Rock throwing Lawnmowers

When Felita was old enough (I’m not sure how old that was), Mother would make her treks to town or to do community/family errands leaving us at home with chores (always with chores)--under Felita’s supervision. As soon as that old blue station wagon disappeared over the eastern hill, the chores were abandoned for some sort of play, if not mischief. 

Felita was all about having time to herself, listening and dancing to the tunes on the radio with her friends and our closest neighbors, Nancy or Debbie, allowing us to do whatever we wanted...until something went wrong or the time was drawing near for mother’s return. 

On one summer day we were left with the chore of mowing the two-acre lawn--not foreign to us, ‘twas something we had done since we were big enough to push the mower. On this day, my two younger sisters and I were romping in the summer sunshine and decided to play hide-and-go-seek. Beverly and I had our turns at seeking and eventually Pauline was ‘it’. Beverly and I ran off as Paula was counting out the time for us to hide. Contemplating the best of hiding places, Beverly and I decided that we would really throw her for a loop and hide inside the house. We ran around the house and into the back patio door, locking it behind us, laughing all the while. [Our doors were never locked!] 

Just after we entered the house, Paula was on the prowl. Ducking below the windows, Beverly and I gleefully watched as she searched all around--for quite some time. Eventually, exasperated with the hunt, Paula tried to enter via the patio door, found it locked and knew we were inside the house. She started around the house and Bev and I immediately headed for the front door, arriving a moment before her, locking it as she shrieked. Whew! Then we remembered that Felita’s bedroom window was open and ran down the hall into the bedroom and slammed it shut--laughing--just as Paula appeared outside. 

The unjustified scorn delivered by Beverly and me was just a bit too much and that little feisty squirt of a sister began pounding on that window, demanding that we let her in. All of a sudden there was a clash, glass flew our way and it looked as if something had been thrown right into the middle of that window.  Felita is suddenly jolted from developing the proper choreography to Cher’s “Half-Breed” playing on WKAC. 

When mother arrived there was a wee bit of grass cut--a path in front of the house.  In that path, which just happened to be right in front of that broken window, was one-half of a hard clay rock and the other half was inside on Felita’s desk with all that broken glass. 

I truly don’t remember how the idea developed yet, it was collective-sister minds and a memory that stays. We did eventually tell Mom and Dad what had happened--later in life.