Cheerio!

It must have been a summer day sometime in the early 1960’s.  My father, a boy, was out in a pasture with a couple of neighbor kids, including a boy named Matt Banks.  Matt Banks had a thing for speaking with phony accents.  He was always repeating the word “blackberries” over and over in his fake French, pronouncing it like “vlack-veyees.”   In his British accent he often said the word, “Cheerio,” in a way that sounded like, “Chiddio.”

The boys didn’t have much to do in the pasture that day.  Inspired by their boredom  they decided they would try to lasso the big Holstein cow grazing there.  They had never really lassoed anything, but they had seen it done and it seemed interesting.   They tied the rope, tossed it and were surprised when it landed fairly easily around the cow’s heavy neck.  The hard part turned out to be getting the rope back off again.  They tried and tried, but every time they got close enough to put some slack in the rope, the cow took a couple steps forward and tightened the loop.  

After a while they started to get nervous.  If their dads saw the Holstein wandering around with the lasso around its neck the boys were sure to be in trouble.   They decided to get serious.  They all held onto the rope and pulled as hard as they could.  They wanted the cow to stand still and eventually move back.  Even as the kids used all their strength, pulling until their faces went red, the cow would take a few effortless steps forward to reach a new patch of grass, and topple the boys like dominoes.  One of the boys was dragged through a cow pie.

Matt Banks thought this was hilarious, and said to the cow-pied kid in a jaunty sort of way, “chiddio mate!”  The other kid said, “Don’t you mean shittio?  I’ve got your shittio right here!”  Then he picked up a cow pie and hurled it at the others.  This spontaneous move led, in just moments, to a full, passionate poop fight.  No one was even concerned about the filth, they just kept on scooping and throwing.  Some of the cow pies were as hard as Frisbees.  Others smooshed and splatted. 

They carried on slinging poop and shouting “shittio!” and other bad words at each other, crazy with kid-madness, when  all of a sudden my dad’s father, Ancel, was just standing there.  He had seen everything.  Heard everything.   They had been so absorbed in the poop fight they hadn’t even noticed his approach.  The bad words still hung in the air near their lips, they were all covered with poop and the Holstein was still securely lassoed.  The boys froze, terrified, and silently waited for the punishment to begin.

Ancel walked in silence over to the cow and slipped the rope from around its neck.  He then rolled up the rope, hopped over the fence and walked away.  Somehow—no one could believe it—they had escaped with their lives.  Shittio!