Toad Buddies--More than Meets the Eye

           

While my sixth grade classmates loved listening to our teacher read Wind in the Willows, I found it silly. Toads talking and acting like people, no way. This attitude toward anthropomorphic creatures was a childhood peeve. I wanted critters au natural.

To this day, I find stories about talking animals silly. Despite my curmudgeonly attitude toward this popular genre, I like toads. Fortunately, summer provides daily opportunities to observe toads residing in patio planters and garden beds.

Looking at a toad, you wouldn’t think it overly bright, but one summer, two caught my attention because they were so clever and entertaining.

Before the solstice officially arrived, these fellows demonstrated their smarts. Our section of prairie made growing anything a challenge. Instead of investing in a big flowerbed, I decided a few well-chosen pots with bright blooms would make it seem summery without demanding water necessary to grow a lush flower garden. These neighboring green gents quickly determined which pots stayed cool and damp longest and moved in. Initially, they lived separately, one in my mixed bloom bucket and the other in a geranium pot. 

As May days lengthened and warmed, the geranium toad must’ve investigated the mixed bloom pot because next thing I knew, two amphibians rose, gasping for air, out of the same toad hole when I watered. They dug their cavern deep enough one could rest on the other’s head while leaving the top toad covered to his bulging eyeballs in potting soil.

For a while, they found their bliss in the mixed bloom pot, but as summer grew hotter and drier, both toads abandoned it for my herb garden. That soil must’ve stayed cooler, maybe due to the insulating brick border. Watering time became an adventure. I never knew where I’d find my garden buddies.

In addition to requiring cool, damp living conditions, these guys exhibited hearty appetites. As a result, their bodies grew wider and longer than my palm--a result of their canny hunting skills. 

While other toads in our yard gathered nightly under the yard light, these discovered the much closer patio light drew insects equally well and didn’t burn nearly as many calories making the journey. Patiently, they waited until evening temperatures dipped before emerging one green amphibian limb at a time from moist earth. Then they let the beam from the porch work its magic. 

One night, I interrupted their fashionably late supper to see why they were so plump. Both warty lads had rooted themselves directly under yellow lamp rays, gobbling beetle after beetle as freshly toasted insects sizzled and plopped to the patio. While I watched, these big boys didn’t move more than a couple of inches as they went through the equivalent of a twelve-course meal. I wish I'd stayed long enough to see them lug distended, white bellies back into the flower pot  where I found them the next morning.

As much fun as I had watching those toads, I may give Wind in the Willows another chance. Obviously, there’s more to that story than I realized in sixth grade.

The Ol’ Swimming Hole

When the calendar flips to June, small town youngsters know it’s time to spend days at the local pool. Decades ago, this wasn’t a water park with a variety of fountains, burblers, and lazy rivers. It was a shallow baby pool and the BIG pool where water depth varied from three to twelve feet. It meant gutters to cling to when you first learned to swim in the deep end. It meant belly busters that made those tanning on the hot, cement deck groan in unison with divers who didn’t get quite into position to slice painlessly into the water. Talk to any adult who lived near a pool in western Kansas and watch their eyes light at the memories. This was the place to be whether you were three or sixteen.

To this day, I still see that cinder block bathhouse and smell bleach-scented locker rooms where we showered before entering Meade’s summer hot spot, the public pool. Lifeguards collected fees at a sun-warmed metal counter. From that point, males turned left and gals right into dressing rooms. Then everyone hotfooted across a sizzling cement deck where moms in sunhats watched youngsters, teens mooned over one another, and school age kids dare one another to jump first into frigid water. Accompanying shrieks of glee echo in my mind.

As kids, the blind hollering game Marco Polo was our chosen activity if we weren’t challenging one another to swim across and back without surfacing for air. The person designated IT, closed his or her eyes and maneuvered about using sound to locate and tag other players. A few minutes as the pursuer made you wish you had dolphin-like sonar.

