My oldest brother lashed the Radio Flyer wagon to our unusually powerful Chesapeake Bay Retriever. He put me and my other brother, ages six and seven, into the wagon. Things went well until the squirrel showed up. 

Between our house and the neighbor’s was a two-rail fence, part of it surrounded by rose bushes, the rest serving more as a landscape feature than a barrier. The bottom rail was only inches higher than the Radio Flyer.

The squirrel felt no obligation to stay in our yard. Our beloved dog chased it under the fence on a full run. The bottom rail stripped Dean and I from the wagon and left us sitting dumbfounded on the grass. The dog and the wagon just kept going.

That wasn’t the only time that fence got the best of me. As small as I was, I remember walking the top rail until I fell into the roses. I went to bed that night after my mother painted at least a hundred orange dots of Mercurochrome on my wounds.

Mercurochrome fell off it’s own fence in 1998 when the FDA finally decided mercury in over-the-counter antiseptics might not be as safe and effective as once thought. 

How’d we ever make it through our childhood years?