Mr. Padley’s garden ...

... was a cornucopia of wonderful stuff. But for Richard and me, there was but one patch of interest ... the tomatoes.

Mr. Padley was a pretty good old guy, I guess. I didn’t really know him, but I figured any man who listened to the Reds every day had to be pretty good.

Every single time Cincinnati was playing, he had his radio cranked. He loved sitting on his front porch on those summer days and nights, listening to his beloved team.

One day, after riding our bikes in the alley behind Mr. Padley’s back yard, where his garden lived, we were leaning on his fence and talking about how delicious his tomatoes looked. Then we saw it: The rabbit.

It wasn’t a cute rabbit, either, like the little fellows you saw at Easter. This guy was grubby looking with really long legs to go with really long ears. And he was munching at Mr. Padley’s produce.

As we watched this assault, we kept wondering when the old man was going to come barreling out of the house with his “rumored” shotgun to blow the hair off this hare. We waited and waited and waited but ... nothing.

The Reds blaring out front, the rabbit chowing down out back. Richard and I weren’t geniuses but we soon figured out that, as long as you could hear the Reds out front, the back yard was an unguarded veggie buffet.

Which brings us back to two boys who loved tomatoes. If Bro Bunny could pull this off, why couldn’t we scarf some tomatoes with the same modus operandi: Wait until we heard the game on the radio and then hit the dirt running.

But, being just kids with no real combat training at Oakview Elementary, we were halted by thoughts of that “rumored” shotgun.

We spent a couple of days and a night watching and listening. It was the same each time. Waite Hoyt’s voice would start blaring on the radio out front and the garden was open for business out back.

The next game was at night. When the radio went on, armed with a saltshaker, we sneaked up next to the fence and waited ... waited ... waited ... and went over the wall.

The tomatoes weren’t bright red and clumps of dirt hung on them, but that didn’t halt two young commandos.

We each bit off a chunk, spit it out and went to work with the saltshaker. Man, it got better with each bite. Then, who knows why, we started giggling and couldn’t stop. We were holding our mouths and bent over. When we looked at each other, we gggled more.

Then! ... it sounded like the skies had opened with a big crack. Actually, they might have, since Mr. Padley had just fired his very real shotgun into the air.

I don’t know if I wet my pants then or if it happened running for the fence. We cleared it and crossed the alley into another backyard.

We were running side by side when, suddenly, Richard was gone. I looked back and he was on the ground, holding his throat.

I ran back to him and he pointed up. It was a clothes line. I had run under it and for the first time was glad I was short. It had caught Richard in the throat.

We crawled over to some bushes and hid for what seemed forever. There were few lights. People went to bed early in those days of few TV sets. The only sound we heard, from a distance, was a radio.

It was the Reds game.

Nothing was ever said about the “great tomato caper.” It wasn’t neighborhood gossip. I know two boys who certainly never talked about it. Most things seemed normal.

We didn’t know if the rabbit kept his dinner scheule. We didn’t know because we never got close to the fence again.

The only difference we ever saw was this: When the Reds game was on and Mr. Padley was sitting on the porch, there, on his bannister, was a new item: A saltshaker.

MIKE RELIFORD can be reached at mreliford@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2647.