The Red Army

The Red Army marched towards me but I stood before them without fear. The red ants marched across the road single file. Their colony had been poisoned by our neighbour when his grand daughter had been bitten by the ants when she played to close to the large ant mound.

I was five years old when the Red Army invaded my family's back yard. On the north side of an old storm shelter was the ant mound of the black ants. The red ants home was poisoned but they didn't lay down and die, they picked up their colony and went on a quest for a new home. They had no time to dig a new home in the spring rains so they would take the black ants home. As a five year old you had to respect that.

My little gang of friends were all preschoolers except of course our wise leader Brad. He was a first grader and knew almost everything. Our toys became boring as we watched the war between the black and the red ants. The black ants were only a third the size of the red ants but they were in greater numbers. For three days we watched the war play out as we could all see the black ants were going to lose.

We debated among ourselves if we should help the black ants then Brad spoke up.

"It's best to stay out of these things. We should let nature take its course."

The wisdom of a first grader could not be questioned and we watched the war till its bitter end.

I remember the last moments of the war when the black queen was pulled out of what was the black ant mound and tore to pieces. The red queen moved in and the war was over. As the red ants moved in to their new home my father saw all the red ants in the back yard and told my little gang of friends to go home.

I watched from my bedroom window as he poured poison into the ant mound. This time all the red ants died.

Death of a Stream

Behind Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City Missouri is a little woods. I think it's still there. I once lived near the stadium and spent many hours walking that little woods with my sons.

In that little woods somehow spared from the giant parking lots of twin stadiums was a beautiful little stream filled with tiny fish. Our dog Sonny would drink from the little stream on our walks through the woods.

Sundays the boys, the dog and I would always walk in that woods. One Sunday we found ourselves in that woods and Sonny ran to the stream to get a drink. Sonny stopped on small hill before he got to the stream and froze like a statue. The three of us reached the top of the hill and looked down on the stream. All the tiny fish were dead in the stream. A film of gas from the run off of a Monster Truck show in one of the stadiums had killed the stream.

We never walked in that woods again.

Toxic Barrels

I remember the first time I saw the barrels. The barrels were in a lot next to the house I was renting an apartment in Holden Missouri with my newlywed wife Jackie. I remember looking at the barrels through a fence and wondering what was inside the mystery drums.

Then there was the stories in the local newspaper about the barrels being full of toxic waste.
The local paper said the toxic waste in the barrels had been dumped in ponds, lakes and streams.
I never fished in the area around my hometown again.

Years passed and I didn't think about the toxic barrels. Halfway between Holden and Kingsville they built a facility to deal with the toxic barrels. I remember I heard the rumble in the distance one night. My sons were teenagers then and my oldest son Mark had climbed a near by water tower with his friend Jeff.

Mark and Jeff watched the facility burn from a distance. How the fire started is an unknown.
I remember later that night Mark describing the barrels exploding up into the night sky like some kind of giant toxic fireworks.