It started out being a fairly ordinary night, until suddenly, there seemed to be a buzz.  My dad, seemingly out of the blue and without warning, took a large saw and started cutting a great big hole in the back wall of our second story family room, just next to my newest hiding place.  The part that used to be wall fell to the ground one story below with a great big thump! All of us kids, me being the youngest, just stood in the opening, looking down into the woods below and listening to the crickets.  I don’t remember any of us saying a word.  He just seemed to be done for the night.

It was at the age of my earliest memories.  The night had been ordinary, except that as a young child, everything seems so large and exciting.  I had just found that new hiding place which had just been sacrificed. I love hiding places. Evolution influences us so much more than most of us are willing to admit.  Small bear cubs, small anythings, have a very strong motivation to hide, lest we be eaten. I was just like any other cub. I absolutely adored my hiding places.  They were magical. The covers on your bed turned into a powerful impenetrable shield against monsters when properly pulled over your head. A single toe sticking out at the bottom could be the difference between complete safety and total disaster.  Now, I chuckle at the memory of the nuns in grade school teaching us that humans, unlike other animals, have no instincts other than things like blinking.

The next day, everybody started building a new stained glass studio, jutting out into the woods behind our house.  My job was to hand nails to people. It was a very important job. Without the nails, everything would just fall apart.  If there were plans for this new building, I don’t remember ever seeing them.

This story is continued with The Home of a Tradesman

This story started almost one hundred years earlier, which will be expanded on later.