We were coming down from Georgia on some back roads one day when we saw this huge bamboo growing beside the road. Some were as big around as fence posts.
All I could think of was fishing poles. So we stopped. The bamboo got thicker and thicker. And you could see crepe myrtles all the way to the top of the sky just beyond the bamboo. Wild gladiolas grew everywhere. And those little-bitty, white trumpet flowers were grown up like regular trees. We came to a clearing and saw the house.
It was sitting way back amongst the bamboo. The front steps were still there, and so was the porch. We walked real easy in case the floor boards were rotten. There was an old shift robe in one room, filled up with mouse bedding, and a piece of a chair in another. The kitchen was behind that, with a broken down back porch. We kept on to see if the bamboo would get any bigger. It did. Next we found an old shed with bamboo, like spikes, growing through the eaves. Beyond that, we found the well. We began to throw stuff down it to see how deep it was. Bricks, dead bamboo stalks, and just for luck - two quarters and a squashed penny, which I’d put on some railroad tracks awhile back. Then, we cut our fishing poles and left.
Evidently, that well didn’t work, because my luck got worse instead of better. My truck blew a head gasket, my dog ran off, and I came down with the gout. A burned wire torched my house and the fire truck had a flat tire getting there. But it turned out that those were some good fishing poles. About a year later, we were up in that neck of the woods and decided to cut some more fishing poles. Of course we had to check out the old house again. In one room, we found some cold cream jars and medicine bottles with tops turned to rust. A nineteen fifty-seven calendar lay over in a corner of the kitchen. In the yard were some Nehi and Pepsi bottles like you don’t see any more. Then, we decided to go look at that well. I sure didn’t plan on throwing anymore money in!
Things had grown up even more and we had a time getting through those bamboo woods. I stopped to check out a wash pan that had gone to rust and what looked like a rotten shoe. Then, when we got close to the well, I saw something shiny sitting on the edge. Walked over to take a look, and derned if it wasn’t my fifty-one cents - squashed penny and all!
