Page 30 - Super Cowboy Rides Again

Four cans meant I had to make two trips, which took up
most of the rest of the afternoon. At least I wasn’t
scrubbing walls or planting the garden, but I would
have rather been raking the strawberries.

Grandma rounded up two old buckets with lids.
In each of these she mixed one bucket of paint and one
bucket of tar. When I say she mixed them, I mean she
dumped them together and I had to mix them. By the
time they were mixed, my back and shoulders ached.
They were an ugly, stinky mess—I mean, the stuff in
the buckets was, not my back and shoulders.

Grandma placed the buckets by the garden side of
the garage, setting a lid loosely on each bucket.
“Good,” she said. “We’re ready.”

I wasn’t quite sure what we were ready for, but I
was tired and glad when my dad finally came to pick
me up. When Grandma saw him coming up the step,
she turned to me with a serious expression on her face.
“What we did today is to be our little secret. I don’t

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