kids
friday firesmith – the haunted house
Way back in the 1960s, my family lived in the small town of Blakely Georgia, a town famous for nothing at all except having a peanut butter factory that let contaminated peanut butter to kill seven people nationwide with a salmonella outbreak. That was many years ago, and I haven’t been back to that town in more years than that.
The road going to school, and we rode our bikes to school, was dirt, so those kids worried about their clothes getting muddy would ride slow. We rode fast and got dirty. Then they paved the road one year and ruined it.
A green and white house at the end of the road had home made signs that read, “No Trespassing” and “Keep out!” but we never saw anyone in the house or a car in the yard. We kids decided it was haunted. We had no reason to think ghosts had written the signs, but that didn’t stop us.
The yard wasn’t mowed on a regular basis, weeds popped up, the fence around the yard, which looked terrible even to kids, eventually fell over and it disappeared. We worried the ghost was now free to roam the earth and that’s not a bad beginning for a ghost story.
Yet over the years, just a few actually, but three or four years for a ten year old is almost half a lifetime, we ran out of reasons to believe in ghosts. A family with two little kids moved into the house, and since they were little kids we suspected the ghosts would eat them, not that there was a reason to believe that ghosts had to eat.
Then they bused us to the other side of town, to the middle school and we stopped riding our bikes as much. Suddenly, we were in high school and one day I went by the haunted house and they were tearing it down.
My family had moved to another neighborhood by that time and no one rode bikes to school when they could drive. The stories we would have told about the ghosts murdering the family, and as far as I know no one was murdered at all, would have kept us going, but it was too late . I realize now, having driven by the place where the haunted house once stood, it wasn’t ghosts that were haunting that house, but us.
What there a house in your home town people thought was haunted?
Take Care,
Mike
He cannot tell a lie, and he didn’t lie
A lawyer, who had a wife and 12 children, needed to move because his rental agreement
was terminated by the owner who wanted to reoccupy the home. But he was having a lot of difficulty finding a new house. When he said, he had 12 children, no one would rent a home to him because they felt that the children would destroy the place.
He couldn’t say he had no children because he couldn’t lie. Now we all know lawyers cannot, and do not lie… So, he sent his wife for a walk to the cemetery with 11 of their kids.
He took the remaining one with him to see rental homes with the real estate agent. He loved one of the homes and the price was right — the agent asked: “How many children do you have?
He answered: “Twelve.”
The agent asked, “Where are the others?”
The lawyer, with his best courtroom sad look, answered, “Well, they’re in the cemetery with their mother.”
MORAL: It’s not necessary to lie, one only has to choose the right words… and don’t forget, most politicians are unfortunately lawyers.