Camp Life Is Paradise for Freddy. Fred Lanzing
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pole across his shoulders. When he reached the flowerbeds, he’d pour the water into a smaller can with a wooden handle, whose bottom had been pierced with little holes. Then he’d water the plants, dousing the shrubs and trees as well.
It was time for our bath. In the cool semidark bathroom with its always slightly musty smell, you scooped the water from a huge cement basin, the mandi-basin, and poured it over your head. Sometimes the water contained droves of mosquito larvae. To repel them our neighbors kept a few goldfish in their mandi-basin. I loved the looks of that and whined that I wanted the same. But my parents didn’t think it was sanitary, and that was the end of the matter.
As you were bathing, you stood on a wooden pallet, which felt mossy and slippery to your bare feet. It was a disagreeable sensation, all the more so because almost transparent, glassy-looking centipedes often lived underneath the pallet. After the bath the maid would use sweetish-smelling baby powder for your neck, between your legs, and between your toes. Then you were allowed to play outside again.
When the kebun had finished watering the plants, he’d languidly rake the gravel path or sweep the hallway and gallery with a sapu lidi, a broom made of bendable palm-leaf ribs.
Sometimes he’d carve a slingshot for us from a fork-shaped branch. A frightful weapon. With small round pebbles we’d shoot at sparrows or alley cats that dared venture into our yard. I must confess that I was actually quite happy we never hit anything because I wouldn’t have known what to do with an animal injured like that.
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