I remember that July started off with days of searing heat. It was so hot during the day you could cook an egg on a sidewalk. And the asphalt street was even hotter. Me and my friends decided to conduct the experiment of cooking an egg on a sidewalk. And we used the sidewalk in front of my house as the experiment test site. To our amazement, the egg cooked very quickly. However, we did not eat the egg, we just threw pieces of it at each other before pulling out the hose to clean the sidewalk and to cool our bodies down.
The temperature on this day before our fireworks day was hovering around 114 degrees Fahrenheit, which is about 7 degrees higher than average here in the deserts of Las Vegas in July. But I was now used to this heat. And I looked forward to my summertime desert trail riding in the heat, cooling off at the creek, and hanging out at the pool with my friends.
I had given up my Western North Carolina roots when we moved to Las Vegas when I became a true desert rat. My friends would call me that because I was a southern who truly enjoyed the desert and all the wonders it can bring to your senses. “Desert Rat” became my nickname, and on some occurrences, I was just called “Rat”. We all had nicknames. My friend who challenged the flash flood water at the beginning of the school year was called “Daring”.
Yep, I was a boy who loved being in the desert no matter the conditions anytime of the year. And I felt that I could endure the many challenges the desert could throw at me. I was young and felt invincible.
The Fourth of July holiday was now upon us. It was another very hot day. At sunset, my friends and I set off a collection of fireworks our parents had bought including firecrackers and some very loud, somewhat illegal, cherry bombs. I won’t rat on who brought them.
I am happy to report that no fingers or eyes were injured during our celebrations. We were very good with lighting the fuses and running away.
Before we began our little neighborhood fireworks show we enjoyed a BBQ gathering complete with hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and potato chips. Everyone in our local neighborhood family group provided various food dishes to share, and there was plenty of soda for us boys, and girls too. The alcoholic drinks were reserved for the adults.
My mom made grandma’s Western North Carolina potato salad that was gone in minutes. It was my grandma’s recipe which was coveted by my mom and her sister and had remained a tightly kept family secret. My mom also made her banana pudding and that was gone even faster. Sadly, these recipes were lost forever after my mom’s passing.
After the holiday celebrations concluded, we cleaned up our mess and headed to my friend’s backyard to claim our tent spots. Our boy’s friend group had planned a campout sleepover in my friend’s backyard several weeks ago and our parents gave us permission. We pitched our little tents and rolled out our sleeping bags in the tents. All of us were in the scouts together so we had everything we needed. And it was going to be a clear night, so we didn’t have to worry about any rain.
My friend’s mom and dad let us build a little campfire so we could toast our marshmallows for our smores. Well, it wasn’t that little. After consuming many smores, our fingers we very sticky and needed cleaning. We washed our hands with hose water and then doused the fire. It was time to get some sleep.
The next morning, we got up extra early, just before sunrise, and snuck out of the backyard through the side yard gate. We then secretly visited several houses in the neighborhood so we could put our counterfeit request notes into the aluminum milk box that was on the front porch. The note requested the milkman to leave an extra bottle of chocolate milk and some vanilla ice cream.
We then hid where we could watch the milkman make his delivery to the porch milk box. We knew that our request was successful when the milkman went back to his truck to get the extra requested items. Once delivered and the milkman drove away, we would sneak back up to the box on the front porch to collect our bounty.
Yes, we were being little juvenile delinquents, but so what. This was a common occurrence in our neighborhood. And I think that our parents knew what we were doing and would just pay each other back to cover our mischievous behavior. It is interesting that we were never caught.
So, these special stolen treats were our secrete breakfast before my friend’s mom made us a real breakfast that we could barely touch. We sat around a newly started campfire passing the bottle of chocolate milk and the ice cream to each other as the sun crested the top of the backyard fence. This was the best way to get our day started.
On this special campout sleepover morning, our official parent prepared breakfast was bacon and pancakes. I will say that our tummies were already filled with an internally blended chocolate milk shake. And it was oh so good. We did our best to eat some of the official breakfast so there would be no questions as to why we weren’t hungry. We finished off the leftover bacon and pancakes for lunch.
That afternoon we went out to the desert to ride on some new trails. We went to a different desert on the other side of our community to explore them.
As we were riding the trail in the heat of the day, we were suddenly overcome with this putrid smell in the air. It was a vile smell that invaded our nostrils and wouldn’t clear out. I decided to get off my bike to go find where this smell was coming from. My friends followed me. As the vile smell increased in intensity, I looked over this bush in front of me to see a rotting animal carcass.
When my friends caught up to me, I pointed the animal carcass out to them, and they were horrified. I could see it in their faces.
I went around the bush and lifted the carcass up off the ground with my hand, visually exploring the remains of the internal organs. I wasn’t bothered by doing exploration. The visual memory of the damage inflicted to my arm was much worse than touching a dead animal carcass. I remember one of my friends getting sick watching me lifting the carcass up off the ground.
After being cavalier with touching a dead animal, we got back onto our bikes and continued our trail ride. And we rode the many trails in this new desert location until late in the day. And we rode them as fast as we could never crashing on this day. This was a good day.
I will say that it was an enjoyable holiday this year and I had lots of fun from what I remember. But it was now time to go home and to clean up. And I felt extra dirty because of what I had done on the trail ride. I wanted my bath water to be extra warm with lots of soap suds. I felt like I needed to get extra clean.
As I was drifting off to sleep, I thought about how gross that dead animal carcass was. I could see it when I closed my eyes. I quickly flushed that image from my mind and began to think about the trails we rode on. I thought about every up and every down, and where we were able to get airborne. Yes, we jumped our bikes whenever we could. The more air the better. We were always living dangerously. And I wouldn’t realize how dangerous until a few days later.
When something happened…
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