Big Cat and Big Sister

One of my greatest fears when I was young was going to the barn to do the chores after dark, particularly before we got electricity. It was always kind of spooky, even in the daytime and when the light started to get dim outside the shadows really got dark inside. On top of that, if it was windy, the barn would creak and you couldn’t be sure what made the noise. I didn't mind the noise of the livestock moving around and making noise, I knew what those sounds were. It was the unexpected things like a screech owl, a bird, a bat or the wind that caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand up.

It was often my job to put down straw from the strawmow to bed the shed and you couldn’t have a lantern in the strawmow because if it upset the whole barn would be on fire in a few minutes. So you worked in the near dark and there might be anything in the corner where you couldn’t see, or so I thought.

It didn’t help that dad had told me about going down to the barn in the early morning to feed the horses, when he was 10 or 11. He said that he opened the stable door and a big cat jumped of off the steps to the barn floor and came past him out the stable door. He said he thought it was a mountain lion. Well I knew there weren’t suppose to be any mountain lions left in Pennsylvania, but knowing and believing are two different things. And I really did believe that there could be a big cat in the barn.

Also I was working on the barn floor one day and was coming down to the feeding room to get a fork. Unknown to me, Peggy was hiding behind the steps and as I came down she reached through and grabbed my ankle. Well I cleared the 10 feet to the stable door without touching the ground and didn’t stop until I got to the middle of the barnyard. Peggy thought that was great. I didn’t think so. She might have been a big cat.