After our dad remarried in 1965, he removed my brother and I from the orphanage. We and our sister moved were moved back home, in this basement house, with our dad and his new bride -- our stepmother.
The 10th Short Story
Beware Yellow and Black Demons With Wings
"Beware Yellow and Black Demons With Wings"
ANDY JUNIOR'S CHILDHOOD STORIES
The St. Joseph Home for Boys
My 10th Short Story
The St. Joseph Home for Boys stood on the northwest corner of Blackstone St. and Van Buren St. in Jackson, Michigan for more than 50 years. The Felician Sisters out of Livonia, Michigan, purchased the mansion from a local banker in the early 1900s and cared for up to 50 boys in the orphanage, between the early 1910s and late 1960s.
When my dad remarried in 1965, he brought us 3 kids back to live at home on Sandstone Road in Spring Arbor, Michigan. I kicked off another schoolyear that September at Western Junior High School in Parma, Michigan. My brother and sister went to elementary school in Woodville.
This short story takes you back to my earlier childhood and spans many younger years in Michigan. I'm sure many of you will be able to relate to the kinds of experiences shared through these not so pleasant memories. I hope you enjoy this more than I did while enduring such tortures.
"Beware Yellow and Black Demons With Wings"
“Just because Mother Nature loves all creatures of the world,
doesn’t mean I have to.”
--Andy Skrzynski
Of all creatures I’ve faced during my sliver of time on Earth, things that sting have to rate as my most dreaded and hated. I didn’t necessarily have to search them out; they seemed to take a liking to me -- unfortunately. I guess I should be thankful I didn’t live in the days of the dinosaurs, when such things were a hundred times bigger.
Being smaller didn't make such creatures any more tolerable, as I’ve had a fair share of venomous, pointy lances thrust through my tender layer of skin more times than I cared to count. Even though articles would attest to beekeepers growing accustomed to stings, I could not vouch for such a miracle.
Getting stung might not have been nearly as bad if it wasn’t for the fact that these flying tormentors almost always chose some of my most sensitive areas to attack. I was only 5 years old when I remember the first such intrusion at our house on Sandstone Rd. in Spring Arbor, Michigan. I had been walking through our field of tall grass with my dad, when I suddenly felt a pinch on the back of my leg like I had never suffered before. The longer it pinched, the more painful it got.
I screamed, “Ouch, help me Tata! Something is biting me!” I twisted around to point and found a large, brown winged thing pressing its behind against my pant leg. Quickly brushing it off and stomping it to death, Tata blurted, “It’s a wasp.”
I didn’t care one bit what it was called, the agony only grew worse as I bawled like a baby. The terrible burning sensation eventually faded, but I’d never forget what that ugly insect looked like. I don't ever want to get stung by no wasp thing again!
Four years later, I had gotten stung by a big, fat bumble bee at the St. Joseph Home for Boys, but for some unexplained reason, I never even felt its sting. The tiny, red speck of an area barely even swelled up.
From the screaming and hopping reaction of one of the other boys, who got stung at the same time by a different bumble bee, I considered myself the luckiest boy in the world. That charmed feeling vanished a few years later, after my brother and I were moved back home from the orphanage.
Just as I found the hammer I was searching for in the toolshed on our farm, some scratchy thing crawled behind my glasses and stung me in the eye. Screaming like a maniac, I removed my glasses and swatted at it as I raced out the door.
A bit later, after the worst of the pain wore off, I returned to see if I could find what had attacked me. Sure enough, there was a crunched-up wasp still writhing on the wooden floor. There you are!
I tossed a scorned look its way while mumbling to myself, “Let me help you end your misery.” I stomped the poor sucker to smithereens and ground it with my boot several times, until I could barely find anything left of it. I couldn’t hold back my grin. That’ll teach him!
Well, that little taste of euphoria didn’t last very long. The very next morning, I had to find an attachment in another smaller shed, where we stored spare parts for our farm equipment. My right eye wasn’t worth much, because it was still a bit swollen from my harrowing experience, the day before.
Unfortunately, one end of this dilapidated shed was open to the elements and provided a hanger of sorts for all kinds of flying insects -- wasps included. They continually buzzed in and out of this haven of theirs while constructing honeycombed nests under the low-hanging rafters, throughout the summer months.
I hated that creepy den of nasty insects with a passion. The last thing I desired was to end up being some stinger bait for their pleasure. The shed wasn’t very tall, so I always had to duck my head while scrummaging around for parts. This meant all those wasp condos were only inches away from my head as I went about my business.
No matter how low I stooped, the winged menaces were always perturbed at my presence in what they considered to be “their territory.” The flitty bluish-black ones were always the first to perform their kamikaze dives at and around my head. For some reason, they never seemed to sting me, but they were annoying to the hilt, just the same.
On this particular day, the stupid wasps guarding the nest, must have decided the front-line defenders weren’t effective enough at chasing me off, so one decided to take matters into its own hands -- or should I say wings. It dove directly behind my glasses, and once again, as fate dictated, the blasted creature stung my “other” eye.
Screaming like the dickens, I flung my glasses and scooted out of there as quickly as possible. I knew better, but at that moment I could have cared less what words flew from my mouth. I cussed up and down a storm as tears filled my eyes.
With all the commotion I was generating, my stepmother came running out of the house. “What’s going on, Andy, and why are you swearing like that?”
My left eye seared with agony as I explained what happened, “Another stupid son-of-a-@#$% wasp stung me again. This time it got my left eye.” I tried scanning the ground through the tears. “Can’t find my glasses. I threw them out here somewhere. I’m blind without them!”
She ran to my side and guided me with her arm. “Don’t worry about them now. Let’s get back to the house where I can take care of that welt. We’ll get your glasses later.”
For a couple of days after my not-so-fun experience, I looked like a raccoon, whenever I stared at the mirror to check out the damage. The pain and swelling finally subsided after a while, and I didn’t have another such excruciating experience for months. Needless to say, I hated wasps more at that time, than ever before, and I wasn’t particularly fond of them to begin with.
One fine day, on our great grandfather’s 80-acre farm, off of Seymour Road, north of Jackson, Michigan, my father was combining oats. After my brother and I had finished our chores of filling bushel baskets with ripened peaches from the Pa-Pete’s orchard, we snuck a break.
We decided to walk stroll the combine our dad was pulling with our large, green John Deere tractor. Together, they were a rather noisy set of contraptions that chugged, vibrated, and whirred while gathering and separating the seeds from the brown, brittle stalks. A thick, billowing cloud of dust engulfed the farm equipment.
Without a care in the world at that moment, my brother and I stopped to chat to avoid choking to death from the filthy air near the commotion. The combine slowly continued along the field that was only a stone’s throw away from Dead Man’s Curve, where Highway 127 met I-94 from the south. Over the years, the thunderous crashes of many 18 wheelers could be heard as they careened out of control and smashed into the guard rails while traveling way too fast around that sharp winding ramp.
No such occurrences happened that afternoon, but as we were talking, something landed on the front part of my brother’s pant leg. I stared at it, then quickly pointed. “Hey, you better brush that off. It’s a yellow….”
Before another word could escape my lips, we were swarmed by yellow jackets. One of the winged devils landed on my temple and stung me in the eye. I immediately flung my glasses to the ground and swatted several attackers that were stinging me and my brother all over our bodies.
Terrified, we both sprinted up the hill and zigzagged throughout the fruit trees, hoping to lose the crazed zappers. It didn’t take but a few seconds to realize they were faster than us and weren’t going to quit. I pointed toward our dad’s pickup truck at the top of the hill. “Let’s hide out in there!”
We stripped off our t-shirts and waved them around our heads as we raced for cover. Quickly climbing into the cab, we slammed the doors behind us. Just like cartoons I’d seen before, the angry bees were smashing into the windows, trying to get at us.
After a second, I breathed a sigh of relief. “We finally got rid of those suckers.”
My brother yelled, “Ouch!” He brushed both sides of his pants, and before I could say crap, a dozen or so of the horrifying intruders were buzzing and stinging us inside the cab. One got me under my arm while I was swinging, and another stung me in the side of my head. I hollered, “We gotta get out of here! They’re gonna kill us!”
We rushed out of the truck and swung our shirts as we hoofed it down a gravel road. We continued yelling and screaming until we reached a small mobile home at the bottom of a hill, near the end of the orchard.
The crazed bees attacked us the entire way, until we finally slipped through the side door. Once inside, we feverishly searched all around.
Only one of the yellow and black demons had followed us in. We both glanced at each other for a moment and proceeded to beat the living daylights out of it with our shirts. That’ll teach you to mess with us!
By the time we finished our fit of retaliation, we were both huffing and puffing while bent over with our hands on our knees. Pain emanated from every part of my body, but the worst were the searing throbs, emanating from two puffy areas near both eyelashes. “What is it about the eyes? I hate anything that stings!”
Our stepmother rushed through the door. “What happened? You guys were screaming bloody murder!”
Staring at each other, we shook our heads. I slowly turned toward her as I rubbed the numerous welts forming across my skin. “We got stung by hundreds of yellow jackets!”
By then, my eyes were swelling to the point of closing shut. I couldn’t even see out of my left one.
Our stepmother gave each of us the once over and blurted, “I need to get you guys to the hospital. Both of you have been stung way too many times.”
No kidding! Given that she had been a nurse's aide at Mercy Hospital, I wasn’t about to argue with her.
She hollered at her grandfather, Pa-Pete, as he stood outside his farmhouse. “Tell Andy Senior that I’m taking the boys to the hospital. They’ve been stung by a swarm of yellow jackets.”
He waved. “Will do. Hope they’re okay.”
She rushed us to the emergency room of Mercy Hospital, and the doctor decided to keep us overnight for observation. Fortunately, neither one of us suffered any serious reaction, other than all the stings hurt like crazy for quite some time.
By the grace of God, both of us survived to tell the tale of another one of our farming mishaps -- one I wished we never experienced. This incident turned out to be the worst of all of my stinging adventures, but little did I know. While my body had healed relatively quickly from all the venomous welts, my mind had not.
For years, other than the time I told my tales, I put that incident and most of the other painful experiences suffered from the stingers of all those winged demons behind me -- so I thought.
Four years ago, during the summer of 2016 -- more than 45 years later -- I panted and wheezed while snapping out of a nightmare about hordes of huge wasps swarming me. Terrified, I was soaking wet in fear as I came to my senses. At first, I thought it was a singular dream and wondered why such a thing would enter my head.
Then, like a glaring lightbulb flipped on in the pitch of dark, I realized something that stole my breath away. I had been dreaming that same exact nightmarish attack, over and over again for many years and didn’t even realize it, until that very moment. The thought of it shook me to the bone. How is this possible?
************
That's it for now.
I hope you enjoyed another of my many childhood experiences. I look forward to sharing more over time.
Thank you so much for your wonderful support!
Andy Skrzynski
ANDY JUNIOR'S CHILDHOOD STORIES
The St. Joseph Home for Boys
My 10th Short Story
The St. Joseph Home for Boys stood on the northwest corner of Blackstone St. and Van Buren St. in Jackson, Michigan for more than 50 years. The Felician Sisters out of Livonia, Michigan, purchased the mansion from a local banker in the early 1900s and cared for up to 50 boys in the orphanage, between the early 1910s and late 1960s.
When my dad remarried in 1965, he brought us 3 kids back to live at home on Sandstone Road in Spring Arbor, Michigan. I kicked off another schoolyear that September at Western Junior High School in Parma, Michigan. My brother and sister went to elementary school in Woodville.
This short story takes you back to my earlier childhood and spans many younger years in Michigan. I'm sure many of you will be able to relate to the kinds of experiences shared through these not so pleasant memories. I hope you enjoy this more than I did while enduring such tortures.
"Beware Yellow and Black Demons With Wings"
“Just because Mother Nature loves all creatures of the world,
doesn’t mean I have to.”
--Andy Skrzynski
Of all creatures I’ve faced during my sliver of time on Earth, things that sting have to rate as my most dreaded and hated. I didn’t necessarily have to search them out; they seemed to take a liking to me -- unfortunately. I guess I should be thankful I didn’t live in the days of the dinosaurs, when such things were a hundred times bigger.
Being smaller didn't make such creatures any more tolerable, as I’ve had a fair share of venomous, pointy lances thrust through my tender layer of skin more times than I cared to count. Even though articles would attest to beekeepers growing accustomed to stings, I could not vouch for such a miracle.
Getting stung might not have been nearly as bad if it wasn’t for the fact that these flying tormentors almost always chose some of my most sensitive areas to attack. I was only 5 years old when I remember the first such intrusion at our house on Sandstone Rd. in Spring Arbor, Michigan. I had been walking through our field of tall grass with my dad, when I suddenly felt a pinch on the back of my leg like I had never suffered before. The longer it pinched, the more painful it got.
I screamed, “Ouch, help me Tata! Something is biting me!” I twisted around to point and found a large, brown winged thing pressing its behind against my pant leg. Quickly brushing it off and stomping it to death, Tata blurted, “It’s a wasp.”
I didn’t care one bit what it was called, the agony only grew worse as I bawled like a baby. The terrible burning sensation eventually faded, but I’d never forget what that ugly insect looked like. I don't ever want to get stung by no wasp thing again!
Four years later, I had gotten stung by a big, fat bumble bee at the St. Joseph Home for Boys, but for some unexplained reason, I never even felt its sting. The tiny, red speck of an area barely even swelled up.
From the screaming and hopping reaction of one of the other boys, who got stung at the same time by a different bumble bee, I considered myself the luckiest boy in the world. That charmed feeling vanished a few years later, after my brother and I were moved back home from the orphanage.
Just as I found the hammer I was searching for in the toolshed on our farm, some scratchy thing crawled behind my glasses and stung me in the eye. Screaming like a maniac, I removed my glasses and swatted at it as I raced out the door.
A bit later, after the worst of the pain wore off, I returned to see if I could find what had attacked me. Sure enough, there was a crunched-up wasp still writhing on the wooden floor. There you are!
I tossed a scorned look its way while mumbling to myself, “Let me help you end your misery.” I stomped the poor sucker to smithereens and ground it with my boot several times, until I could barely find anything left of it. I couldn’t hold back my grin. That’ll teach him!
Well, that little taste of euphoria didn’t last very long. The very next morning, I had to find an attachment in another smaller shed, where we stored spare parts for our farm equipment. My right eye wasn’t worth much, because it was still a bit swollen from my harrowing experience, the day before.
Unfortunately, one end of this dilapidated shed was open to the elements and provided a hanger of sorts for all kinds of flying insects -- wasps included. They continually buzzed in and out of this haven of theirs while constructing honeycombed nests under the low-hanging rafters, throughout the summer months.
I hated that creepy den of nasty insects with a passion. The last thing I desired was to end up being some stinger bait for their pleasure. The shed wasn’t very tall, so I always had to duck my head while scrummaging around for parts. This meant all those wasp condos were only inches away from my head as I went about my business.
No matter how low I stooped, the winged menaces were always perturbed at my presence in what they considered to be “their territory.” The flitty bluish-black ones were always the first to perform their kamikaze dives at and around my head. For some reason, they never seemed to sting me, but they were annoying to the hilt, just the same.
On this particular day, the stupid wasps guarding the nest, must have decided the front-line defenders weren’t effective enough at chasing me off, so one decided to take matters into its own hands -- or should I say wings. It dove directly behind my glasses, and once again, as fate dictated, the blasted creature stung my “other” eye.
Screaming like the dickens, I flung my glasses and scooted out of there as quickly as possible. I knew better, but at that moment I could have cared less what words flew from my mouth. I cussed up and down a storm as tears filled my eyes.
With all the commotion I was generating, my stepmother came running out of the house. “What’s going on, Andy, and why are you swearing like that?”
My left eye seared with agony as I explained what happened, “Another stupid son-of-a-@#$% wasp stung me again. This time it got my left eye.” I tried scanning the ground through the tears. “Can’t find my glasses. I threw them out here somewhere. I’m blind without them!”
She ran to my side and guided me with her arm. “Don’t worry about them now. Let’s get back to the house where I can take care of that welt. We’ll get your glasses later.”
For a couple of days after my not-so-fun experience, I looked like a raccoon, whenever I stared at the mirror to check out the damage. The pain and swelling finally subsided after a while, and I didn’t have another such excruciating experience for months. Needless to say, I hated wasps more at that time, than ever before, and I wasn’t particularly fond of them to begin with.
One fine day, on our great grandfather’s 80-acre farm, off of Seymour Road, north of Jackson, Michigan, my father was combining oats. After my brother and I had finished our chores of filling bushel baskets with ripened peaches from the Pa-Pete’s orchard, we snuck a break.
We decided to walk stroll the combine our dad was pulling with our large, green John Deere tractor. Together, they were a rather noisy set of contraptions that chugged, vibrated, and whirred while gathering and separating the seeds from the brown, brittle stalks. A thick, billowing cloud of dust engulfed the farm equipment.
Without a care in the world at that moment, my brother and I stopped to chat to avoid choking to death from the filthy air near the commotion. The combine slowly continued along the field that was only a stone’s throw away from Dead Man’s Curve, where Highway 127 met I-94 from the south. Over the years, the thunderous crashes of many 18 wheelers could be heard as they careened out of control and smashed into the guard rails while traveling way too fast around that sharp winding ramp.
No such occurrences happened that afternoon, but as we were talking, something landed on the front part of my brother’s pant leg. I stared at it, then quickly pointed. “Hey, you better brush that off. It’s a yellow….”
Before another word could escape my lips, we were swarmed by yellow jackets. One of the winged devils landed on my temple and stung me in the eye. I immediately flung my glasses to the ground and swatted several attackers that were stinging me and my brother all over our bodies.
Terrified, we both sprinted up the hill and zigzagged throughout the fruit trees, hoping to lose the crazed zappers. It didn’t take but a few seconds to realize they were faster than us and weren’t going to quit. I pointed toward our dad’s pickup truck at the top of the hill. “Let’s hide out in there!”
We stripped off our t-shirts and waved them around our heads as we raced for cover. Quickly climbing into the cab, we slammed the doors behind us. Just like cartoons I’d seen before, the angry bees were smashing into the windows, trying to get at us.
After a second, I breathed a sigh of relief. “We finally got rid of those suckers.”
My brother yelled, “Ouch!” He brushed both sides of his pants, and before I could say crap, a dozen or so of the horrifying intruders were buzzing and stinging us inside the cab. One got me under my arm while I was swinging, and another stung me in the side of my head. I hollered, “We gotta get out of here! They’re gonna kill us!”
We rushed out of the truck and swung our shirts as we hoofed it down a gravel road. We continued yelling and screaming until we reached a small mobile home at the bottom of a hill, near the end of the orchard.
The crazed bees attacked us the entire way, until we finally slipped through the side door. Once inside, we feverishly searched all around.
Only one of the yellow and black demons had followed us in. We both glanced at each other for a moment and proceeded to beat the living daylights out of it with our shirts. That’ll teach you to mess with us!
