Home Alone

Weetie and I just got home from a ride in to town.  I couldn't help my self!!  The sky was getting darker and lonelier looking by the minute.  The thunder was getting louder and closer.  I try to tell myself that it's just a thunderstorm...that it will pass, but myself refuses to listen.  My flip-flops and the car keys were near the door so I was out of here in a flash, leaving the storm behind.  There's a cold front coming through this evening so the storms were expected.  It just happens to be Poppy's night to work late.  Never fails, does it??

When my Mother died, she was living in an assisted living facility about five miles from Poppy and me.  I would go sit with mama during a storm because she was very afraid of storms too.  We were like two peas in a pod.  For a while after mama died, when it was storming, I would drive over and park in front of the apartment where she had lived, until the storm passed.  I missed her so much.  I still miss her.

The storm left a steamy haze in the trees...

 
When I was sixteen or seventeen, after we had moved to the country, a terrible storm blew up one afternoon.  No one was home but mama and me.  Jackie and our younger brother Randall were out somewhere on the property, or down the road a piece.  But this terrible storm blew up.  The sky was dark, the wind blowing, there was lightening and thunder...when suddenly the pounding rain turned to hail...large hail, bouncing off everything!  Mama was standing in the guest room barely peeping out the door and I was as close behind her as I could get!!   She said, "Lord, Melba, do you think it's the end of the world"?   She was scared for the two of us and scared for Jackie and Randall.  When everything got quiet and the storm had moved past, Jackie and Randall came running in the house.  The two of them had jumped into a car that was parked in the driveway and had crouched down on the floorboard.  The mailman also had pulled into our driveway and stopped.  The windshield of his car was broken out by the hail stones!   Daddy must have pulled up immediately after the storm, and shortly thereafter, a news reporter from Robbins came out to take pictures and ask questions.  A field of tobacco, belonging to our closest neighbor, was completely destroyed by the hail.  The following day the front page of "The Robbins Record", featured a large picture of daddy, our neighbor, and little Randall in the middle of the beaten down tobacco field.  Every window in our neighbor's small, older home was broken out.  Quite a storm that was!!!

I don't have a picture of the day of the storm, but this was was along about the same time.  Jackie was telling our cousin John how to handle the pony.  Little Randall seemed very interested...I'm sure he thought his big brother Jackie knew how to do everything!!!

Have I told you what a very special little boy Randall was?  Jackie was the youngest, at eleven, when Randall was born.  We all loved Randall so much...he was just the cutest, sweetest, most loveable little boy ever...

Thank you for stopping by.  I started this post yesterday.  That cold front did come through last night!   We woke up this morning to a sunny, cool 65 degrees.  I'm giving myself one hour to straighten up this house.  Hopefully, then I am going outside and find something to do!

Love,
Henny Penny