A Guest, Uninvited, Who Did Not Know How to Leave

 

Good Saturday morning.  Paradise is receiving another cleansing this weekend with wind.  What doesn’t wash away is blown away so when the sun returns it will be glorious!  Today’s story goes back a number of years and I think of it often.  Remember I told you what a large, noisy happy family we were.  We were also farmers and I loved every day of my life.  My oldest sister attempted to sew when she was in her teens but I can’t remember that she kept that alive after she married.  Today’s story is about one of those days that will be etched in my mental notebook of memories forever.

 Every year when the new automobiles were introduced the American Auto Companies published a beautiful, colorful booklet highlighting them.  Well I think they were highlighting the autos but for me the people in the booklets were the fascination.  My Dad made a trip to town on my 6^th birthday and he brought me one of these auto booklets.  I was thrilled because this was a book of paper dolls for me.  While my oldest sister, Ann, was sewing I decided to sit on the floor close to her and cut out my paper dolls. We were quite happy and busy but I thought I saw something move behind the sewing machine table.  I was much too busy to give the thought too much of my time and I continued.  Suddenly Ann jumped up from her chair and I turned just in time to see a huge snake.  Well to a six-year-old huge was the description that best suited this ugly, slimy creature.

Our house was called a shot-gun style with four very large rooms, two on each side of the house and a wide hallway that separated them.  During the summer the hallway was open and our table to seat twelve was in the middle of the hall.  I think that snake decided not to argue with the table and he slithered across the hall to the girl’s bedroom but with screaming girls and more joining the party quickly, he was headed for safety.  Clearly he did not know how to exit the house.  This room had two windows, one facing the front porch and one facing the side yard, but they were screened.  Oh boy!

“Get a hoe,” Ann shouted and Ghynell ran for the back yard to a shed and returned with the hoe which was to chop off that snake’s head.  The girls pulled the mattress off the bed.

The beds in those days were frames with head and foot boards, a comfy mattress, and a bed spring that was just that, coils of springs exposed.  Wallah, thought the snake, perfect place to hide.  He found himself in a delicate situation, however; when he realized he was in a maze of coiled springs and all he could do is try to hide from one side of the bed to the other.  You see Ghynell was chopping that bed spring with a hoe and when she chopped, well you can imagine the disturbance to all of those springs.

Suddenly my Dad entered the room.

“What on earth are you girls doing in here,” he demanded. “It sounds like you are tearing down the house.”

Once he appraised the situation he managed to relieve Ghynell of the hoe, which I will add, was no easy task.  He shooed us all out of the room and with the hoe handle made a way for the poor snake to return to the floor to be escorted from the room, into the hall, and out the front and down the steps.

“Good Lord,” he exclaimed.  “That was a rat snake and I don’t think he would have hurt anyone.  He was simply trying to stay cool and out of the way.  Now girls he did not belong in the house but you should have called me instead of destroying a bed.  Well it is your bed so do what you will with it.” 

Then he left the house and very quietly the girls went about putting the bedroom back together and I happily returned to my paper dolls.  The poor snake probably took off to the safety of the barn and promised himself to never visit anyplace that had no defined way of leaving once he arrived.  And he was huge!