Outrunning a speeding bullet

I was 8 years old at the time and the country was still gripped in a world-wide depression. In casting about for someone to blame, we picked President Hoover. NO ONE has yet explained to me how one individual could cause a world-wide depression.

But at the time, food was a concern for everyone.

Across the street from the house where I was living (where I got spinal meningitis from my homemade swimming pool - but that's another story), was a beautiful orange tree orchard.

One day, I went through the fence and started picking oranges right off the tree.

After a bit, I saw the farmer come out on his porch with a gun.

I was already running for the fence in a flash. Before I got there, I distinctly heard a shot ring out. In my mind, I ran faster to get ahead of that bullet and was under the fence and long gone before the bullet could catch up.

Couple weeks later I had the nerve to go back. This time I knocked on the farmer's door.

He could have said no... but he didn't. He filled up a bag full of the oranges from the ground, ones he could spare because he couldn't sell them. The ones I had tried to take were those from the tree - the only ones he could sell.

Off I went with a bag full of lovely oranges.

This was a lesson I never forgot. Knock on the door and ask.

I have great admiration for the farmers that made it through those tough days, yet still found a way to give a bag full of oranges to a starving 8 year old.