Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Did You Say Fence?

LV's memories continued.
Dad and Mom had to go somewhere and couldn't take my brother Vernon and me along. They made arrangements for us to stay with their friends Perry and Alma.

Perry and Alma loved children but didn't have any of their own and were always happy to babysit. It wasn't quite as fun for us though since they didn't have much for us to do or play with.

On this particular day we were following Alma and helping her the best we could with her work. After lunch she decided it was time to go gather eggs. Vernon and I both enjoyed gathering eggs and happily tagged along after her. It didn't take long for the basket to get filled with eggs as we checked all the nesting boxes. I was always sorry when the last egg had been found and we had to wait for a whole day before it was time to gather more. I looked around the chicken house and happened to see several eggs in the corner. It looked as if they had been there for quite a while already but I got them to add to the basket any way.

Alma looked at the eggs and decided they weren't fresh enough to take to the house. She gave them to Vernon and me and said, "Go throw them over the fence."

(I have to stop here and insert that in Pennsylvania Dutch fence is pronounced fence, and a window is pronounced fence-tah.)

Vernon and I looked at each other not sure that we had heard right. Why would Alma want us to throw eggs at a window?  Vernon asked her which one and when she said it doesn't matter we headed outside with our eggs. This was going to be fun.

We walked all around the house trying to decide which window we wanted to throw the eggs at. After we settled on one we both threw our eggs and watched as they broke and slithered a slimy trail of yolk down over the glass. Alma had come around the corner of the house just in time to see the eggs hit the window and let out a gasp and immediately went to fix water to wash it off.

She explained then that she had said fence, not fence-tah. We felt sorry for what we had done but at the same time there had been a delicious thrill of watching those eggs smash against the window that it had been worth it.

11 comments:

  1. Haha, that must have been hilarious fun! Great story!

    ReplyDelete
  2. That sounds exactly like the sort of thing a child would do. Grown-up said, so even if it didn't make sense, off we go. And I'll bet it was fun!

    ReplyDelete
  3. funny funny! oh the innocence of youth!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love it!! Too funny, and what fun! ;)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Some mis-understandings are such merriment to the heart. I've not trouble envisioning those egg-gooped windows :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. You gave me the biggest chuckle of the day! Oh to have been able to see that happen! Youngin's! Love it!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  7. That is so funny, My daughter and I read a book with an Amish dictionary in it. I was surprised by all the different words. Thanks for sharing that with us, it would of been fun to see those eggs hit the window.

    ReplyDelete
  8. OH that is hilarious!!! Poor kids.. Lucky the couple were kid friendly :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. What fun the children must have had for those moments!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Being Dutch (i.e. from the Netherlands) I can easily understand the confusion. One of our words for window is 'venster' (fence-tah)... I visited Pennsylvania with my family this year and was amazed at the similarities between our Dutch (the language spoken in the Netherlands, one of Germany's neighbouring countries) and PA Dutch.

    Thanks for sharing your memories!

    Suzanne

    ReplyDelete

Thank you so much for taking time to comment. I love hearing your thoughts.