Huckleberries: Of bears, boards and bad ideas

Columnist D.F. Oliveria is spending his vacation sorting his recyclables and setting up his worm composting operation. Today’s guest berry picker is Thom George, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Schneidmiller Realty in Coeur d’Alene.

When a story begins, “My friend and I lassoed a bear!” you can’t help but smile. As far as I could tell, the person still had all his appendages. On Saturday, I met a man who grew up in Yellowstone National Park. To hear him tell it, one day around the age of 10, he and a friend lassoed a bear. The bear climbed a tree, and the boys tied the rope to the tree and ran to get the ranger. By the time they returned, the bear had torn up the lawn as far as the rope would allow. The boys spent the summer repairing the damaged lawn. Kids are the same everywhere. I grew up in New York City. We didn’t have any bears, but there wasn’t a shortage of bad ideas that seemed like good ones at the time. The road at the end of my block was a route for buses and trucks, two lanes, and it crested a blind hill. When I was 10, my brother and I took skateboards to the top of the hill, waited for a break in traffic, ran to the middle of the road and rode the double yellow line down the hill. A neighbor noticed our stunt and told our mother. As she got to the corner, she watched as two buses passed in opposite directions with her sons riding the line in between. I spent the rest of the summer without my skateboard.