There's Guns in Them Thar Hills!

I've always really liked where I live. We have a large backyard and lots of woods. There's a path in the woods that leads to a river and waterfall. It's only a few feet high, but...do you have a waterfall? Didn't think so.



Anyway, there's a path that leads to my grandmother's house and for the past two weekends, I've been cleaning up the path and making it look nice after years of neglect and several storms left it looking creepy and foreboding.

My brother Glenn and I also cleaned up the hill leading up to my grandmother's house (you can either go up the hill or through the woods...or just use the driveway like normal people.) My neighbor's house used to be a mill and the guy that lived there many years ago used the hill to dump his trash. For as long as I can remember, we'd find old glass bottles, license plates, and Schlitz beer cans on the hill, usually after a rainstorm uncovered them.

But this weekend as we raked all the leaves off and cut back the thorn bushes, Glenn uncovered two rusty old guns, or at least the barrels. The stocks and everything else were gone, but burried together was a rifle and a shotgun.





First the creepy hut, now we're finding old guns.

Who knows why they were burried there. This guy dumped all his trash on that hill, so it's more likely that he just threw them out than if he hid them to cover some sordid crime. Maybe his mama put them in the ground because he can't shoot them anymore.

I'd like to know exactly what kind they are and how old they are. I don't know the first thing about guns, so for all I know they could just be BB guns. But they look really old. And anything over 100 years old that you find in the ground is cool.

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The Secret of Bare Cove

Like the Hardy Boys before us, (the teen sleuths, not the wrestlers) my friends and I have discovered the secret of someplace. Yes, we have uncovered the grisly truth of behind the secret of Bare Cove. Or we would have, if we hadn't bolted like Kenyan marathon runners as soon as we heard someone coming.

Here's what went down: Last month we were sitting around Nick's house trying to decide how to spend our Sunday afternoon, when it was suggested that we buy some disposable cameras and go around taking pictures of random stuff. Maybe it was the ammonia emitting from the ferret cage, but we thought it was a good idea and we were soon on our way.

After taking a few pictures at Nantasket Beach, we drove to Bare Cove, the type of large wooded area where people go to walk their dogs or to write 10,000 page manuscripts on the evils of technology. It didn't take long for us to veer off the paved path to explore the woods. Eventually, we came to a suspicious pair of women's shoes.


Two red pumps. I think they were pumps. I don't really know what the hell a pump is, but it sounds good: two red pumps. Abandoned shoes in the middle of nowhere are a little disturbing. But not as much a hut made out of tree branches sitting on a hill that overlooks abandoned shoes in the middle of nowhere.





We went up to investigate the hut. It was small; made out of branches and twigs, and what looked like maybe a piece of broken old fence for a door. There was a jacket inside. Outside, there was a hacksaw with a bright orange handle sticking out under the dead leaves.



I'm sure there's many explanations for what we found. Maybe the hut was a Cub Scout project or some handy junkies home, and completely unrelated to the shoes scattered below. It's not like I saw any blood on the hacksaw, although I didn't exactly get close enough to investigate. We all ran away when we heard someone coming. Maybe it was just a jogger. Or a squirrel. But no one wanted to stick around to find out. I'm too young to be skinned alive and worn as a coat.

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Spleen Day

April 2.

This day may not hold much meaning to most people, but to my friends and me, it will forever be known as Spleen Day. Yes, on this day in 1996, Nick got smacked around like an angry rag doll and wound up in the hospital minus a superfluous organ.

We were juniors in high school. I was sitting in homeroom, probably doodling skulls and bunnies, when Jim burst into the room, laughing hysterically.

"Nick's nose exploded!"

"What?!"

"There's blood everywhere!"

Jim explained what had happened. Apparently, Nick had some words with someone outside the building. I think Nick made fun of his girlfriend or something. I don’t know. I was sitting at my desk, channeling my own teenage angst into demented little scribbles in the margins of my notebook. But the point is, things started to heat up, and Nick got punched in the face, spilling forth what I can only imagine was a crimson torrent from his nose. That probably would have been more than enough for someone to get their point across, but it didn't stop there. He was also kicked in the side, which ruptured his spleen and set up the subsequent hospital stay. All this before school even started. It was an interesting day.

Ironically, the school was having a blood drive that day. Really. The joke was that all the blood collected went to Nick, either that or all the blood he left on the dirt outside was mopped up and donated to the Red Cross.

Nick was laid out for a few weeks, while the other kid with the silly poodle haircut was suspended and told if he got into another fight within so many days he’d be expelled.

Nick has since proclaimed that April 2 be known as Spleen Day, and while the greeting card companies haven't jumped on it yet (Happy Spleen Day, Grandma!), it's significant enough to be the date of Nick and Hedie's wedding next year. Easier to remember the anniversary that way.

Who knows? Maybe it'll catch on. Or maybe not. But for a select few, it will always be remembered as the day Nick got the ever-loving crap kicked out of him by a drugged-out lunkhead.

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