Little Johnny and the grease trap

(A very funny one in the Little Johnny series, stories I tell June from my childhood.)

Once upon a time when Little Johnny was about four, he had a very embarrassing experience—one of quite a few, as he was a bit of a showoff as a little boy!

Johnny and his family were all visiting Aunt Sadie and Uncle Andrew in Pidcock, Georgia, one summer weekend, and all of Johnny’s many cousins were there, the McKinnons who lived there—Billy, Mabbat, Wallace, Phillip—and Patsy and Marilee, and Barbara and Little Bill, and maybe a few more. It was one of those family gatherings that happened a lot down in Brooks County.

So they were all playing outside that day, which is what they mostly did wherever they were, and Little Johnny decided he needed to show off a little bit.

“I bet y’all I can walk all the way around the top of that grease trap!” he boasted, knowing everybody would be impressed because nobody wanted to even get close to that grease trap most of the time. It was stinky and yucky and scary. It was just a little brick wall about a foot high that made a pool just underneath the kitchen windows that caught all the dishwater and trapped the grease (hence its name!) from all the dirty dishes instead of running it through the septic system where it tended to clog up the pipes and the drain field. But it was yucky!

So everybody poo-pooed Johnny’s boasting, saying they knew he wouldn’t get up on that wall and walk around it cuz he would be in big trouble!

Well, that was about all it took to make sure that Little Johnny was gonna do it, since they dared him.

Well, he stepped up on it, and they all gathered around oooohhing and ahhh-ing and taunting him even more. So off he stepped on his daring journey around the little wall. Except that about three steps into that journey, his foot slipped on that old crumbly brick and down he went, Plop! right into that stinky, greasy, yukky mess!

Of course, he started yelping right away and somebody went running off to get his mommy and he was trying to climb out when she arrived.

She was not very happy! She mostly just snatched him out of that mess and marched him around to the back steps by the ear.

“Stand on those steps!” she ordered.

So Johnny stood on the steps while Mommy hosed him down good with the garden hose, and she wasn’t too delicate about it either. She finally had to make him strip down to his underwear to get him halfway clean, and then she marched him into the shower—luckily, there was a shower room right off the back porch, because this was a country farm house and being dirty was pretty normal.

Johnny was not happy about getting hosed down, especially with all his cousins standing around laughing at him and taunting him for being such a showoff.

But we all hope that Little Johnny learned a good lesson from that grease trap! He sure did stay away from it for the rest of his childhood!