Long Neck Tree-a-saur

It was a beautiful summer day, the kind of beautiful day that could only come the day after an all-night-long thunder storm. There wasn't a single fluffy white cloud, wind-blown wisp, of jet trail interrupting the vibrant blue of the summer sky. It seemed that the clouds had been completely spent in the previous night's storm and all that was left was sky. The Henning children were taking a walk towards the north end of the farm, just south of their great uncle Clyde's house. The access road for the oil well ran all the way to the woods, which was their intended destination. (Their intended destination was the woods, not the oil well. While some of the children might have harbored ideas about riding the oil well arm like the giant grasshopper it appeared to be, even they realized it was probably a bad idea.) 

The kids watched the driveway pass beneath their feet as they walked, keeping a keen eye out for unexpected treasure. The driveway was paved with gravel that was somehow a bi-product of some of the local steel works and contained a significant amount of metal. Some of the metal was smooth on one side like a bubble or a drip and rough on the other side which was most likely a reflection of the surface upon which the molten steel had dripped. Other pieces were rough and sparkly and reminded the children of silver or gold that they had seen characters pan for in the cowboy movies. According to their dad, the sparkly pieces had gone through the blast furnace prior to being integrated into the farms gravel.

Every kid had a collection of driveway treasure. They would store their collections of metal chunks in boxes they had built in their grandfather's workshop and often traded pieces amongst themselves. Obviously, these pieces had no actual value, but the value of a piece had little to do with it's position on the real world. A piece's value had everything to do with it's position withing the imagination of the owner. There were precious few make-believe scenarios that were not improved by the existence of treasure. Besides, on rare occasions, these pieces of discarded metal acted as a kind of currency among the children and could occasionally be traded for items of actual value. (These scenarios rarely worked out well as one child always eventually felt cheated.)

Scott bent down and pick something up and eagerly rubbed the dirt away so that he could see what he had found.

“What'd you find, Scotty?” Luke asked excitedly. “Is it a piece of metal?”

“Nope,” Scott responded with a smile. “It's a piece of granite, I think.”

Scott was a collector of pretty much anything. He collected coins, stamps, boxes, model cars, books, and yes...rocks. His tendency to collect boxes was likely the natural result of his impulse to collect everything else. Where else would he store all of his collections? His rock collecting had been encouraged by some members of his family at various points in his life. Someone had gotten him a collection that came in a cardboard box and was labeled with the scientific names of each specimen. His grandpa and grandma had gone on a long road trip and had brought him a rock from every state they had visited. His uncle Wayne Stucky had gotten him a rock tumbler for Christmas one year. Needless to say, all this adult attention to this particular obsession only cause the young man's infatuation with his rock collection to grow.

After a long leisurely walk, the children finally made it to the woods. The driveway they had followed turned sharply to the west and then promptly forked. The right fork went up to the oil well and the continued into the woods. One could follow that fork all the way to Uncle Clyde's house by way of Oldsmobile Pass if one had a mind to. The left fork led to a field that was on the other side of the woods. The kid took the left fork. There was a gully that wound through the woods just off to the right of that fork which was a great environment for all sorts of games and make-believe. Fallen trees that bridged the gully were great for Robin Hood and Little John confrontations. The upturned root clusters of fallen trees provided excellent canvasses for war-time foxhole scenarios. 

The children didn't make it to the gully that day. Their trip was cut short by something that was new and exciting. Off to one side of the road stood an old fireplace that had been constructed out of field stones by craftsmen whose identity was unknown to the children. (The craftsmen who were responsible for the construction of the fireplace were their great Aunt Lois and their Grandpa Henning.) That wasn't what was new and exciting. That fireplace had been there for years prior to this particular day. The tree that was laying across the fireplace was what was new and potentially exciting. 

