Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years.
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It was a hot summer evening when I was somewhere around eight or nine years old. I was sitting on the floor of our living room with my friend, Dick Foley, and we were playing some kind of board game. I think it was Monopoly.
Dick was going to spend the night at our house. Then, the following day, we would both go to the Saturday matinee at the Avalon Theater.
My sister, Betty, was reading, while my mother crocheted and my dad listened to the radio. I guess you could say it was a typical summer evening at the Boyd house.
Then suddenly, with no warning at all, my sister screamed. It scared the daylights out of all of us because it was such a loud scream. Then she yelled, “There’s a bat in here,” and she covered her head with an afghan that was folded over the sofa arm.
I looked all around the room, but I didn’t see a bat anywhere. I thought maybe my sister was becoming a little “batty.” But before I could say anything, a bat flew at lightning speed right down our open stairway. Then it headed toward my mother. She didn’t scream. Instead, she let out a kind of moan and said, “Oh dear.”
My dad didn’t say much. He just opened the front door to see if the bat would fly out. But the bat had no interest in going out the door. Instead, it darted here and there. It flew up and down our stairway. I had no idea a bat could fly so fast.
My dad went to the basement and came back with two old wooden tennis rackets. He gave me one, and the two of us tried to swat the bat as it darted from room to room. Neither of us even came close. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to swat a bat.
My dad gave his tennis racket to Dick and then headed to our garage to get something else. For the next couple minutes, Dick and I swatted furiously in our living room. Then one of my swats went wide, and I knocked a vase of flowers off an end table.
That’s what made Dick start laughing. And once Dick Foley started laughing, there was no way to stop it. He sometimes laughed so hard he got a pain in his side. Then I started laughing. So there we were, both of us laughing and swatting while my sister covered her head and screamed every now and then.
When my dad came back into the house, he was carrying his fishing seine. It was what he used to catch minnows that he sometimes used for bait. It was a net, maybe four feet by six feet. My dad held one side of the net and I held the other in a doorway just above the floor. When we saw the bat coming toward the doorway, we quickly raised the net, and the bat flew right into it. Then we let the net fall to the floor.
Aha … we had it! The bat was securely trapped in the net. My dad carried the net outdoors and released the bat. I went with him, and we both watched as it took off into the nighttime sky.
Dick didn’t go onto the porch with us. When I came back inside, he was still sitting on our living room floor laughing. Boy, did that kid like to laugh. I think that’s one reason we had so much fun together
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Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at bill@davidwboyd.com