Youthful Adventure

“We need a party”, Ashaline, my 10 year old sister said. We called her Ash. Anita my 8 year old sister was nicknamed Nita. Me, I’m Wayne. I’m 6. It was a hot day and we needed an adventure.

Nita and I dragged a couple of wooden peach crates from under the front porch. We placed them in the shade of the maple tree of our front yard. Becoming excited about having a party we ran to the kitchen to gather table settings and three chairs. Ash placed an oilcloth over the peach crates. The tablecloth belonged to our grandmother. It was unique. The pattern had lots of square designs. Each square design had a print of a red heart with a black arrow going through it.

Nita set the make-shift table with plates, silverware and some glasses. I struggled with the big chairs but managed to get them setting steady around the table. The ground wasn’t as level as a floor. I tested each one by sitting on them to make sure they wouldn’t tip over.

Alice, our white fox terrier, jumped onto the chair that was for me. Nita and Ash thought it was great to have Alice join our party, I wasn’t sure. I had to go to the kitchen to get another chair and Alice’s food bowl. Ash had moved my table setting and she placed Alice’s bowl in front of my old chair. Taking our places at the table we were ready for a party.

Ash explained we would have a make believe party and have pretend cakes and pretend ice cream. Nita remembered the barn down on the highway was where they pasteurized milk for Shenandoah’s Pride. They decided we should hike over to the barn and see if we could get ice cream. Down the lane we went to the dairy barn. I was really excited to be at my first party with grown ups. Alice asleep on her chair was left dreaming of whatever dogs dream about. We left her there.

The dairy barn was a one story building used for processing milk. Each day a tank truck would haul the milk to the ice cream plant. I didn’t know what pasteurized or dairy meant, but I understood ice cream.

We stood at the door looking in. We must have been a sight, three kids looking through the door as if to see a big bucket of ice cream. It was a little disappointing when I didn’t see any. I remembered seeing a man spraying a hose at the other end of the building. Nita was the first to see the waterfall of milk. Actually it was milk falling across cooling rods. Milk is heated and cooled quickly by running it over the refrigerated rods. Ash touched the milk that had collected at the bottom saying it was cold. Nita wondered if it tasted like ice cream and she stuck her tongue right into the cascading milk. Ash and I kept watching to see if it did taste like ice cream. If so we would stick our tongues in too. In seconds we realized Nita’s tongue was stuck. She couldn’t get loose. Her tongue was frozen to the cooling rods. Ash started jumping and screaming. I just stood there watching Nita as her eyes were getting bigger and bigger and her tongue started turning purple. I felt something wet on the back of my head. It scared me and I jumped to the side. I was surprised, it was the man with the hose, he yelled for us to get out of the way as he squirted water into Nita’s mouth. Her tongue came loose from the cascade and the guy started laughing and spraying us with the hose. Ash took Nita by the hand and the three of us flew out the door like a bunch of scared kittens. Much later the dairy barn was torn down, but none of us ever went back there again. We still like ice cream.

From the dairy barn we made our way across the field to our house. Nita had trouble talking at first because her tongue was swollen and numb. She kept talking and soon sounded ok. She rattled on about how scared she had been and Ash’s screaming and my staring didn’t help. She was really tough and didn’t even cry. I don’t remember ever seeing her cry. As we walked and talked it was less scary and became funnier.

On arriving at the house we had forgotten about our party. There was our table waiting for us, Alice jumped up from her nap and started eating from her bowl. We sat down and chose our favorite make believe cake. Mine was Grandma Cline’s banana cake it was a four layer yellow cake with quarter size slices of bananas between each layer and on the top layer. The icing was butter cream. I don’t remember what their cakes were. Ash counted out the candles on each of our cakes, then pretended to put them into each cake and light them. She had us blow out our candles and make a wish. My wish was to fly around the world. We had lots of fun celebrating our birthdays and talking about our adventure. It was a great party and the day I learned to sing. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU”