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I finally spotted Ma and* Pa coming back to the house. Their clothes looked as if they
were going to blow off their bodies. It got so dark that .the chickens went to roost. Back at

the house, Pa remembered reading that a solar eclipse was about to happen soon.
Pa was interested in astrological things. He used to get me out of bed in the wee hours
of the morning to see a lunar eclipse or falling stars. We looked through smoked glass to see

a solar eclipse. He told me about the great northern lights (aurora borealis). I listened spell­
bound when he spoke of a luminous meteoric phenomenon that looked like a long train lit up
going through the night sky. This may sound like a fairy tale, but Ma witnessed this sight,
too. Pa was pretty smart. I wish he could have given us more of his time-^-I’m sure we

would have really benefited from all his.'knowledge. I guess we didn’t do too bad, though—
none of us turned out to be criminals.

In 1918, lightning struck the big oak at the front gate, splintering it from top to bot­
tom. Uncle Webb Gillen, Grandma Dicks’s brother, was living with us at the time. He had
just moved from one end of the porch to the other. If he hadn’t moved, he would have surely

been killed. The water bucket was knocked off the shelf. Pa was reading with legs crossed
inside the house by a window. The force of the lightning uncrossed them.
I heard the crackling of the tree tfunk being split from top to bottom and saw chips

flying all over the porch and yard. The entire universe out front turned a blinding, brilliant
red color. I was so scared I ran back into the bedroom and crawled under the bed. Pa found
me and asked where Uncle Webb was. He jumped up when I said to check on the front

porch. Uncle Webb was all right except for being very shaken up.

and ^jriaina /rennieA

One Sunday morning the boys, my uncles, came over to our house as they had a habit

of doing on Sundays. They must have missed not having Pa around. They had been working
in the fields all week. Pa went to church every Sunday afternoon to superintend Sunday
School and teach the adult class from 3:00 to 4:30. If the adults were enjoying themselves,

they stayed until 5:00.
This specific Sunday morning, for some unknown reason, Ma was irritated with me. I

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