Lizzy went from the Convent big house, to a small group living situation, back to the big house, to an apartment finally to her own house. She got Scruffles her Maine Coon cat when she got into the apartment.

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When it was time for me to move to my new house, I knew I needed to get Scruffy, later to be renamed Scruffles, a sort of upgrading as they say, trained to respond to my call. I purchased an over-sized harness, modified to fit with a few strong rubber bands attached to a lengthy yellow rope. This way if he escaped, all I had to do was step on the long fleeing rope. 

I led him into the woods, ironically in the same area I received my training in the Novitiate, the name of the building where all the damaging ‘pf,’ homophobic nonsense went on.  

“Having lived there for three years, it was a little weird going back on the property.  Familiar with those woods, I knew they’d be safe for training.  I walked him on the leash a ways, slowly letting go of it to allow him breadth to sniff his unfamiliar surroundings. 

“At the same time I tiptoed about 500 feet ahead of him, hid behind a tree and produced a sound similar to the background of the song ‘The Good, The Bad and the Ugly’. It worked. He quickly waddled his way toward  me.”  

This sniffing, and running to the call was repeated a few times until Scruffy bored with the whole process, and started heading out toward the entrance.  When he saw something familiar, the teal blue Honda, he bolted for the opened car door.  

As his familiarity with the woods grew, so did his sense of adventure.  He no longer needed coaxing to explore.  In fact, he was going farther beyond the swampy areas than I cared to attempt.

There were two times I thought I’d lost him.  Fortunately, I brought along my friend Sandy and her two daughters, Keb and Beth.

We were unaware Maine Coons carried a speculated history of jumping from a ship and swimming to the coast of the state of Maine.  It seems all Maine Coons love water.  The mischievous feline leapt across the greenish water ‘til he got to the other side.  After this fright, I realized  Scruffy had had enough training. 

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The Brook 

Unlike Scruffles, I was afraid of deep water.  As a matter of fact, not until I was nine, did I even know there was such a thing as deep water. Although, today I suspect my fear of deep water stems from a past life death. I was drown as a suspected witch. There are many clues related to that possible past life. 

Back in the 1950’s the level of water at the dammed up section, where we used to swim, was  waist high.  The only time, which often happened, any of us ever had to put our head underwater was when a large cow flop came floating down the shallow crawling brook.

“As I plugged my nose and puffed out my cheeks, I loved looking up from the bottom toward the shimmering surface of water to see the silhouettes and shadows. You see, the brook ran right through the middle of a cow pasture.” 

I think the term, class field trip, may have its origin in school outings to places such as ours.  The end-of-the-year class picnic was literally a field trip.  Our competitive games consisted of throwing, dodging, and stepping around frisbees of dried cow dung. Someone inevitably slipped, ending up sitting in a warm fresh cow flop or falling into the brook. 

In this same brook, right behind my house, my friends, Timmy, Teddy, Trudy, and I had exciting challenges crossing a large flat slippery rock without sliding into the cool frothy water.  

And we could always tell every time someone in Timmy’s house flushed. A small slip of toilet paper eased its way through the opening of a pipe leading into the brook at the base of the stonewall. 

When we saw that gross sight, we all yelled,"Someone just flushed in Timmy’s house.” 

 When we looked up at Teddy’s house on the hill, at certain monthly times of flushing, the rocks had a pink tint to them. All that raw sewage didn’t seem to hurt the rocks a bit.

As I reflect upon it today, I not sure what drove my mother to get us all in rubber boots to go down into the brook and clean it out of broken glass and other rubbish which had made its way into our water world.  Was her purpose to form some sort of bonding among us all. Kids loved my mother.

Or was it just an opportunity for my mother to have an excuse to get out of the house, as there were no malls in those days?  Was it to ensure we wouldn’t get cut when we tromped around in the water?  No one ever really dared purposely sit for very long in the water in that section, for obvious reasons.  It wasn’t a swimming hole, more suitable for wading.

On other occasions, Teddy would be planted somewhere up by the pink rocks with a Daisy B-B gun aiming at Timmy and me, hidden behind an old rusty oil barrel on our side of the brook.  Plinking sounds on the rocks near a difficult-to-spot Teddy could be heard.

Once in a while, an ow of pain echoed across the brook to the grinning marksmen whose B-B hit its target.  Of course, I wanted to believe I had hit my target Teddy.  I secretly enjoyed when Timmy got hit by Teddy; but it was not so funny when I felt a sudden stinging on my own arm.

Sides were not always matched up in my favor.  One day I will always remember, Timmy said something about my weight or size I did not appreciate. I pushed him off the railing, onto the porch floor, three feet below.  

Almost before Timmy could pick himself up, his hitman, Teddy, walked onto the property, firing his B-B gun at me.  I took off down the street, followed by Teddy, running and firing the whole time.