DOGS & BEANS

June 26, 2025

After postin’ a picture of a kid-made fort on Facebook, I was asked by one of my friends if I could find an old story I had written about a house my buddies and I made out of pine limbs. Well, I found it and here it is.

Down the road from where I grew up, there was a pine thicket. I don't even know whose land it was on, but it didn't matter, us boys thought it belonged to us anyhow. Those trees must have been planted there by somebody because they were all in rows. They were thick, too. You couldn't even see the sky in some places.

Now, there is one thing not so good about pine trees, and that's the rosin, you know, the sap. Man that stuff is sticky, but we learned to live with it.

What I really liked about those trees those were the houses we would build out of the limbs. These trees had those old long pine needles that when they fell off the tree made a big soft carpet for the floor of our houses. This is how we'd build those houses.

We'd find two trees that were pretty close together. Then we'd cut a saplin' long enough to stretch between those trees to form our beam. We didn't have to tie the saplin' to the trees, we'd just lay the two ends on some limbs where they joined the tree. Then we'd lean some smaller saplin's that we'd cut up against the beam. We'd do this on both sides. Next we'd weave smaller saplin's through the ones we'd just leaned on the beam. We'd find some good pine boughs, break them off and, starting at the bottom, hook them into the lattice work. Before long we had us a house, which we called a lodge, 'cause that's what the Indians called them. We were big fans of Indians, you know. We didn't make our lodges little either. Heck, they were big enough to stand up in and would hold all of us, which included my cousin Coy, Greg Hunt, Little Rusty, his little brother Wee Whoa, and his dog Bones. Oh yeah, and me.

I may have to do some explainin' here. For some of you who haven't been readin' this junk I write, may not know who some of these characters I grew up with are. Little Rusty was another kid named Rusty. He was littleler (I know that's not a word, but I like it) than me, so we called him Little Rusty, so we wouldn't get mixed up as to who was who. His little brother’s name was Randy Joe, but when he was a baby he tried to say his name and it came out Wee Whoa, and the name stuck. Even his mom called him Wee Whoa. Oh yeah, and there's Wee Whoa’s dog Bones.

Bones was not what you'd call a pedigreed animal by any means. In fact, callin' him a dog was stretchin' it. He'd never seen a bath and had the odor to prove it. The dog, well, I’ll try to be delicate here. The dog was gaseous. And when he'd, how can I put this? Let an indiscretion? Well then, he'd take off runnin'. He'd do this because he'd been kicked so many times for doin' what he did that he'd learned that it was not healthy to hang around. I'm tellin' you this to let you what happened one day.

We had spent most of the day constuctin' a new lodge so we could camp out in it that night. We had got everything we'd need to survive for the night, which included sleepin' bags, some cans of pork and beans, a flashlight, and a deck of cards. We were poker players, you know. Of course we had to make our rounds before we went into our lodge. We'd walk up and down the roads, go dig in Mr. Dozier’s trash, and stuff like that first. Then when it got good and dark, we'd head for our lodge.

"Get in there Wee Whoa," Greg said.

"Why do I always have to go in first?" Wee Whoa asked.

"In case a snake got in there while we were gone," explained Greg.

"What if there's one in there?"

"Look," I said to Wee Whoa. "Has there ever been one in there?"

"Uh, no," he said.

"Well then, what'cha worried about. Take that stupid dog with you if you want to."

"Can I take the flashlight?" he asked.

"No, you'll use up the batteries. Now quit bein' a sissy and git in there."

"If you don't get in there, you can't camp out with us," said Little Rusty.

"Okay," said Wee Whoa. "I'm goin', but if I git bit, I'm tellin' momma."

He crawled though the little hole we'd made for our door. He rambled around for a while then stuck his head back out. “I ain't found no snakes,” he said.

"Good," Greg said, and we piled in. My cousin Coy grabbed the flashlight and wedged it between some limbs overhead and it shone down so we could see what we were doin‘. We opened up five cans of pork and beans; each grabbed a spoon and ate our fill. What was left over we gave to Bones. Lookin’ back, that probably wasn’t the wisest thing we ever did. Then we sat cross-legged, Indian style and broke out the cards.

Wee Whoa and Bones sat over in a corner watchin' us play. We had determined that he was too young to be playin’ cards. That and the fact that when we had let him play in the past, he always won.

It wasn't long before the air was gettin' pretty stuffy. We didn’t have much ventilation. Coy was on a winnin' streak, so we figured he was cheatin'. Of course that just meant that he was cheatin' better than the rest of us. We were just fixin' to show our hands when Bones jumped up and ran out the door. We all looked at each other. We knew what was comin'. Greg jumped up and yelled "AIR RAID!" Coy jumped up next and bumped the flashlight which dislodged and fell and hit Little Rusty in the head, which caused the light to go out. Man, was it dark.

AAAAAUUUUUGGGGHHHHH!" someone yelled as the odor hit him. We were bouncin' off each other like a pinball machine tryin' to find our way out.

"I'M DYIN'!" someone else yelled. Then the gaggin' started. You know, seein' someone gag is bad enough, but to hear it is really sickenin‘.

"I'M OUT-A-HERE," yelled Little Rusty and he crashed through the wall of our lodge. I went through on the other side and ran smack dab into a tree. I fell back and crashed into Greg who was still havin' the gaggin' fits. I could hear the others crashin’, gruntin’ and fallin’ all around. Finally, everything got quiet.

We were laying where we had fallen until daylight. I woke up covered in dew, pine needles and playin' cards. My face was puffy from slammin' into the tree, and Greg’s nose had dried blood under it. Everybody else looked okay, I guess. It didn’t look like there were too many bones broken. The lodge, on the other hand, was destroyed. I looked over and there was Wee Whoa; asleep. Under his head was his pillow, Bones the dog, lookin' as innocent as can be. Then the varmint looked up at me. You know, I could have sworn I saw him smile.

Stupid Dog.

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