This is a story about me, a technician's technician, mechanically capable and an absolute perfect gentleman. My name is Tom. Oh yeah. Also in the story is my kid sister, Barb. Okay, she's only ten minutes younger than me, but I am the older child in our family.
My sister and I are twins, but if you didn't know it, you wouldn't even think we were related. I got the height (6'4"); she's only 5'2". She has the easy tan skin of our Greek mom; I got the fair skin from our Irish dad. She got the looks; I got the muscles. She might be a hundred pounds wet and with rocks in her pockets; I weigh in at two hundred and fifteen pounds. Even our hair is different, mine is the red that is almost orange and I keep it really short; hers is halfway down her back and the deep auburn that is almost brown, just red highlights in the bright sunlight.
Any resemblance to real live people, places or things is purely intentional and is completely ridiculous and absurd. The story picks up on the second day of our vacation. The first day was taken up by eight hours of driving to the site, and then two hours of lugging all the stuff from the car down across the creek and up the hill into the cabin we'd be occupying for the vacation.
We'd woken late after a not so restful night and shortly after lunch...
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"I'm bored."
Damn, I'm glad that mom is all the way at the other end of the porch reading one of her books. If she had heard my sister say that, she'd have made me spend the next hour or two or more entertaining my sister by playing cards or some other stupid stuff. But I'd better come up with something to distract my sister before she thinks of going over to mom and repeating that.
"Barb, why didn't you bring some books to read, you knew that this place is so far out that we wouldn't have cell reception or even TV. Didn't you bring an MP3 player or a tablet? Go listen to some music or something, you always have it blasting at home. Or go find dad, I saw him head downstream to fish and I'm sure he had at least two rods, he always does when he goes fishing."
I hoped that would be enough to get her to do something other than to tell mom that she was bored. Maybe if she had stuck with me when the discussion of vacation had come up, we wouldn't be stuck out here in the back of nowhere. If we had presented a united front, maybe we could have talked mom and dad into going somewhere that was still in touch with civilization, or maybe even have gotten to stay home and let them go on vacation themselves at least for the first week.
I mean, we're nineteen, so it's not like we're too young to survive for a week without the parents taking care of us. But no, when dad said fishing, Barb had thought water and water meant swimming and that meant being able to show off to boys, and so I got out-voted since mom could read anywhere, and without checking where dad wanted to fish, although why she didn't realize where he'd want to go escapes me, Barb had voted with him. And then, just before we left, dad had happily informed us that the vacation would be extended to a full two weeks. At least I had the sense to bring a couple car magazines to hide the porn magazines I was able to bring since we wouldn't have internet. It was a good cover since I am somewhat of a car guy. I wish I had also thought to bring a copy of Vogue or Cosmo or something for Barb, but I thought she'd be smart enough to do that on her own, I mean come on, she's nineteen, too.
"I didn't have any books I wanted to read and I forgot to charge my player when dad had the generator running last night, so it has a low battery. And Jenny told me that when they came up here last month, her brother ran into a skunk just down the hill and he had to sleep outside for three days before they could stand him in with them at night, so I'm not going off by myself to find dad or to go swimming."
I knew that dad had gone downstream, he was probably anywhere from a quarter, to a mile away. The only swimming hole was about a quarter mile upstream where a waterfall landed in a shallow pool not really big enough to swim, but at least you could wade there. I figured the safest thing to do would be to take my books and go with Barb to let her swim or sun while I'd have some quiet time to read and think; who am I kidding, time to fantasize.
"Okay Barb, get your swimsuit on and put on a tee and some shorts and I'll walk up to the waterfall pool with you so you can wade or sun while I read."
"Oh, thanks Tom, I'll get ready right away."
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"Mom, Barb and I are going to the waterfall so she can wade a while. We'll be back in an hour or two. We'll be able to hear the air horn if you need us back sooner for some reason."
"Okay Tom, you watch out for your sister. Your dad probably won't come back for another three or four hours so we won't be eating before 5:30 or 6:00 anyway."
When we left the cabin, I was carrying the backpack that dad insisted that we have whenever we leave the cabin on foot. It always has at least a couple bottles of water, a couple energy bars, a towel or two and a small tarp and some rope along with a box of matches and a hatchet, just in case. Of course, I had my books (which Barb wouldn't care about since her only interest in cars was how to turn on the radio, I don't even think she knew how to put in gas), and the larger towel and sunscreen for Barb.
I also had my walking stick. It's about 6 foot long with a knobby end. I found it a few years ago when I was into wizards and warlocks and thought it looked cool. Now I keep it so I'll have a long stick to keep anything I don't want to get too close to, at a safe distance, or to fend off branches that have stickers or burrs.