The fireplace was fairly close to the woods. That particular part of the woods was primarily populated with tree of heaven. (Tree of heaven is an invasive soft-core Chinese import that had been brought to America in the days of colonization. It grows very quickly and quite tall but isn't useful for much other than firewood.) A particularly tall tree of the heavenly variety had failed to stand against the previous evening's stormy gale and had fallen across the stone fire place. The tree itself was devoid of branches and as a result, was extremely straight. The wide end of the tree was still firmly anchored in it's half buried root cluster while the narrow end of the tree extended a good fifteen feet past the fireplace upon which the center of the tree rested.

Being the adventures that they were, the children decided to check out this unusual rock/tree formation. They climbed onto the log and began walking up and down the sloped tree trunk, each trying to keep their balance longer than the others. The trick on this log was that the further south the kids walked, the further off the ground they ended up. This gave them some incentive to leave the rougher games they might have played for different logs. (Neither Robin Hood nor Little John wanted to fall prey to the other's staff when the resulting tumble was for a distance in excess of five feet at the center.) 

As the kids got more and more confident, they wandered past the fireplace bit by bit. It wasn't long before they realized that the freshly fallen log, still being green, had some considerable flexibility and bounced a fair amount once they ventured past the fireplace. Every one of the children saw the potential in that fact. Scott sat down straddling the log. He scooted on his rump to the end log where he was perched ten to twelve feet off the ground. He turned towards his brother and sisters and motioned for the others to follow his lead. Kelsey, Luke, and Kerry eagerly obliged. The children steadied themselves by holding onto the log or each other, depending on the trust that each child had in the person in front. 

“Okay, guys” Scott began. “We're going to bounce on this log and make it go up and down like a big teeter-totter except without anyone on the other end, okay?”

The kids began bouncing on the log causing it to slowly rise and fall. The movement of the log grew in intensity and prompted the children to tighten their grip on the log and each other. After a few minutes, Scott's mind grew bored with the log on the north end of the family farm. The world around him began to morph. The trees changed to exotic tropical varieties and the grass grew tall. The valley around them grew deeper and was populated with all sorts of different dinosaurs. A pterodactyl glided over their heads on it's way to the lake that had formed in the basin of the valley. The brontosaurus the children were riding, lazily meandered through the tall grass, pausing frequently to graze. The dinosaur bent his long neck towards the ground and scooped up a mouth full of green grass before raising it's head to chew.

“Why doesn't he just chew with his head down like the cows do?” Kerry asked from her perch on the dinosaurs neck.

“He's gotta watch out for predators,” Scott replied. “The cows don't have to worry about that. Look over there,” he pointed towards a tall tree on the outskirts of the woods. “That's a tyrannosaurus rex. If our dinosaur doesn't pay attention, we could all become a t-rex's dinner.”

“That's a good point,” Kelsey agreed. “Do you think a t-rex would go after a dinosaur as big as ours?”

“Only if it could catch it by surprise,” Scott replied with the confidence of a seasoned dinosaur wrangler. “Our long-neck is pretty big, so as long as he keeps grazing like he's doing, the t-rex should leave us alone.”

The children spent a considerable amount of time wandering through the prehistoric wild with their bouncing long-neck tour guide. Flocks of over-sized birds flitted and flew through the air and occasionally dove close to the ground scooping up giant grasshoppers and cockroaches. Triceratops grazed on the far side of the lake, brandishing their bony crowns at potential predators from time to time. A stegosaurus fended off a small group of velociraptors who had taken an inappropriate interest in her three spike-tailed babies. After a couple of well places tail swipes, the raptors fled into the tropical forest to nurse their wounds and their egos.

The sun's bright yellow glow began to shift to orange as it grew closer and closer to the western horizon. Scott checked his watch and saw that it was well after five thirty.

“Uh oh,” he mumbled as he turned towards his brother and sisters. “It's time for us to get back to the house. It's almost milking time.”

The prehistoric world around the children faded away as they scooted backwards on the still bouncing log until they reached the fireplace. They stood up and walked down the lower end of the log to where they could easily step on the ground. They walked towards the house all the while discussing the different adventures their new-found reptilian friend could facilitate for them in the future. Scott looked up into the sky where one last prehistoric bird morphed back into a red-tailed hawk and smiled to himself. Oh the places you'll go.