Not Scared?

There were two times that I was really scared. The first was when I was still in school; I believe it was before I started to high school. My parents would drop me off at the local community center on Friday evenings for a roller skating event. They would go shopping and if they weren’t there to pick me up at the end, I would walk to my grandparent Miner’s house that was about four hundred yards away. It wasn’t like today when parents worried about their kids. It was a rural community and my walk would parallel a highway.

The road was dark. There were no homes between the community center and my grandparent’s farmhouse. Part of the roadway ran between two high banks that were capped by thick underbrush and mountain laurel. As I walked through this dark area, pebbles slid down one embankment toward the road. I was scared. Afraid that something might be there to harm me, I tightened the grasp on my skate laces figuring I could get one good whack if something charged. I didn’t run, but stepped up my pace until I was safe in the house.

The next day, my father said that something had killed and eaten part of a pig on a nearby farm that was on the other side of the community center. Perhaps I should have been a bit more scared.

Another time I can recall was after I’d graduated high school and was working the afternoon shift at the Walworth Valve Company in South Greensburg. I would leave work at eleven pm and drive for half an hour to get home. Many times I would feel drowsy. Often turning the volume up on the radio and winding down the windows to let in the cold air would revive me for the trip home.

One night as I was driving home the song “The Good, Bad, and Ugly” was blaring loudly on the radio. My windows were down and chilly air was coming inside. I was still feeling drowsy. As I crested a hill, a huge owl swooped down in front of my car. Its wingspan was nearly as wide as the windshield of my 1966 Galaxie 500 XL. The owl’s body narrowly missed the hood and its flight almost my car’s windscreen. I was definitely awake for the rest of the drive home.