Kitty Down the Well, or in the Pit

I’ve been going back over previous blog posts, old family pictures and family stories that I have typed up, hunting for a good story to share. One that I may have not shared before or if I have, maybe I can expound on it. I came up empty, so pulled a new one out of the memory tank. 

I don’t know why, but this is the first story to come to my mind.

Because my dad worked on our vehicles on a regular basis (like a lot of dads did back in the day, before they made cars and trucks with so much complicated stuff under the hood), when he built the new garage, he put a pit in it. Just like going to Jiffy Lube today, he could drive Mom’s car or his truck into the garage, over the pit, and change the oil without laying on the ground. This thing was well-built, dug five and a half feet into the ground with cement blocks lining the sides.

As kids, occasionally, we’d play in it, though my claustrophobia never made it a popular place. I already shared one such story here.

On one particular summer afternoon, we were playing the usual game where my sister Pat was in charge and I had been arrested for some minor offense. I would need to be held in the pit. I started down the wooden ladder, wondering once again how I was so hard up for friends that Pat was my BFF, when I looked behind me to the cement bottom. A black and white kitten curled there.

Only it wasn’t a kitten. I scrambled up the ladder as fast as I could, colliding with Pat.

“Get back down there,” she commanded.

“Do you see what’s there already?”

She looked. “Huh. Go figure.”

Skunks and other wildlife occasionally fell into the pit, perhaps on the hunt for left behind treats. Dad would lower a long plank into the hole and we would wait in the house or somewhere else out of the way for the errant animal to climb out on its own.

Luckily, we never stepped on any of those critters. But wasn’t that a fun time to be a kid? 

This is the only picture of our garage that I could lay eyes on in a jiffy.
 I think I may have shared it before, but it's worth seeing again.
Aren't we beauties?