By the time we finished our fit of retaliation, we were both huffing and puffing while bent over with our hands on our knees. Pain emanated from every part of my body, but the worst were the searing throbs, emanating from two puffy areas near both eyelashes. “What is it about the eyes? I hate anything that stings!”
Our stepmother rushed through the door. “What happened? You guys were screaming bloody murder!”
Staring at each other, we shook our heads. I slowly turned toward her as I rubbed the numerous welts forming across my skin. “We got stung by hundreds of yellow jackets!”
By then, my eyes were swelling to the point of closing shut. I couldn’t even see out of my left one.
Our stepmother gave each of us the once over and blurted, “I need to get you guys to the hospital. Both of you have been stung way too many times.”
No kidding! Given that she had been a nurse's aide at Mercy Hospital, I wasn’t about to argue with her.
She hollered at her grandfather, Pa-Pete, as he stood outside his farmhouse. “Tell Andy Senior that I’m taking the boys to the hospital. They’ve been stung by a swarm of yellow jackets.”
He waved. “Will do. Hope they’re okay.”
She rushed us to the emergency room of Mercy Hospital, and the doctor decided to keep us overnight for observation. Fortunately, neither one of us suffered any serious reaction, other than all the stings hurt like crazy for quite some time.
By the grace of God, both of us survived to tell the tale of another one of our farming mishaps -- one I wished we never experienced. This incident turned out to be the worst of all of my stinging adventures, but little did I know. While my body had healed relatively quickly from all the venomous welts, my mind had not.
For years, other than the time I told my tales, I put that incident and most of the other painful experiences suffered from the stingers of all those winged demons behind me -- so I thought.
Four years ago, during the summer of 2016 -- more than 45 years later -- I panted and wheezed while snapping out of a nightmare about hordes of huge wasps swarming me. Terrified, I was soaking wet in fear as I came to my senses. At first, I thought it was a singular dream and wondered why such a thing would enter my head.
Then, like a glaring lightbulb flipped on in the pitch of dark, I realized something that stole my breath away. I had been dreaming that same exact nightmarish attack, over and over again for many years and didn’t even realize it, until that very moment. The thought of it shook me to the bone. How is this possible?
************
That's it for now.
I hope you enjoyed another of my many childhood experiences. I look forward to sharing more over time.
Thank you so much for your wonderful support!
Andy Skrzynski
This is the basement house that my brother, sister, and I lived in, once our dad remarried and brought us back home from the orphanage. It stood on a small 20-acre farm along S. Sandstone Rd. in Spring Arbor, Michigan. The tiny 3-room Quonset hut, we lived in prior to moving to this new home, was located to the right of the basement house in this picture, where you can't see it. This scene was captured after a big snowstorm, in January of 1967.
There is my dog, Nicky, next to his doghouse. Besides that, is the toolshed where I was stung for the third time in my story. The middle building is the shorter dilapidated shed where I got stung the next day. Further in the distance, is the barn that Tata and us boys built out of lumber recovered from an old house that was torn down in Jackson. My brother, sister, and I spent many an afternoon pounding out and removing the rusty nails from the old lumber that was recovered. My brother and I dug out the path through the snow to get to the barn to feed and water the cows, during the harsh Michigan winters.
On the left, is our great grandfather, "Pa-Pete," who is holding our half-brother, Danny, the first of the children between our stepmother, Eulah, on the far right, and our dad (not in the picture). The woman in the middle is "Granny," the daughter of Pa-Pete and Eulah's mother. This picture was captured in May of 1967, behind our basement home on Sandstone Rd.
This was our great grandfather, Pa-Pete's, farmhouse on 80 acres off of Seymour Rd., a quarter mile east of Dettman Rd., north of Jackson, Michigan. One corner of the house was infested with honeybees, which loved and pollinated Pa-Pete's wonderful orchard of many types of fruit trees. Helping pick the fruit wasn't a chore we hated all that much, because we got to eat all the lush, fresh fruit our tummies desired!