Once upon a time there was a very timid young girl living on a big farm in the southern regions of the Ohio valley. She had her dog, Shep, to play with when permitted, some piglets when the sows were friendly, her imaginary friends and sometimes a kitten.

Daddy would always get his chores done in the early morning, feeding and watering six to eight hundred hogs ranging in size from little piglets up to fattening hogs that were nearly ready for market and several sows in various stages of breeding and one huge old mud encased white bore with three copper rings in his shout (cause he loved to root in the mud and under fences) that loved to drink his water straight from the hose, grunting his pleasure with every swallow.

Daddy would have a hundred or so white faced Herfordshire cattle to take care of as well, feeding hay if it were winter and allowing them graze the pasture in summer. Every day he would take a head count to see that all critters were present and accounted for. And there were usually at least two cows that needed milking.

That milk needed to be brought to the house for the cooler, to have to cook and drink, be made into butter. Sometimes Mom would make clabbered cheese. It would be the girl's job to sit in the wagon, holding onto the buckets of milk, that often had 'floaties' that Mom would strain out through a clean linen towel or an old pillow case, making sure it didn't spill before it got to the yard gate. Daddy would carry it from the wagon to the back porch where he would sit it on the library table where Mom would take over.

By the time the feeding was done it was time to get the mail, which included the local newspaper, and back to the house for dinner, giving Daddy the opportunity to read the newspaper and rest a spell.

To get the mail was a quarter mile ride out to the highway. Oftentimes Daddy would drive the old light gray & blue Ford tractor with the two wheeled orange wagon in tow (the same one used to haul water and feed to the hogs a bring the milk to the house) and she sat on the tail of the wagon bouncing over the ruts and breathing the dust of the gravel lane while the sun beat down on my bare toe head.

She so loved flowers and would hop off to pick some blue daisy shaped flowers that grew at random up the sides of a scratchy stalk, some Old lace (as Mom called it, chick weed as Daddy called it) and Fox tail grass, with a good supply of dandelion thrown in. Then she would race to catch up to the wagon and hop back on before Daddy realized she had gotten off. Sometimes she would miss the ever rambling, bouncy wagon and fall into the gravel, getting scraped up and covered in dust. Through pain and tears she would have to run even harder to catch up.

She would do her best to hide her flowers in the wagon so Daddy would not see them, but he was usually more stealth than she and often would snatch them from her dirty little hands. "You don't need them %@# $@*^&! weeds! You'll have jiggers all over you." He would toss them out into the barnyard before she had the chance to take them into the house and present her prize to Mom.

Mom would have put them into one of her many vases, maybe even the pretty blue ceramic one with the pink rose on it, and sit them proudly on the kitchen table as a centerpiece.

After dinner Daddy would often take off for town or parts unknown. Then she would have the run of her kingdom, or at least the yard and a bit beyond. She would walk the white picket fence talking with her imaginary friends until Mom would come out and scold me for being on the fence rail. "Get down from there before you fall and run one of those pickets right through you. Your Daddy would have my hide if you got hurt on them. Why don't you play on the concrete porch."

So down she would come and as soon as Mom was back inside the house, preferably in the kitchen which was on the back side of the house... she would be back on the fence. she always played on the front side of the house, that way she was away from her Mom's constant critical eye, as she spent most of her time in the kitchen/back porch area, and could keep a watch for Daddy's big black Buick coming down the lane. The one place she didn't want to play was the concrete, either the walk out back or the the porch by the house, because they were always covered in sticky cedar needles that got into my bare feet. Not to mention the sticky, stinky Yucca plants near the front porch. Neither made for pleasant play, so the further away from the house the better.

She would often sneak down to the far corner of the hog lot to behind the garden where Sheppy was banished to live at the end of a chain and bark. She was never sure how he could learn to be much of a watchdog and protect his family from that distance. The minute she got near him he would stop barking and begin jumping all over her. She totally understood how he felt to be left all alone and have no one to play with.

After this she would head to the tiny woods in the opposite corner of the lot. In this little cluster of trees two deep holes had been dug in years past to deposit unwanted items like jars and cans that no longer had a use or were broken, along with old metal and brush. Sitting on the ridge between these holes was what remained of an old Model A Tudor Sedan. It had been a rag top so there was no roof over head and the seats were pretty much shredded. The window was frozen in the half open position and the crank was gone.

It was often inhabited by wasps and other wild critters as raccoons, mice and squirrels, but they usually scrambled away whenever she came near... All except for the wasps which she often wished would have been as obliging. She would sit in the driver's seat, bouncing on the still supple springs turning the wheel this way and that and occasionally honking the horn... at least until the mice plugged it up and prevented it's blare, which was just as well, because it was a telltale sign as to where Mom could find her.

She was always sure to be back to the house before Mom discovered (hopefully) she was missing, but always before Daddy got home and most definitely before Mr. Owl came out at dusk. She did NOT like the way Mr. Owl looked at her with those big round eyes and bellowed at her, "WHO-WHOOOO! WHO ARE YOU, AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY WOODS?!!"

Once she was sent to feed Sheppy after supper and it was nearly dark. There were bats flying around the hog barn, in and out of the night light, and Mr. Owl flew low over her head and landed in a tree nearby, shouting... "WHO-HOO!" He gave her that look that said, "You are trespassing! Get home before the Boogey man comes out!"