  |
|
Years ago
I had a house built a distance of 60 miles southwest of Washington DC.
The builder promised a speedy construction as always he lied and
the construction took three extra months. The house was set on the
back of a three and a half acre lot of oak forest. The driveway was
eight hundred feet long. It was a beautiful spot. Since the
date for the house completion was what we thought, gospel, we sold our
other house to coincide with the completion. When the new house was not
finished on time, we had to move somewhere anyway. A friend loaned
us a camping trailer with a big striped awning on one side that didn't
have any running water, sewage, electricity or heat. We thought we
could rough it for a few weeks. It turned out that we lived in it
for three months. I had to dig slit trenches so we could go to the
toilet. I had a wooden lawn chair, so I took the cushion and springs
out of it and used it as a toilet seat. Sitting on it in a snowstorm
proved teeth chattering cold. We had the Rappahannock River just
behind the house one hundred and fifty feet straight down a cliff.
The awning came in handy in rain storms. It proved to be the only
means of showering that we had without trekking out to relatives.
We just let the awning droop on one side so that the rain would sort of
collect in a low spot on one side and come down hard on the corner so that
we had pretty good water pressure. This was only good for September
and October because of the onset of fall. When our son Eric needed
to study for school, we used a gas lantern until we ran out of fuel and
then had to switch over to a flickering array of candles. After 17
years Eric has very strong memories of that time in his life.
For drinking water we had to go to a neighbor about one mile down the road
and fill several plastic gallon milk jugs to keep us going daily.
When I needed to take a bath I climbed down the cliff and into the Rappahannock
River with a bar of soap. In the latter part of September the water
was pleasantly warm, 78F/32C. The river originates in the mountains
about forty miles to the west. Round about November I went down to
take a bath. I stepped into the waste deep water, realizing something
was wrong when I couldn't feel my legs or anything else that was submerged
in the water because of the sudden water temperature drop down to a frigid
41F/5C. That was the last straw, we had to put pressure on the contractor
to finish the house. So we gave in on some of the things that were
not what we contracted for and finally moved in and out of our impoverished
living conditions.
c1997
Harry H. Leichter
The wild
life in around the house was some of our making and mostly of g-d's making.
We had two cats, originally one dog and later a second that had originated
as a stray. The cats were given to us by a neighbor. Eric named
the gray cat after his Hebrew school teacher, Stanley. Our orange
one Ruth Anne named Felix. The original dog was Prize, because Eric
when he was little couldn't pronounce the word surprise and thought that
Prize was the dog's name, so we just went on to call her that.
Eric learned of
a Children's Theater in Fredericksburg from school. He tried out
for it and got into the play Heidi. Somehow they got a live nubian
goat to play the goat part. After the play was over, they asked who
wanted the goat and of course we said we could take her since we lived
out in the country. Later on we let some of the farmers and neighbors
borrow her since she was good about eating briars, poison ivy, vines and
various other pesky plant life. She later hung herself while trying
to climb up a wire fence wearing a collar with a rope attached to it.
We missed her so much that we bought another goat, boy was that a mistake.
This was a billy goat that had not been fixed. We called him Houdini
since he could escape from anything. The other problem was that he
could make an onion cry because of the odor he produced to attract nanny
goats. He was great while he lasted to keep down the vegetation.
We would tie him to spike driven down low in the ground so that he wouldn't
wind the rope around it. He would eat a circle around it as far has
his rope would reach, sort of like a crop circle. His odor increased
dramatically to the point that the neighbors directly behind us, on the
other side of the river about a mile away were seen to be holding cloth
over their faces every time they would go outside.
c1997
Harry H. Leichter
One of
Eric's school bus drivers had seven nanny goats and wanted a stud to increase
her herd. So we told her she could have him for $35. She drove
up a few days later in a half ton Ford pickup truck with her twelve-year-old
son. When he got out of the truck, he was holding plastic bicycle
handlebar grips. You know the ones that you put your hands on to
steer the bike. I asked him what he intended to do with them and
he told me that they were needed to put on the ends of the goat's horns
so not to injure his mother or him. To my utter astonishment, instead
of putting the goat in the bed of the pickup truck they went to put the
goat in the front seat with them. It seemed that the odor didn't
bother the bus driver because her taste buds didn't work anyway and she
couldn't smell anything. The explained that they could better control
the goat in the front seat than putting him in the bed of the truck.
I mumble something like "sure that sounds right" but thinking they are
crazier than hell. I kept track of the goat for about six months.
At first her children went out to feed Houdini but soon the odor got about
one hundred-times worse because of the presence of the seven nanny goats.
The bus driver became the only person in a forty-mile radius that could
stomach the odor of that goat and even I stopped talking with her because
of the odor of him on her clothes.
c1997
Harry H. Leichter
Getting
back to the second dog, a friend had found a stray that turned out to be
a purebred Bearded Collie. It looked like a small English Sheepdog.
The breed is very rare in this country and is of enormous intelligence.
One of its traits is that it stays playful as a puppy all of its life.
Ruth Anne fell in love with the dog, called her Fluffy. She brought
so much joy to the family but one day to our horror, Fluffy began running
madly in circles and died of a heart attack under the dining room table.
