Picture it.
Summer, 19mumblemumble.
Orrin Watkins and I dressed in our best Boy Scout uniforms. I met him at his house up on “the hill”.
We had to walk down this street and under this overpass on our way to the elementary school gym for our meeting.
Notice how dark it is in the section over the sidewalk, even in daytime.
Orrin says, “Hey! Look! A cat!”
(Like I remember what he said mumblemumble years ago - I don’t remember what I had for breakfast!)
Well. Nope. Not exactly a cat, Orrin.
More like a polecat.
More commonly called a skunk.
The white stripe down the back and tail should have been a dead giveaway. I mean, Boy Scouts should know these things if they’re going to go camping in the wilderness. Right?
RIGHT!!???!!??
Well. Benefit of the doubt to Orrin.
We weren’t in the wilderness.
It WAS really dark under the overpass.
Orrin DID wear glasses with very thick lenses.
I’m just sayin’. It coulda happened to anyone.
But it didn’t happen to just anyone.
It happened to Orrin and me.
Besides the nauseating stink, skunk juice stings on the skin. I know this from experience now. Thank you Orrin.
The Scoutmaster chased us out of the gym.
I remember soaking in a huge metal tub of tomato juice in the back yard of that house on Dayton Ave.
For two days.
If anyone ever excavates the back yard, they may just find an old Boy Scout uniform buried about two feet deep back by the stone wall going up towards the railroad tracks.
But I did get to keep the pins. My Mom let me take them into the tomato bath with me.
And to this day, I still don’t much like cats.