Sharing here because some of my folk are not on the family site yet. I remember well those pleasant Sunday afternoons at Grandma Kesslers house.The carefree days of summer childhood. (This is the house at the foot of the viaduct in Rincon that s now Susies Barber Shop. Nearly every Sunday, it seemed, we would all gather at Grandmas after church and have one fine picnic out on the long tables in the backyard. In those days, our biggest problem was how we were going to stay out of sight of our parents long enough for them to forget to tell us to get cleaned up for evening church services. If you went into grandmas house too early, some grown up would make you get in the bathtub and get cleaned and dressed. Then you had to sit on the couch in the living room until time to walk a block or two to church. But if you were smart, you could time your appearance just right. Suddenly, it would be almost 6 oclock and, magically, to late for you to get cleaned up and all that stuff . So youd be left in the care of some older teenaged cousin. A cousin that was probably going to bribe ( or threaten) you not to tell that he or she went down to the store and left you and the other brats alone in the house without supervision. While the rest of our very large family of parents, cousins, aunts and uncles were at church, and the teenaged babysitter was gone to the store or meeting a boy at the corner, we were left to our own devices. We used this time wisely. We would sneak into Grandmas room and peek in her bottom bureau drawer, where she kept all her post cards that people had sent her, or we would go into the front bedroom and look in the cedar chest. I dont remember there being anything in that chest that excited me. Mostly we used this time to eat all the dessert that was left or other fine food choices and watch television. One night, my sister, Heidi, cousins Bruce and Ronald and I were left at Grandmas. It was getting dark and we heard noises in the attic. We had watched way too many episodes of Rod Sterlings The Twilight Zone. We were scared!! Ronald decided that it must be another cousin, Roger or Ritchie just trying to scare us, so he puffed himself up and decided to open the hall door that led upstairs to the attic. We all got in a line behind him trying to be brave like him and followed him up a stair or two. Now, the light at the top of the stairwell was operated by pulling on a string with a canning jar round tied to it, about the fourth stair up. He opened the door and like a train, we went up the stairs following our brave leader. He pulled the string and like a flash, the light came on. At the top of the stairs was a pair of windows that looked out over the back porch roof. As quick as the light came on, we saw a shadow of something go out the window! Of course, we didnt see who it was because our fearless leader, Ronald, turned and ran right over our backs, back down the stairs and out the door and straight to the kitchen! The rest of us were all trying to get back down the steps and out the door at the same time! We heard it jump from the porch roof on to the roof of the tin shed next to the porch and out into the back yard. Who or what ever it was was gone by the time we got the courage to go out onto the back porch, of course leaving the kitchen door open with the light spilling out into the darkness. We huddled in the kitchen until our babysitter returned just before the grown-ups did. To this day, 50 years later, I still dont know if it was someone trying to scare us or if it was a burglar. Anyhow, they did a good job The next Sunday we were one of the kids waiting in the living room, cleaned and ready to go to church!
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 13:08:39 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015