What I have this Friday morning

Over the past seven years, I’ve shared lots of stories from my past, some funny, some sad and I’m sure, a few boring. My childhood was pretty boring, but on July 6, 1980, I came to appreciate how uneventful my life had been up to that point.  

It was a Sunday afternoon. I was sitting at our kitchen table trying to figure out my class schedule for college that fall. Mom was at the kitchen sink under the kitchen window, cleaning strawberries. She watched a car drive by.

We heard a bang, bang, followed by ping, ping, ping, ping. It was the Fourth of the July weekend. We thought nothing of it. The car driving by must have thrown firecrackers out the window. 

Mom’s sister came over later and after we all had eaten supper, the two of them took a walk around the yard. From inside the house, I heard one of them shout something. Dad and I ran out to the driveway where Mom and her sister were standing next to Mom’s car. The back of it had been sprayed with fine shot. We immediately realized that the noise we heard earlier had been gunshots.

While Mom ran in the house to call the police, the rest of us walked around the yard. Dad found a bullet hole in a pine tree in the front yard and two more bullet holes in the house, one right above the kitchen window where Mom had been standing at the time.

As freaked out as I was – we all were – we figured it was just the kids in that car, pulling a sick prank. We didn’t think anything else was going to happen.

The next day, Mom called me at work to say the house had been shot at again. This time the person had come through the woods behind our house and fired two shots into the house. One had actually gotten through the wall but was stopped by the metal radiator in my bedroom. Dad had been sleeping in his recliner in the living room just on the other side of my room. Had the shot come into the house a few feet higher, it could have hit him.

The cops were called again. We found shotgun shells in the trees across the road from the house, so ruled out the car we had seen drive by the day before. By then, Mom was starting to suspect who it was.

At this point as I am writing this account, I had to consult my journal from that year. A lot more happened after that that I didn’t remember so clearly.  

Mom ended up in the hospital because of the stress. The shooter went up to the hospital and confronted her. They moved her to a different room, next to the nurse’s station so they could see if he came back.

I spent one night up at my aunt’s house, but then slept the rest of the time with my sister in her room above our garage (as if being in the garage five feet away from the house guaranteed my safety).

Friday, Dad and I went in to see Mom at the hospital. On our way home, my uncle flagged us down as we drove by, to say that the shooter had been at our house nosing around. Everything looked fine around the house. Dad was calm, as always, not rattled, but I made him go back up to my uncle’s when I went to work in the afternoon.

Shortly after I got to work, Mom called to say that it was over. The man had fired more shots at the house, then went back up to the hospital. He went in the room Mom had been in before and when he couldn’t find her, he slipped back outside. The police tracked him down and arrested him in an alley.

As much as this event remains vivid in my head, I’ve not been able to share it before. The man died quite a few years ago. He had a disease which affected him mentally as well as physically. Mom always said, “he’s not insane.” But he wasn’t always in control of his decisions or his actions. That summer, he had his reasons for having a grudge against Mom (reasons I don’t feel I have the right to divulge). I don’t remember if he was ever charged with anything, but I know he never went to trial. His mom passed away this spring and my mom passed in February, so I feel I can at least now share this story, if not all the details.

The reason I’m telling you any of this right now is because of a shooting in my little community last night. A shooting which wasn’t as personal as the one in 1980, but still too close for comfort - I was at work a block away when this happened.

I think you’ll understand why I have a fear of guns. But even so, I don’t believe that guns kill people. People kill people. And if they don’t have a gun, they can kill or maim with a knife, a bomb, a car, a paperclip, their words.

What happened in 1980 was an isolated incident for those times. Not so anymore. This world has gone insane. I don’t know what’s in people’s heads and I probably don’t want to. I don’t have any brilliant answers. I think people should get to church, read their Bibles, have faith in something bigger than themselves. Study what Jesus taught, learn to forgive. It’s not much, but it’s what I believe.

That’s all I got this Friday morning.  

The house I grew up in, viewed from about where the first shots were fired. The tree in the middle of the yard wasn't here then, others were. Mom's car had been parked in front of the right side of the garage.