forbidden” zones.
Another “forbidden zone” was a portion of the
creek that was said to have quicksand.
My parents warned me to avoid it, no matter what! Dad said, “Hidden beasts wait beneath the
surface to drag you down. Mom almost
died when the bull chased her into that trap.
The only thing that saved her was the fallen tree she used to drag
herself free.”
The third “forbidden zone” was a gully on the
hill’s far side from the house. Of
course, since my parents had forbidden me to go there, it attracted me like a
magnet when my younger siblings were napping.
Like the silage pit, some mysteries drew me to investigate. This invisible “something” often had me crawl
on my stomach to the top edge, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever or whoever
was hiding there.
Then there was the old barn where my dad milked
our cows. It was not a “forbidden zone,”
but when I played by myself with the calves kept there, I heard strange
footsteps walking in the loft overhead.
I never stayed around to find out who or what it was. I raced to the safety of the house
instead. In my mind, all the “forbidden
zones” and the barn were somehow connected.
As an adult, I can’t explain away the voices of
invisible people I heard walking by the cabin in the middle of the night. A friend had joined me for a camp-out at the
cabin. About midnight, we were both
awakened by voices. It sounded like teenagers out for a stroll—in the middle of
nowhere. When we got up to investigate,
there was nothing there. The crickets,
bullfrogs, and coyotes were silent. We
watched in the bright moonlight as the voices faded into silence. As if by some invisible signal, the crickets,
bullfrogs, and coyotes began to sing again.
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