Tiring of the chase, we tested our lungs. I still feel the sensation of mine screaming for me to surface. I ignored it and kicked even harder to reach the concrete ledge. Once there, gasping survivors clung to the rough concrete lip and refilled aching air sacs.

Accomplished underwater swimmers who’d crossed the pool and returned without taking a breath next challenged one another to climb the high board ladder and dive into the deep end. More than one youngster discovered the ascent wasn’t as scary as the board’s end, where they gazed into crystal blue water 10 feet below. Those who steeled themselves to face that plummet hoped they entered hands first. A minor shift meant excruciating pain. You knew you were okay when you saw smiling lifeguards still perched on their stands. Lucky divers swiftly surfaced, sputtering in front of laughing friends.

While the pool challenged adventuresome young swimmers and teen boys, it provided a stage for maturing females to display their charms. They sucked in stomachs and applied baby oil mixed with iodine over skin to enhance tans. Those with perfectly teased doos made sure their hair didn’t muss despite others’ efforts to splash them. Despite wishing they could join taunting males grabbing knees to create massive cannonball waves, they posed prettily on beach towels, cheering on favorite performers.

During summer, the pool was the town social magnet. Scents of chlorine and suntan lotion drew even the faint-hearted. Memories and legends waited to be made. Drive by your local watering hole and note that some things never change.

Visiting Grandma’s Meant a Dalton Gang Hideout Adventure

Most families keep their black sheep a deep, dark secret. Following this unwritten code in the late 1880s and early 90s, Eva Whipple, sister of the notorious Daltons,  didn’t announce to fellow residents of Meade, Kansas that her brothers robbed banks for a living. However, a hidden tunnel between her house and nearby barn supports the theory her outlaw relations secretly visited her. Apparently, citizens of this little Southwest Kansas town on Highway 54 didn’t know about the connection with these infamous characters until the Whipples moved and the home’s new occupant discovered a hand dug, three-foot diameter secret passage, just big enough for grown men to crawl through. It conveniently linked  house and barn.

During the Works Progress Administration, an administrative entrepreneur-at-heart arranged to stabilize and expand this shaft, so paying tourists could walk where the Dalton Gang once crawled. It worked. My cousins, brother, I, and every other kid visiting Meade finagled a dime,  quarter, or dollar (depending on the decade) in order to tour the small Victorian era home with gingerbread trim, heavy drapes, and carved furniture. The best part came when visitors trailed their fingers over damp, dimly lighted stone walls through the improved tunnel to the old barn. Renovators had turned the floor above the ancient horse stalls into a museum showcasing pioneer era Meade. Sounds of awe and delight announced that kids had discovered the stuffed two-headed, newborn calf display.

 Even today, my relatives and I fondly recall good times on the south side of town. It was close enough to Grandma’s we could walk. She  directed us to behave ourselves or she’d hear about it. I’d visited often enough  to know this rural community kept no secrets after revealing the Dalton’s hidden passage. Keeping my hands to myself, I walked on the sidewalk where possible and didn’t smart mouth anyone along the way. I paid my fee and responded politely to a local, retired woman dressed in a long pioneer dress to set the mood.

Recently, I reviewed Meade, Kansas on Trip Advisor. Not surprisingly, Highway 54 travelers still visit The Dalton Gang Hideout. Most report excellent or very good ratings. It’s wonderful to know adults and children still find their way to that little house with a big yard. It’s fussy furnishings counterbalance that trip into the tunnel where every sense goes on alert.

Nostrils still quiver at earthy scents as shoulders brush rough, stone walls. Tall people must duck to complete their journey. Naturally, imaginations picture outlaws with bandanna covered faces and whinnying horses waiting to speed their escape at the end of the passage . 

If the Dalton brothers actually used this tunnel when it was merely three feet high and carved dirt, I suspect they worried more about a cave in than getting caught visiting their sis. Nowadays, a ticket to see that two headed calf lightens wallets considerably more than it did when I was a youngster. Today’s visitors shell out a whopping 5 bucks to navigate the tunnel and examine that oddly formed calf. I bet the Dalton boys wish they’d raked in that kind of loot.