The Peeping Tom

Not all of the stories we told last night were hilarious; some were just family happenings.  One family story that stands out in my memory is the "Peeping Tom."  I wrote about it in my Journal Jar, and I'll repeat it here.

It was probably late evening, but not past nine or ten o'clock.  My sister Lois was getting ready for bed, and my sister PJ was taking a long bath.  She often fell asleep in the tub and she had done so on this night.  Lois had just knocked on the bathroom door to wake her up, and then had gone into the bedroom they shared to begin to dress for bed without turning on a light.  All of a sudden she realized that there was a face at the window.

Someone was pressing up against the glass with his hands on either side of  his face, trying to see in.  She calmly (and we still don't know how she stayed calm) left the room and got my Mom.  She told her there was someone outside looking in her window.  My Mom woke Dad who got his loaded pistol and went quietly out the back door.  My sister PJ was just coming out of the bathroom, dressed, but with a towel on her head, asking what was going on, and she, Lois, Mom, our sister, Barbara, and I all followed my dad outside!

Someone was running across a field next to our house and my dad fired his pistol over the guy's head.  There was a car parked at the curve, about 100 yards from our house and it started up as he got in;  so apparantly there had been someone there waiting for him. 

There had been a lot of break-ins and petty theft in our rural neighborhood that summer which is why my dad kept his old six-shooter pistol loaded.  We never found out who it was, and no one reported any more trouble in the area that year. 

I was only about four or five years old, but I remember it like it was yesterday.  I can remember Lois tiptoeing into the living room where Mom, Barbara and I were and whispering calmly, "there's someone outside my window looking in."  And I can remember the delicious chill that ran down my spine.  I don't really think I was scared; after all, I was surrounded by the ones who kept me safe.  I had explicit faith in my father.  No one was going to harm us.  And I can still see all of us following Dad out the back door, can see him several yards out ahead of us, see him raise the pistol into the air, hear the shot, and see that car peel off down the road.