About a year later a smaller fluffy white dog, we called her Taffy, because
it her original name, drifted into our garage and was feeding itself on
our garbage. We found out later that she was a real-honest-to-goodness
Cockerpoo. We adopted her after tracking down her owners and finding out
that they had dumped her in front of our driveway after their children
had abused her for the first two years of her young life.
Now for
the real wild life. We had lots of birds in the woods behind our
house. Most of them didn't have a wingspan smaller than six feet.
They were Bald Eagles, Red Tailed Hawks, Paraquin Falcons, Northern Harriers,
Black Vultures, Turkey Vultures, Turkeys, Cooper Hawks and an occasional
Osprey. The Vultures built nests in the cliffs below the house. The
rest built nests in the towering four hundred years old Oak trees over
looking the cliff behind the house. There were herds of Deer, an
occasional Black Bear, Mountain Lion, Possums, Red Fox, Otter and Raccoons.
Of course, seeing we live in Virginia and not on an island such as Ireland
or New Zealand we also have what I call critters because my wife Ruth Anne
is terrified of even the word "Snake."
c1997
Harry H. Leichter
After we
had lived in the house for a year, I decided that we needed a better way
to get from the top of the cliff "our backyard" to the bottom of the cliff
"the river." Also taking into account, a friend's handicapped child, I
decided to build a trail down to the river traversing the cliff with not
more than a five-degree slope at any giving place. The path was five
to six feet wide and took two years to build. Tools that I used were
a wheelbarrow, various chisels to cut the path into the cliff, chain saw,
pick and shovel. I did most of my digging and cutting in the warmer
weather. At times I had to use only a hammer and chisel to cut into
the rock out cropping. In the summer I would work no longer than
twenty minutes a day because of the tremendous physical effort. One day
when I was using the chain saw to cut a dead tree down to use as one of
the borders of the trail. After I took down the tree, I noticed that
the tree was being consumed by what looked like a million termites.
The next thing I knew a copperhead "snake" was coming toward my feet and
was heading right between my legs. Normally I would not kill one
of these critters. They have a place in g-d's great work as we humans
do but I couldn't afford to be bitten either. So since the chain saw was
still running I carved it up with the saw, so that Ruth Anne wouldn't see
it. I dumped the lifeless body into the hollowed out tree stump.
A little while later Ruth Anne and Stanley the gray cat came down to see
how I was doing. I didn't want to frighten Ruth Anne so I didn't
mention the incident. Stanley on the other hand could smell the critter
and followed the odor to the tree stump. I really didn't want him
to pull the critter back out. As Stanley climbed precariously down
into the stump with only his back and tail sticking up out of the stump,
I grabbed his tail. He hair stood straight up and when he shot straight
up out of the stump his eyes were as big as saucers. He took off
running for the house and it took a while for him to venture out again.
c1997
Harry H. Leichter
Stanley
was normally a fearless cat, especially if he took the point, meaning out
front and I followed close behind for protection from the larger animals
of the forest. On one such safari into the forest behind the house,
Stanley took the point as usual with me close behind. Our objective
for the day was to explore the upper reaches of the cliff behind the house.
We decided to take a small, leaf choked, gully to reach the top most part
of the cliff. From there we climbed down to some small caves about
six feet below the top of the cliff. These caves were only eighteen
inches high and eight inches wide, just big enough for a small animal like
a fox to squeeze into. The caves were being used for a quite an unexpected
purpose. It seems that Vultures lay their eggs on a few leaves, on
a ledge, in front of small caves like these. They don't even build
a nest. Stanley and I discovered one of their nests if you could
call it that. We watched from afar to see what the mother Vulture
was doing and then we climbed down to the two Vulture chicks to see how
they would defend themselves. The mother just watched from a nearby
perch. It seems that Vultures are not capable of attacking anything
that is alive. As we approach the so-called nest or nesting spot,
the fuzzy white puffed chicks retreated into the cave. When Stanley
got to the mouth of the cave, because of the fear, his hair started to
stick straight up. He kept looking over his shoulder for me to protect
him. The closer Stanley got to the cave entrance the more the threatened
chicks made a particular noise that was amplified by the cave into a deep
hissing sound that scared anyone or anything that could hear this fierce
sound. The amplified sound gave the perception that what was unseen
in the cave was a very large menacing animal rather than two, ten inches
high chicks.
Below the cliff, grew an extensive expanse of native American fruit trees called the Paw Paw. This fruit could be harvested the first week of October every year. The local people had never tasted this fruit since colonial days in the eighteenth century. The fruit was called the false banana or the Custard Apple in those days. They are high in protein and only grow along river banks under an Oak forest. The range of growth for the Paw Paw is from the Mississippi River east to the Atlantic and north to Canada and south to the Gulf of Mexico. The fruit tastes like a cross between a banana and a pear. You can use a spoon to dip out the flesh of the fruit. The fruit is about three to four inches in length, two inches in width, pale green like an unripe apple and has about eight, half-inch dark brown seeds nestled into the inner bright yellow flesh. A patch of three trees yielding about one hundred twenty five pounds of fruit. Because of the custom of eating a new fruit each year on succot a jewish harvest holiday, I harvested from my grove of Paw Paw trees, 60 pounds of its fruit and brought them to my synagogue. The congregants partook in the new fruit and were amazed how good Paw Paw's tasted.
c1997
Harry H. Leichter