Murder At The Barn

Insanity breeds in family lines and ours has a healthy claim to it. When Cece and cousin Rosa get together, amazing and scary things happen. This has always been so, even when they were little tots. Somehow, the brain waves and imagination corpuscles get tossed around like a nuclear accelerator and BINGO: weird things occured.

Such was the case many times when we lived on Gilbert Road in Yakima, Washington. Our barn sat very close to the road and it fascinated the girls who wanted to sleep out in it. Foolishly, we let then do so and now, years later, we are finally hearing about some of the questionable things they did after hours. One of the events we did witness many times was “Murder at the Barn.”

During the summer season, the best times for sleeping out there, fruit trucks would endlessly roar passed our place, headed for the Borton’s warehouse and loads of apples. These truckers were the preferred audience of our two demented actresses, although any stray car that passed by was also pounced upon. The drill was that one of the two, (I mostly remember Cece) would lie on the ground by the edge of the barn and mere feet from the road. The other would wait for a car or truck to come close and then scream or shriek loudly, brandishing a huge knife and acting as if they had just stabbed, or were in the act of stabbing the prone victim. I also remember red food coloring being implicated and maybe even catsup was used a time or two. Little sister Becca was encouraged to stand by the side of the bank, bordering the road, shrieking and clutching her teddy bear in sheer terror as the car or truck passed. Oh, the fiends!!!!!

To my knowledge, no cars ever stopped and no sheriff ever came to the door to investigate an alleged homicide. The drivers, certainly if they were truckers frequent to the warehouse run, must have figured out that it was just two demented teens, getting their “yah,yahs” out in a creative (?) manner. Both Cece and Rosa possess a dramatic flair and I tremble when I think of what could lurk in the future when they get together!

10-2-2010