It was an idyllic time for us (my brother and I) that year of 1952. We lived on a ranch in the small town (town? no, not really - just a place in California called Apple Valley - population....maybe a few hundred spread out over God knows how many square miles), and life was good. Mom and Pop (Bill #2) had divorced three years earlier, and Mom was now with Mr. Lamb (Bill #3). Pete was 6 and I was 4 and life, as I said, was good - until that day in June, 1952...

As I said, we lived on a ranch, and Bill had a lumber and carpentry business that he ran from the ranch, and he seemed to be doing OK, but I guess that's only through eyes of a child...

The ranch is gone now, replaced by a few hundred tract homes, and the population of Apple Valley has increased JUST a touch since then (I think to about 100,000, but I'm not sure). The memory of that day had long been buried, although it manages to ooze up to the forefront of my thoughts occasionally, like some primordial slime, festering all that it touches.

A lazy day in June...Pete and I running and yelling, and laughing, and being kids, and not thinking about the past few weeks when the talking started. When Mommy and Daddy would talk very, very LOUDLY, and use ugly words like "Bankruptcy" and "Foreclosure", and Pete and I would cringe and slink to our room like disobedient puppies and be very, very, very quiet so we could be invisible, and no one would find us till the talking was over and life was good again...

On this particular day, the talking had started, and we had slunk, and we were waiting, and then...Mommy screamed...

And we ran out to see if Mommy was OK, and we saw Daddy, his face engorged and red, his eyes bloodshot, and a look of pure hatred washing across him, and he was moaning, and snarling, and mumbling, and gesticulating wildly all around, and he raised his hand and pointed at us, but he wasn't pointing a finger...he had a gun...

Have you ever seen the movie "To Kill A Mockingbird"? There is a scene in that movie where the Sheriff wants Atticus to shoot a rabid dog...and you see the dog running up the street toward you, and he is yelping, and snarling and flopping around...whenever I see that movie, that dog always reminds me of Bill on that particular day, in that particular place, at that particular time.

He raised the gun, and Pete screamed, and dove behind the couch, and I screamed and dove right after him, and Mommy yelped and dove through a door, and the first shot followed her through the door. The second shot clipped through the wall she was behind, and she yelped and was she OK? We didn't know, and weren't about to peek out to check.

The third shot snapped through the couch between us, hit a nail in the floor, and ricocheted off, whining like an angry hornet, to smack the wall like the clap of doom. The next shot slapped through the couch and cut through a fold in Petes shirt and thunked the wall and the one after that zipped past my forehead so close I thought I could feel the breeze of its passing and Pete was screaming and Pete was cringing and Pete was peeing and I was screaming and I was cringing and I was peeing and Mommy was yelling and over it all you could hear a soft snarling and moaning and mumbling and then there came the sixth shot.....

I am pretty sure that most of you folks out there have kids...and probably grandkids, too. Oh, I know some of you don't, but I'm pretty sure the majority of you do. And, I'm pretty sure that when your kids were small and free and happy, you probably had Family Fun Days and Lets Get Together and Do Things Together Days and had fun. BUT, I KNOW, I just know that no one on here has had a Together day where the Mommy said in a soft, sad, quiet, fragile voice..."OK, Kids, Mommy needs you to help her now...Mommy needs you to help her clean Daddys brains off the wall..."