Summertime...And The Livin' Is Freeeeeebie

Hmpf! It's that time again. Summertime. The time for city folk to convene in Hillmomba for free nature. Yeah. So bold, those city slickers. I'm sure it's not regular Hillmomba citizenry congregating on our creek banks. Hillmombans would not be driving sedans. They would be in respectable rusted-out pickup trucks. Not sleek automobiles with nary a dust speck, all parts in matching colors, shining like new dimes.

Yep! They're here. Taking an early exodus for Friday's 4th of July holiday, perhaps. Not one, but TWO cars were parked on our gravel road around 1:00. Parked like they owned the place, doors wide open, trunk up, a skinny kid in red swimming trunks running around with a bucket like this is the beach. Oh, adults were there aplenty. Two, wearing T-shirts to denote their foreign, not-of-Hillmomba heritage, were hunched over downstream from the bridge. No idea what they were up to.

In the upper creek, that kid waded in and grabbed his beach ball, a red plastic orb that did not look like the kind you blow up. Good, or bad, I suppose. Because anybody who would put their lips to something that had been in that creek would come to no good end. The three upper adults had several white buckets stacked in the middle of the creek. I don't know what that was all about. Maybe it was just a creek seat. They had the water all stirred up and muddy. I did not see any minnow traps or dip nets, which are what bring native Hillmombans into this creek: for BAIT.

I'll be darned if those upper creeksters didn't have A BLUE IGLOO COOLER sitting in the middle of the creek. Yeehaw! Ain't no Hillmombans going to the trouble to carry a cooler into the creek. They put their six-pack directly into the creek to maintain its convenience-store temperature. That cooler ain't gettin' any cooler in the creek. It should stay in the back of the truck, icing the 30 pack of Busch so it's drinkable as soon as the six-pack is gone.

These squatters didn't even have the decency to park at the very end of our gravel road, on the pretense that creeks are free and unowned, and they were simply getting their vehicles out of the way of traffic. Nope. There they were, all trespassy, 60-70 feet up a private gravel road maintained by the pockets of the landowners, and the kindness of a creepy meth-beard guy with a wheelbarrow and a shovel.

Yes. I shook my fist at them as I drove around their automotive barricades, and muttered, "Dang slickers! Get off my road!"

I hope they get to meet several of Missouri's five species of lamprey during their aquatic interlude.