Schoenecker's Shenanigans: Naive naughty boy adventures

I can recall a number of naughty things I have done over my earlier childhood years when left to my own devices. Usually, these instances of mischief would come from being with the company of another friend in the same boat. Both of the following stories come from about the same age period of about 12 years old or so — give or take a year or two. It’s been about 30 years since then so forgive me if I don’t remember.

Flame broiled

One summer day I felt it would be a good idea to have a bonfire. No reason in particular as to why or what we would do once we had it. We weren’t going to cook on it or roast marshmallows for s’mores at all. I believe we just thought that it would simply be cool. That’s all younger boys really want anyway is something to be cool or fun that they are doing.

We tried our usual methods of starting a fire with matches and newspaper under logs. I believe I might have even grabbed a lighter from the house and tried that too. When we couldn’t start it, I had the bright idea of simply getting some gasoline from the barrel. This would definitely solve our problem!

I grabbed an old, open-top, metal kink-necked oil can and filled it up with gas that roughly held about a quart. When I came back, my neighbor friend from Raven Stream had a small fire going but it wasn’t taking off. I poured the gasoline from the container on the fire, and then we had a VERY big and FAST fire that went up the stream of gasoline, lighting the contents of the can and the gasoline fumes surrounding it.

It did get the fire going well, but it also burnt the hair off my arms and maybe even my eyebrows a bit. Oops! I guess it is a good thing we didn’t decide to have the fire near the gas barrel or I would have likely been tempted to just pull the nozzle on the gas tank to help get it going.

Basket of balls

A secondary story, along those lines, happened also in the summer but not on the family farm but rather in New Prague where I would go during the day and stay at my grandparents place.

Naturally, I’d get bored all day at the house. I loved to bike and I knew a few kids in the area, one of them in which I played little league baseball with. He and I would bike around town, usually through Memorial Park.

My little league friend though would sometimes find adventures that I believe he knew were maybe not welcome but knew that I didn’t know that. Different days we would go to the baseball stadium and play catch and maybe hit a few of the stray golf balls that would land in the outfield or just outside of it from the driving range right next to it.

If you’ve never launched a golf ball by hitting with a baseball bat, they go a little further than your typical baseball. My friend said, “You know they have a whole bunch of them out there (at the end of the driving range) that no one is ever going to use right?” He proceeded to tell me that they hit the old balls out there and no one collects them so you can just go out there and pick them up.

Well, how could one resist going out there to get a bucket of them then! We each grabbed a wire bucket, presumably from the golf course, and went out there and filled them up! No one said anything or came by.

I went back to my grandparents house and showed them the bucket of golf balls I had acquired from the driving range and exclaimed, “Look at all these! They just throw them away.” I had planned to take them back home to the farm and have some fun with them.

My grandmother had other ideas. In fact, she looked concerned. She said, “Where did you get those?” I told her that they just leave them out there at the driving range. Then, she proceeded to tell me how they have a machine that they drive around there every day which collects all the balls and brings them back, and she directed me to go back and put those back on the driving range.

What a disappointment. Just when you want to have a little fun, a grown-up ruins it.