CATEGORY: CENTRAL OREGON

One fall afternoon as I was working at my sewing, I glanced out the window and saw a teen age boy coming down my driveway.  I continued sewing, expecting him to knock at the door, but he didn’t.  When I opened the door to look out, he was no place to be seen.  The next time I went out to get into my car, the key was missing.

In true Grass Valley, Oregon tradition, I never locked anything, and always left my key in the ignition of my car.  I had a second key for the car, which I proceeded to use and then also leave in the ignition.  It’s OK.  I have been naïve and unsuspecting all my life.  Some people call it stupid.

About two or three weeks after this incident, I was awakened about 4:30 in the morning by someone outside my front door.  I heard a masculine voice talking to what must have been a dog.  I am a light sleeper.  I was instantly alert.  We didn’t have a dog.  The closest dog was the neighbor’s dog of the skunk incident.  It was probably the same dog, and the skunk didn’t nail him as I had hoped, or he would never have come to my house again.  The dog was obviously a stranger to this stranger, because the voice was saying, “It’s alright, boy.  Good dog.  It’s alright now.  Sh-h-h-h.”  Then I heard a footstep on my front step.  This person was standing right outside my door!  I was sleeping on the sofa in the living room and my head was five feet from where he stood.  The door was unlocked.  Of course.

I lay perfectly still.  A flashlight came on and shone through the little window in the front door.  It flashed all around the room and right on me.  All this person would be able to see was the pillow and maybe a hank of hair.

The light went out.  There was more talking to the dog.  I stealthily unzipped my sleeping bag.  Then the light came on again.  Again it shone all around the room and again on me.  I thought, “This half demented person must think my sleeping bag is just clutter, and not a human being.”

The light went out again.  I heard a step down off the porch.  In an instant, I leaped out of bed and flattened myself against the wall between the front door and the window.  Besides not locking anything in this rural location, I never pulled the draperies at night either.  My windows didn’t face the road so I never considered that necessary.  They were large corner windows and faced the place by the back door where I parked my car.  I saw the light come on in my car and a teen age boy get in.  I only caught a glimpse of him, but I could see that he had straight blonde hair.  He looked like the same boy who had come so boldly and taken my keys.  I opened the front door and shouted, “You get out of that car and you get out of there RIGHT NOW!!!!”  The light came on in the car again.  The boy got out and ran.

As soon as it was daylight, in true Sherlock Holmes fashion, I went out and looked for tracks.  It had frosted the night before and his tracks were plain in the frost.  He had run out the driveway, crossed the road and scaled the fence of a pasture, the corner of which was diagonally across from my corner.  His tracks went off through high grass across the field toward the house where the owner of that property lived.

That farmer kept teen aged boys that were on parole from a correction center.  I went in and called him.  He did not answer.  I had to leave a message.  When he called me back, he said he had been out doing the morning milking.  I told him that one of his boys had tried to steal my car.  I said I had seen him fleetingly; he had straight blonde hair.  He said it couldn’t have been one of his boys, because HIS boys were accounted for at every minute of every day and night.  I said it WAS one of his boys because he had left tracks.  I told him the whole story.  He said again that it couldn’t have been one of his boys because they were all out helping with the milking at that time.  I told him this was earlier than milking time.  When he kept on in the same vein, I told him he must be delusional.

He came down to my house, but by that time the morning’s frost was melted.  The tracks down the driveway were discernible, but where they had crossed the paved highway and scaled the fence through tall weeds, they were not.  I didn’t press it, but I think he knew which boy it was.

Although he would not admit to the guilt of any of HIS boys, he said that I should keep my car locked.  I agreed with him, and–whaddya know?  That’s what I did.