A Splice, A Square. What Does It Matter?

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About a mile down the road lived the Meltons—Shirley, his wife Imogene,  and their children, Herthel, Fern and Lilly June. (Later another son would be born.) Shirley was in the habit of borrowing tools from Daddy who had considerably more than most of the neighbors. One Saturday morning Daddy called Ivy and me. “Shirley has my square. I need you two to fetch it.  Can you do that?”

“Oh yeah,” we screamed, welcoming the a break from the weed pulling job he had given us.

“Now what are you going for?”

“A square,” we said in unison.

“And don’t go dawdling. Go straight there and back.”

The mile walk we dawdled just a little and realized as we got to the Melton place we had forgotten what Daddy sent us for. We searched our memories, tried out different words, agreeing it started with an S. A splice. Yes that was it.

Shirley was chopping wood. “Howdy there girls. You looking for Fern. She ain’t here.”

“No,” Ivy said. “Daddy sent us to get his splice.”

Shirley shook his head. “You girls fooling me?

“No,” I said. “Daddy said tell you he needed his splice back.”

Shirley put us in the back of his Model A, drove to our house. “Walter, what in heaven’s name is a splice?”

“Danged if I know. Why?”

“The girls said you sent them to get yours.”

Daddy and Shirley had a good laugh, after which Daddy went for his square and left Ivy and me pulling weeds with a stern warning. “You’d better be hard at it when I get back.