Re-runs....

... Gary Cooper was on the tube a few days ago.. some ancient interview where he was talking about his performance in "High Noon"... he was blethering on about the Strength of the Individual, The Defeat of Communism, and how hot Grace Kelley was... even though she did deserve a spanking by the time the movie was over...

... anyway, as I was watching him hem and haw while the interviewer stroked his ego, I remembered the time that my Father attacked a nest of bumblebees with only a long-sleeved shirt and a ping pong paddle... one of the bravest acts I have ever witnessed...

... I remember it like it was yesterday... he had this old antique cabinet that sat against one side of the main room of the barn... it was chocked full of old bottles, bits of stripped copper and brass... and bags of nuts and bolts... well, someone (probably me) had haphazardly dropped a half-bale of hay in front of it a few months before and no one had bothered to move it... well, a family of bumblebees found it and nested there....

... now the normal way of getting rid of bees around our home was the tried and true method of dousing the nest with a flammable liquid and then setting it alight.. sure, not the safest way to murder bees, but it was Tennessee... we were happy to take what little entertainment we could find... and nothing says fun like watching flaming bumblebees or wasps whirl like Zeros over Midway... besides, it was better than watching re-runs of Hee Haw...

... well, as you can imagine, we couldn't exactly go tossing a can of gasoline into the barn and setting it alight... so another method was decided upon... hand to hand combat... why he didn't just go into town and buy a can of Raid, I'll never know... maybe he thought it an opportunity for an Adventure... a Man against Beast thing... who knows... all I do remember is him putting on a big hat, gloves, and buttoning up a long-sleeved denim shirt... a form of armor, I guess... and kicking that bale of bumblebees... and what happened next was a truly awe-inspiring sight... he standing there while one bee at a time crawled forth and attacked him... it was like the ending sequence in Jeremiah Johnson, you know, where the Indians would only send one brave at a time to hunt down and do battle with Jeremiah... well, those bees did the same thing...

... he was nimble, my Dad... I'll give him that... and I'll never forget the almighty *thwack!* that reverberated off the tin roof when he finally tagged one of those bees with that ping pong paddle... he'd take a short breather after his victory and within seconds, another fat bumblebee would appear....

... the whole thing probably took a good hour and a half... he was worn out by the end of it... but unscathed, too... nary a sting... just a big pile of dead bees next to the wall where he'd knocked them... it was pretty impressive, when you think about it.. I mean, he killed a whole nest of bees one at a time in hand to hand combat...

... anyway, I know it really doesn't pertain to much, my little story... except that I wanted to say that Gary Cooper may have been a good actor.. and High Noon may be a classic... but I'll be willing to bet that he never battled a nest of bumblebees before...

.. everything is relative, people... everything... and in my mind, Gary Cooper was a wuss....

... guestposted by Eric of SWG...