When I turned 16, I went to work at a local grocery store in the afternoons after school. I had been working there about a month when this real pretty girl came to work there also. Even though we live in a fairly small town, she and I had never met. I had just started driving on my own and had bought myself a new pickup. Seeing that her dad brought her to work every afternoon, I would ask her everyday if I could give her a ride home from work. The answer was always no, "because her dad wouldn't let her."
One Saturday she and I had to work the morning shift together, and when it was time to go home, she asked if I would give her a ride home, seems her dad's truck had broken down. I was thrilled. I had no idea where she lived, and after following her directions for what seemed like 40 miles, we pulled into an older farm house, with about thirty chickens and forty pigs running around the yard. I was no stranger to the chickens or the hogs, but we never let them out of the pen to roam around the house, so that was kinda new to me.
When I parked the truck, she asked if I wanted to come in to meet her parents and I said sure. As we went in the screen door, she called to her mom who was in the kitchen canning tomatoes, and told her she had someone with her. Her mom came in the room, we introduced ourselves and spoke a minute. She told me to have a seat on the couch and she brought me a glass of sweet tea. It was a fairly large house with an extra long living room. In one end of the room was a large attic fan, sitting in the floor running. Someone had stood it up on its side and welded braces on it so it would stand, but it didn't have any kind of cover on it. From the backroom, I could hear a ballgame playing on a radio and a man's voice cussing the announcer.
As I went to set on the couch, I nearly sat on their cat. He tore across my lap and ran toward the backroom. A few minutes later, he came back out and laid down just inside the door. She asked if I wanted to meet her dad, and after hearing all the cussing, I didn't really, but I said yes anyway.
I didn't know it at the time, but her dad had lost a leg and wore a prosthetic one. When he was home he took it off and sat in a wheelchair. He was a fairly large man with a rough voice that to a teenager was kinda scary. She went and got him and as he was coming into the room he ran over the cats tail. The cat let out a scream, tore out running across the room, back across my lap, and straight for the fan. He ran into the fan, which sounded like a gong, and it sent him sailing back across the room where he landed in front of me. He then, without missing a beat, headed toward the screen door. There was a hole in the screen about the size of a half-dollar and he went through it.
It was probably the funniest thing I had ever seen but was afraid to laugh. Her dad looked around the room and said "What the heII is wrong with that crazy Son Of A Bit.. ", and I couldn't hold it anymore. I busted out laughing , but when I looked up at her dad, he wasn't. Needless to say I politely introduced myself, and eased out the door. The next day at work, she said that she had found the cat out in the yard dead.
