The Dreaded Bum’s Jungle

In yesterday’s post I invited Ljorna to educate all of us about Gypsies.  And she did.  You can view her comments attached to this post.  I would truly love to know what your background is, Ljorna.  What is your ethnic heritage and have you actually lived the things you spoke of in your comment?  As the next commenter said, Folks who don’t have a sense of humor shouldn’t go to a comedy. 

On to more important things – like my life.  That’s what this blog is supposed to be about, isn’t it?  Anywa – yesterday Ole decided to move the motorhome up to the house in preparation for getting it off the property prior to the high water that is still predicted to arrive.  He ran into just a wee bit of trouble – like getting a 23,000 lb. vehicle stuck.  Now just how do you go about getting something like that out of the mud.  Farmer Neighbor Dave to the rescue with his big John Deere tractor. 

 

 

His tractor grunted and snorted a bit, and poured just a bit of black smoke out of the exhaust pipe, but the ole’ JD popped that RV right out of the hole and off it went on up to the house.  Ole said he had the greatest urge to just keep on going, out the driveway and down the highway – but he thought it was in his best interests not to leave me behind (snicker).  Yah, you bet, Ole, that would not have been a good thing!!  I took a video of the JD pulling the RV with the idea of posting it to this site, but for some reason I can’t get it to upload.  It had sound on it and everything.  Oh, well, you’ll just have to use your imagination. 

Took a little tour of the countryside a day or so ago, trying to keep watch on the rising and falling of the water level.  This is what we found a couple of miles from where we live.  It’s a common sight at this time of the year – water over all the little township roads.   If you happen to hit it lucky you just might see a beaver or two swimming around in the icy cold water. 

 Enough about all this Water Stuff for now.  There will be plenty of that to talk about within the next couple of weeks.  So let’s talk about Bum’s Jungle instead. 

I was about four or five years old when my father decided to settle down and quit living the gypsy-life  (there’s that word again – shame on me)  on the road construction crew that he worked for.  He bought a piece of property on the edge of the little town that we had settled in, (population 275 at that time) and proceeded to set up residence there.

I remember very vividly that one morning in the fall of the year when I headed for school, I was told that when school got out that afternoon I should go home to the new location instead of the old one. Four o’clock came, the dismissal bell rang and I went happily skipping down the road headed for home. Little did I know that my father had purchased a piece of property adjacent to the dreaded BUM’S JUNGLE!!

Now I had no idea what a Bum’s Jungle was, but all my friends, who were skipping down the road with me by the way, were eager to fill me in on the horrible and terrible things that happened there. My Dad’s Half Acre of Paradise was bordered on one side by the railroad track that went through town, on one side by the gravel road that went a mile down to the country church, on the third side by an open field, and on the fourth side by a heavily wooded area known to all the local kids as Bum’s Jungle. At that time the railroad was still using the big black steam locomotives that shook the Earth making the dishes in the cupboards rattle when they went roaring by, and spewed black ashes and stinky smoke all over everything.

Of course there were times when the engines wouldn’t roar by, but would stop to take on a load of something or to switch to a siding track until another train went sailing past. That’s when the inhabitants of the Bum’s Jungle would take advantage of the slower pace and hop on or off the boxcars and take up residence in the wooded area behind our house. Periodically we could see men moving about back in the woods, campfires at night, etc. The camp would be occupied for a few days and then would be empty for a long period of time. Then Big Brother and I would go carefully exploring back in the woods to see what we could find – empty whiskey bottles, cigarette packs, snoose cans, remnants of meals cooked, etc. As the years went by the occupancies became fewer and farther between. To my knowledge there never was any trouble from any of the inhabitants – they were just itinerant men moving from one location to another in a manner they preferred.

And to this day that piece of property is still known in the local community as Bum’s Jungle.

So that’s your history lesson for today.

Love, Lena