COCKLEBURS WILL GETCHA IF YOU DON'T WATCH OUT

What do cockleburs, Velcro and a tar-baby have in common? That is, a Tar-Baby as in Uncle Remus' stories? Answer: They stick to things.

Out of curiosity, I put some Velcro under a magnifying glass to see if I could determine more clearly how it works. It takes two pieces, or strips one with stickers, the other to receive the stickers. The receiver is a smooth, soft, woolly piece of material. Running your finger across it you think of a sheep's hide, one that has recently been sheared. But you also feel that this never grew on a sheep's back. Not much resilience. No lanolin.

The other strip is composed of tiny, tough hooks, made of something that feels like ultra fine, ultra stiffened, nylon thread. All the hooks turn downward like an inverted fish hook. Alternating rows of hooks run in opposite direction. Push the two strips together and you've got instant adhesion. It takes varying amounts of pressure to pull them apart.

While I was studying the Velcro process, a certain curious weariness came over me, a vague cloud of some unpleasant memory. I couldn't bring it into focus. I have a pretty rapid association of emotions with past events and this inability to go directly to the source of my quasi-malaise bothered me.

I pushed the strips of Velcro aside and ~~went outside to see how many migrating monarch butterflies were fluttering southward. In 15 minutes, I saw six. But it didn't take my mind off the unpleasant feeling the Velcro had initiated.

I hung the blankets and pillows out to be freshened in the bright autumn sunshine. That didn't work either. There was this snatch of Velcro and my magnifying glass still on the table. I'll put them away, I thought, and did so. Still there was that nag, nag, nag of something I should remember. It reminded me of Uncle Remus and the Tar-Baby. Once you touch a tar-baby too bad. You push with one hand to get loose, then both hands are stuck. You push with a foot and it gets stuck, etc. Tar-babies have become synonymous with getting into something you can't get out of.

Red Skelton played this tar-baby game hilariously. He'd get a feather stuck on one hand, pick it off with the other. It stuck there, and there and there and so on.

I went outside again. Somehow just going outside helps my mental processes some times. Some colorful sweet gum leaves were falling. Acorns popped onto a metal shed roof. A neighbor's cat strolled up the sidewalk. I bent down to stroke it and there, bursting on me like a suddenly lit light bulb, was the key to my unpleasant memory. A cocklebur was matted in the cat's fur.

Here's the way it was. I, in about the fourth grade, was coming home from school. Lou had gone on ahead because I had stayed to dust the erasers or do some little chore about the school to help teacher. The sun was getting very low. I decided to take a little-used short cut through a fallow field that hugged up to the river bank. I hadn't taken this short cut all year.

First, there was this over-loaded cocklebur bush. It stopped me momentarily, snatching at my cotton dress, my long cotton stocking, my shoe laces, my hair. Oh, yes, my hair. Cockleburs grow tall in rich river bottom land. But what was one cocklebur bush to a country girl. I stomped it down and proceeded, unaware that perhaps thirty cockleburs were attached to me like barnacles. They reached out with their spiny hooks to embrace other nearby cockleburs like long lost sisters and brothers.

Shadows gathered in the low places. Evening river sounds became more pronounced--bull frogs, tree frogs, crickets. I must hurry. They'd be worried about me at home. And there were my chores. I decided to run, not give the cockleburs a chance to grab. It was a grievous mistake. Sturdy, vibrant specimens of cocklebur bushes awaited my passage, a veritable sea of them. They came at me from all sides, overhead, underneath. They stuck to new places and to the cockleburs that were already ore me, three and four deep. If I pushed one bush aside, another sprang~~~~ at me. I could see the bloody scratches on my hands. No doubt they were on my face too. I tasted blood.

I'll go back, I thought, and take the long way around. But, looking back, I saw the cocklebur bushes had closed ranks behind me. I was in a living trap.

I discarded my books and lunch box to put up a more worthy fight. But fighting a rich patch of cockleburs growing on fertile land is a lost cause. Soon I saw that I was almost literally covered with the hateful things. I had become a cocklebur-baby.

Faintly I heard someone call my name. An owl? There was an old Indian legend .... But I answered. If it was Daddy, I remembered he'd always told me that if I got lost to not wander around but stay in one place, he'd find me.

I kept answering and soon Daddy loomed before me. I guessed it was Daddy. He was wearing cocklebur clothing but his face looked familiar. He picked me up and carried me out of that awful place. I put my arms around his neck, but dropped them quickly when I saw him flinch. I cried and he laughed. He cried and I laughed.

When we got home, after dark, every living thing who saw us laughed or barked or mooed or meowed. Mama gave me a haircut. It started a new fashion called the Cocklebur Tangle! My~ hair~ seemed to like it for it just naturally falls into that coiffure without my doing a thing to it, especially when I see a patch of cockleburs.

REJOICE!