frog - leggin, johnny turner and riding bikes down chattanooga hills

"You know, we're a rare scene in America tonight." Daddy had been telling us stories of "frog legging" and how people would go out with lights at night at gather huge frogs and take them home to fry them and eat the legs. He told us stories from Chattanooga and how he and Johnny Turner would go out in the woods at the base of a mountain and spend hours traipsing around and how that one day they found a set of prisoner's clothes and jetted out of those woods. He told how he and Johnny would go up on a hill beneath the overpass and ride their bicycles down the road - and boy did they fly! Or how he and the boys would lie down on their skateboards and make a chain, latching on to the boy's head in front of them with their feet and rolling down the hill like that. "What if a car would come?" Merry asked, but Daddy just laughed and pulled up his sleeves saying, "Well, honey, how else do you think I got all these scars?" I had been scribbling in my account book of life and its adventures and I looked up to see what had prodded Daddy to say the bit he did about our being a rare scene. It seemed like an abrupt thing to say, so I took a look for myself. At one end of the room, there burned a fire - a nice big one that Daddy built (he builds the best fires). At his feet sat Merry lost in thought and Chattanooga and Mama sat on the other couch reading and interjecting bits from time to time. "You could get pickles at the park? - Oh we paid a dime for ours, but you say you got yours for a nickle? Well, the ones in Paris WERE awfully large. They were the biggest pickles in town." Moriah would come in from time to time and plop on the seat beside me and begin telling a dream, or an idea for a story she had and there was a great deal of laughter and of "pshawwing" while chuckling over something ridiculous and it was so very cold outside and so very bright and laughy and glowy inside that I began to see why Daddy had said what he did. He went on to say "Lots folks in America are stuck in front of a television and will be for a few hours yet." I'm glad. Glad I have a family. Glad I have a Daddy who builds fires for us and tells us stories and makes frog noises and gets red when he laughs. Glad he takes note of these mundane but rare scenes in our lives.