Last week, on the very day that Farmer H left on a jet plane to foist himself upon the unknowing Swedish public...Mrs. Hillbilly Mom had an unsettling encounter. Which party was the most unsettled is up for debate.
Farmer H left around 10:00 a.m. to head for the airport. I left shortly after him, to make my daily 44 oz Diet Coke run. I reveled in my Farmer-H-less freedom, seven days stretched out ahead like a lifetime of relaxation, without the master of the house/keeper of the inn to answer to. Around 4:30, I went upstairs to enjoy my evening driveway walk, then give the dogs a snack on the front porch, then feed and water the animals.
It was one of those too-hot too-soon days. Mid-seventies. I walked in my standard walking uniform. That being sweatpants (the new ones without the hole in the hip), a yellow-and-white pin-striped big (now really big) shirt with my cell phone stuffed in the front pocket, and my blue-and-white cap to hold my lovely lady mullet out of my face when the wind tried to flagellate my cheeks with it. The dogs (and Copper) romped in the front field as I made my six trips up the driveway.
On the third one, having had a chance to break a sweat, flush my face, and make my right nostril drip from the top of its opening...I heard a car. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom does not like to hear a car when she's walking. She is a woman, by cracky, out for her exercise. Not some docile cow grazing in a field, unaware of people gazing at her. Sometimes, I even turn around halfway up the driveway, and then double back once the car has passed. I'm not a waver to possible neighbors unless I'm behind the wheel of T-Hoe. Walking time is my time. I don't want to be noticed.
I kept my head down, which I do anyway, because the sun comes almost straight into my eyes at that low angle of the evening. I glimpsed a smallish white sedan coming up the road in front of the BARn field. I was almost to the end of the driveway, where I turn around. They'd already seen me. I kept going.
That car did not!
It rolled across the intersection of the Mansion driveway and the gravel road. Past our metal pole with our address hanging from a chain.
AND STOPPED!
NO! NO! NO! This wasn't supposed to happen! Here I was, an old (sweaty) lady with bad knees, out for her evening hobble, and now this car of strangers was stopping.
AND BACKING UP!
There were three guys in the car. One, in a cap not dissimilar to mine, put his head out the window, leaning over his elbow.
"Can you tell us how to get to #### [REDACTED]?"
"Go back the way you came. At the bottom of the hill, turn left. That road is [REDACTED]."
Then that car started backing up. I turned and headed down my own driveway, towards the Mansion, hoping they weren't following me. You never know what goes on out here. I felt perfectly safe until that time the FBI found the headless body in the septic tank about a half-mile up that gravel road, on past the Mansion.
I don't know how those three guys in the white car turned around. I don't THINK they backed all the way down the gravel road. Maybe they pulled into the horsey crazy-poodle neighbor's driveway. All I know is that my peace was disturbed by this unusual incident. I kept thinking about Michael Myers, escaped from the mental hospital prison in the original Halloween, driving that station wagon he stole from the guy he killed, backing up to unnerve Jamie Lee Curtis's smart-ass friend who hollered, "Hey, jerk! Speed kills!"
Still, I couldn't help lamenting that they did not ask me how to get to Carnegie Hall.
Too bad the dogs weren't at your side. They would have scared off the guys.
ReplyDeleteThis is when Copper would have been nice to have nearby!
ReplyDeleteSioux,
ReplyDeleteJack would have made a valiant effort to be big and bad. Juno barks but hangs back, though she does look menacing.
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Kathy,
Copper DOES make one think twice about getting close. He spent most of yesterday ON OUR PORCH! That dog is taking too many liberties. He's STILL not getting a snack from me.