Combat Croquet- Another Way of Becoming One with the Land.
Cloudy, 85/65, Fair to Change. Busy time of the year with haying, and picking corn. I am lucky enough to have a job that allows me to get out at 2pm. I can usuallu get about four hours a day in this time of year, so I don't have to cram everything in on the weekends. Right now, the small amount of rain the last two weeks has given the grass a jump start and since my farm help (wife) is going to be about 800 miles away for the next two weeks with her dad, we decided to cut last weekend. Tonight is raking and baling. She does the baling while I follow behind and pick 'em up. I tried it the other way, but the neighbors really gave me a hard time.
Corn didn't do well at all in this drought. 11 bushels an acre!! Oh well, I grow some for seed and some for feed, by the looks of the ears, it'll be mostly feed this year.
Man, I hate this. I’m looking into the woods around the farm. The goats are baaaing all around me. Its been two years since I lost one of these things, and the last time I did, I ended up pulling ticks off me, swabbing briar scratches, and almost having the first terminal case of poison Ivy. Usually I find them under a log, or hidden in the deep grass. Ahh Haa!! Found it!! Ohhhh that’s not it, that’s the white one lost two years ago. Ahhh, there it is. Yep its blue. Look out!! (WHACK) Dang!! Alright, your turn Seth…..
What I’ve described above is one turn in a once elegant game that has been twisted by the Bachelor Family into a vindictive, strenuous sport called “Combat croquet”. Every year, a pile of broken mallets are burned in the fall signifying the end of another season.
Our family has always taken some time out on Sundays for a game. My wife’s jaw still hurts from being beaned by a pitch by Sean when he was eight one Sunday during a game of “Bachelor Baseball” (Sean still has that habit, he hit two batters last spring during the Varsity High School game). Then we switched to “Bachelor Basketball” until both the boys outgrew us and our knees couldn’t take it anymore. As we prepared for old age and retirement, we thought, why not do croquet.
So in the warm months, our Sunday afternoons are spent out on the land near a creek frying hamburgers and eating until were stuffed. Then the croquet game begins.
Leave it to two teenage boys though to take a gentile game and make it into something brutal. When Seth (the youngest) found out you could “send” someone by just hitting him, he decided that the strategy of the game needed to change. If everyone is knocked to place where they couldn’t get out, then he could go through the hoops and win. Sean being the smarter (and the one who will probably get the inheritance if this keeps up), of the two plays more conventional, but goes out of his way to avoid his brother. Kathy and I are the targets of Seth’s sending obsession.
The one rule we follow is you have to play it where it lies or forfeit. That rule alone makes it a game of human pain and suffering. Usually the wife and I are stuck in the briars. The worst shot though happened to me.
I ended up getting too close to Seth and the creek. Usually, the trees and brush provide a buffer zone and the creek is unreachable, but my younger son pulled off a one-in-a-million shot. Splash!! Alright, I have never been there before. I stood over the ball looking for a way to hit it out when it started moving. The current was starting to take it to a small waterfall. I swung twice to get it out of there, but the second shot took a bad bounce and put the ball in the mainstream.
I caught up with it about ¼ mile later. Floating in a pool just below a waterfall (Who’d a thunk croquet balls would float). The rules said I had to play it where it lies, so I took off my shoes and spent the entire rest of the game in that small stream pool watching for snakes and waiting for the now all too familiar call of “haahahahahahah- Dad it’s your turn-hahahahhhaaahahaha”.
This year though will be different, I took the post hole auger this winter and drilled a hole hidden in the brush about three foot deep. I will bide my time and wait until Seth hits into the area, and then we’ll see who has the last laugh… BWAHAAHAAAAAAA
Corn didn't do well at all in this drought. 11 bushels an acre!! Oh well, I grow some for seed and some for feed, by the looks of the ears, it'll be mostly feed this year.
Man, I hate this. I’m looking into the woods around the farm. The goats are baaaing all around me. Its been two years since I lost one of these things, and the last time I did, I ended up pulling ticks off me, swabbing briar scratches, and almost having the first terminal case of poison Ivy. Usually I find them under a log, or hidden in the deep grass. Ahh Haa!! Found it!! Ohhhh that’s not it, that’s the white one lost two years ago. Ahhh, there it is. Yep its blue. Look out!! (WHACK) Dang!! Alright, your turn Seth…..
What I’ve described above is one turn in a once elegant game that has been twisted by the Bachelor Family into a vindictive, strenuous sport called “Combat croquet”. Every year, a pile of broken mallets are burned in the fall signifying the end of another season.
Our family has always taken some time out on Sundays for a game. My wife’s jaw still hurts from being beaned by a pitch by Sean when he was eight one Sunday during a game of “Bachelor Baseball” (Sean still has that habit, he hit two batters last spring during the Varsity High School game). Then we switched to “Bachelor Basketball” until both the boys outgrew us and our knees couldn’t take it anymore. As we prepared for old age and retirement, we thought, why not do croquet.
So in the warm months, our Sunday afternoons are spent out on the land near a creek frying hamburgers and eating until were stuffed. Then the croquet game begins.
Leave it to two teenage boys though to take a gentile game and make it into something brutal. When Seth (the youngest) found out you could “send” someone by just hitting him, he decided that the strategy of the game needed to change. If everyone is knocked to place where they couldn’t get out, then he could go through the hoops and win. Sean being the smarter (and the one who will probably get the inheritance if this keeps up), of the two plays more conventional, but goes out of his way to avoid his brother. Kathy and I are the targets of Seth’s sending obsession.
The one rule we follow is you have to play it where it lies or forfeit. That rule alone makes it a game of human pain and suffering. Usually the wife and I are stuck in the briars. The worst shot though happened to me.
I ended up getting too close to Seth and the creek. Usually, the trees and brush provide a buffer zone and the creek is unreachable, but my younger son pulled off a one-in-a-million shot. Splash!! Alright, I have never been there before. I stood over the ball looking for a way to hit it out when it started moving. The current was starting to take it to a small waterfall. I swung twice to get it out of there, but the second shot took a bad bounce and put the ball in the mainstream.
I caught up with it about ¼ mile later. Floating in a pool just below a waterfall (Who’d a thunk croquet balls would float). The rules said I had to play it where it lies, so I took off my shoes and spent the entire rest of the game in that small stream pool watching for snakes and waiting for the now all too familiar call of “haahahahahahah- Dad it’s your turn-hahahahhhaaahahaha”.
This year though will be different, I took the post hole auger this winter and drilled a hole hidden in the brush about three foot deep. I will bide my time and wait until Seth hits into the area, and then we’ll see who has the last laugh… BWAHAAHAAAAAAA
posted by Brad Bachelor at 3:46 AM
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