First, my toad story needs some background.
After being discharged, honorably, from the United States Navy in 1946 I went back to Western Michigan University where I’d already spent one prewar year.
With an ego the size of Everest, and self appreciation of my athletic ability to match, I went out for Western’s basketball team. That required a physical, which I alternately scoffed and laughed at. Come on, I personally had just won WWII after just two weeks aboard ship somewhere off the island of Okinawa.
A couple weeks into practice, however, the coach informed me I wasn’t eligible to play for the Broncos. An X-ray showed a spot on the apex of my left lung. Obviously, it was either a flawed film or plot. I was way too healthy and active to ail.
Anyway, I finished that educational term at WSU while under Veterans Administration orders to wait a space in some tuberculosis sanatorium.
In that after-war, pre-Western summer I met the gal who would become my bride. We were thick from the start. Fast forward my confinement in Lansing’s Ingham County Sanatorium. Hazel would come see me every weekend, staying in the YWCA.
Our ward was on the first floor with the windows maybe four feet from the ground. Though I didn’t mind the hospital food, I dearly loved, and still do, hot dogs. One evening Hazel left me, promising to bring me a Coney Island hot dog, and pass it through the window.
I sat on the sill, waiting anxiously for my love and the contraband Coney. After waiting for what I thought was too long of a time, I could see her coming in the dark. I opened the window and reached out for the bunned weiner.
Hazel put a big ol? warty toad in my hand.
And, she broke up at my response, and her own trickery. I had never touched a toad. I never wanted to touch a toad. Though I didn’t actually hate toads, it was the next thing to it.
I yelled, pulled back my arm, scratching it on the window casing, and acted like anything but the strong, capable hero I knew myself to be.
* * *
Let’s go from a toad story to frogs. It’s sort of related. All boys who lived anywhere near a stream, water or lowlands has gone frogging. With a stick or bb gun we all stalked this ‘mighty? prey.
But, how many of us have done it as couples in adulthood?
Hazel and I spent a lot of our early married life with George and Ardith Talbot in Morrice. A couple times we foursome hunted frogs in neighboring lowlands. We trespassed, but no one reported us.
I don’t remember getting enough for a meal, but remember cooking and eating them. Small, but delicious.
* * *
Have you ever wondered how come you press harder on a remote-control when you know the battery is dead?