Sunday, October 23, 2011

Personal Journal of Leland Keith Stoker, Post 3


Rocking truck
One summer, while living at Springdale, Dad's sister, Aunt Jane, and her husband, Uncle Marvin Venable, came to visit us. Along about noon Dad had to go out to feed the cows. I walked out to the corral with him. As we were walking back we passed by a truck that was parked in the yard. We noticed that the truck was rocking back and forth, apparently by itself. Dad thought that Uncle Marvin was trying to play a trick on him by rocking the truck. No one was visible so Dad go down on his hands and kneed to look under the truck. He thought that he would be able to see the prankster feet on the other side that way. Still he could see no one. He crawled nearly half way under the truck. Still no results.
Perplexed, we walked on to the house. They were having a good laugh at our expense. They had watched it all through the window. Being inside the house where the dishes rattled and the furniture moved, they were aware of an earthquake in progress.

Chocolate”
One of the home remedies to take care of many ailments for growing children at that time was the use of laxatives. It was thought that use of them would help to clean out poison and infection from the system. Our family relied on one called E-Lax. It was a chocolate flavored candy type laxative. Seldom did we get any candy so it was a treat to be given Ex-Lax.
One spring day, while living in Springdale, Mom was out working outside. Jesse and I were in the house. We had a small pantry where groceries and other household items were kept. I knew that the Ex-Lax was kept on a high shelf in this pantry. I climbed up to where it could be reached and found a never opened package and about half of another one. Boy, did it look good.
Jesse was on the floor watching all the endeavors. He wanted some so I gave him a few little squares. But being in control and having succeeded in the hard part of the job, I gobbled down the lion's share of a package and a half of Ex-Lax. It really tasted good.
Mom came in about the time the last of the “candy” was consumed. She was really bent out of shape over what we had done. Of course now Jesse was a full fledged partner. I can't remember whether she was upset more over the disobedience or the loss of all the E-Lax. I am sure she was concerned over the quantity of product we had ingested. I think she thought we had taken equal amounts.
Well, it didn't take long to find out who had taken the most. Jesse had a mild case of the “runs”. But Keith, very shortly, showed how the division went. My stomach hurt and I was “loose as a goose”. Over the next couple of days I spent almost all my time sitting on the “pottie”. By the time it was over I think there was just a straight shot through.
Before this incident happened, I really liked chocolate. Afterwards, for many years, I couldn't stand to taste anything made of chocolate. About the time I graduated from high school chocolate again started to taste good. Now it is a favorite.

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