Clueless in Paradise

When I was in sixth grade, my parents sold the Milk Creek place. It was the first time in more than three generations that it didn't belong to someone in our family. We bought the Home Place from my uncle, keeping it in the family for awhile longer. We didn't exactly lose ties with the property up on Milk Creek, though, as my dad still leased the pasture from the buyers.

We had to go up there sometimes to check on the sheep and the herder. One time, he told my dad that the new owners had asked him to help them plant some little plants. Between his limited English and my dad's limited Spanish, my dad figured out that they had asked our sheepherder to help them plant pot. My dad was furious. Not that they were planting pot, but that they had asked his illegal employee to help, effectively ensuring that he would not report them, had he been so inclined. Instead he called them and informed them that if they wanted to employ said sheepherder any more then they could start paying his salary.

Another time, the lady owner asked if I was interested in a box of hand-me-down clothes. I was game, 'cause I was 13 and hoped to score some grown up clothes from the hippie chick. Most of it was junk, but there was a very cool t-shirt that I loved.I loved it so much that I wore if for gym class as often as possible. It was a light green color. It had a bright pink circle on the front, with an outline and a silhouette of a palm tree in dark green. The label didn't say Op, but it looked close enough to fool a bunch of label-conscious 7th graders who thought Magnum P.I. was the bomb-diggity in his Hawaiian shirt, ball cap and Op shorts.

One day my mom was doing laundry and asked where this shirt had come from, did it belong to a friend, etc. I told her it had come from the hippie lady and it was my gym shirt. Her reaction was too much. All the begging didn't stop her from getting rid of the shirt because it turned out I had been blithely wearing a shirt with a giant pot leaf on it every day.

The moral of the story: I would buy the cabin on Milk Creek in a heart beat if I could, but I should have known sooner that I could never pull off shorts that short.