Cliven Bundy: The Toad That Peed On The Right Wing

When I was a little boy, growing up in the Mississippi River town of Clinton, Iowa, we lived on the north end of town, high on a hill at the bottom of which was a wooded area with a creek running through it. It was called “Turtle Creek,” although I can’t recall ever once seeing a turtle in it. But there was always that chance. Being a wet, cool area, tucked down between two hills like it was, that little wooded area just to the north of my house was a great place for little boys and their brothers and friends to go exploring, to fight pretend battles with sides defending either side of the creek, which usually only had small amounts of water in it — the creek’s main purpose was to provide a rain runoff to the river.

We had a simple name for the area. We just called it “Down The Hill.” If we told Mom and Dad that we were going “Down The Hill”, they knew just where we would be. In fact, Dad could amble out to the back yard and just start hollering out kid names until whichever one of his seven happened to be down there scouting around that was stupid enough to answer back.  This usually meant he needed one of us to come up the hill, back to the house, and be his remote control for the TV set. Remember, this was the 1960s.

On occasion, I would explore around the western edge of the “Down The Hill” area, where the creek was usually wider and deeper, leading to an area that we called “The Drowning Hole” (although I don’t recall anyone actually drowning in it, legend had it there were numerous skeletons of BOYS MY AGE at the bottom of the deep murky pit), that had to be accessed either by walking up the creek and incurring the possible wrath of a family of tough kids who thought they owned that part of the world, or taking a treacherous walk along a ridge half way up the hill on the northwest side that we elegantly named “Mosquito Path” for obvious regions.

Every now and then, a lucky explorer would find a toad.

Oh, a glorious, grey and bumpy TOAD! The bigger, the better!

And on a hot summer afternoon in 1966, 11-year old Bill Schmalfeldt, scouting on a solo expedition toward the notorious “Drowning Hole,” made his way down the hill, through the scrub, to the banks of the crick (which is how we pronounced the word “creek”) where he saw a large stone hop a short distance to get out of his way.

But this was no stone, my friends. This was a toad. And MY, what a toad he was.

This wasn’t one of your tiny little hoppers, just graduated from tadpole. No sir! This toad had to be hundreds — maybe THOUSANDS of years old! And I snagged him. I picked him up, holding him around his ribcage, his pale, white belly facing me, his front legs dangling on either side of my clutching grasp. He glared at me the way toads will glare when captured. It’s a defiant stare. “All right. You’ve got me. But you can’t eat me. I taste terrible,” is what the look said. (Judging from the reactions of the various dogs we employed in my childhood who would pick up a toad in their mouths, spit it out, and go eat grass to get the taste out of their mouths, I believed the toad meant what he was saying with his green and yellow eyes with the vertical slits for pupils.)

The other neighborhood kids were jealous when I came running back into my front yard (which was actually the back yard, since the alley we had to navigate to drive to our house technically had no name and “Cleveland Street” was to the east of the house, but it stopped short of the hill and actually didn’t front our house at all) with my newly discovered prize.

He was a large, male toad. Don’t ask how I knew, because I didn’t. But by God if any large toad I found was going to be a GIRL toad. And his name was Mr. Gizmo and he was going to be my life long companion, and I would take him everywhere and show him off as a talisman, as a symbol of my success as an explorer “Down The Hill,” and after standing with my brothers and friends basking in their admiration and envy, I marched triumphantly into the house where my father sat in his Bermuda shorts and white socks, the TV on, his face buried in one of his books, my Mom in the kitchen getting dinner ready.

“LOOK!” I exulted as I held out the toad for my Mom to see. “I found him. His name is Mr. Gizmo and he’s the biggest toad anyone ever found in Turtle Creek. Everyone says so. And I’m gonna put him in a box with some grass and take care of him and…”

The toad commenced to urinate. Copiously. All over my shirt, soaking the front of my summertime cutoff jean shorts. Spattering onto the floor. Getting my Mom’s shoe’s wet. She screamed at me.

“GET THAT FILTHY THING OUT OF THE HOUSE, THEN GET BACK IN HERE AND GET IN THE TUB!”

I looked toward my father. He was a boy once. He understood. He must have.

He didn’t even look up from his book, but I could see his head shaking back in forth as he pondered what sort of dimwit would bring a toad into the house so it could pee on the dimwit’s mother.

“Sweet Jesus,” I heard him mutter. And that was the end of the toad matter.

Cliven Bundy is like that toad. The conservatives found him, picked him up and loved him. He was the perfect hero. A big man, being oppressed by the bad old government. They sent armed agent to force his cows off of the government land he refused to pay the unjust grazing fees for, the same fees paid by thousands of other ranchers in Nevada and everywhere else one finds federally-owned land.

The conservatives brought him into the house and loved him and were gonna keep him for ever and ever and then…

Cliven Bundy peed all over their shirts and shoes by talking about how happy “The Negroes” were as slaves.

Now, their leaders wear a moue of disgust on their faces, they disavow Cliven Bundy and his hate speech. They want nothing to do with it.

Still, Cliven Bundy peed all over their shirts, pants and shoes.

And somehow, I just don’t think a bath is gonna cut it this time.

By: Bill Schmalfeldt

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