In last week’s article I described in some detail the house in which I was raised. That was not exactly what I set out to do, so this week I share with you my earlier intentions.

My father insisted in having his bed in the living room where the heating stove was located. The spot upstairs directly over the heating stove held an unfinished baby casket.

There came a time when a noise could be heard upstairs every night, as if something huge was being dragged over the bare, dusty wooden floor.

My dad was no fool, and it would never have occurred to him that the house had a ghost, as more romantic minds might imagine. He determined we had a mouse, and not just any mouse, probably a huge field rat. Maybe not just one, but several!

Now why would we have mice? My mother always had at least one cat around the house, and everyone knows mice don’t camp out where cats abound. But at least this mouse (these mice) or rat(s) were smart! They climbed up the walls between the outside weatherboarding and the inside tongue and groove planking of the uninsulated house to habitate the vacant upstairs room. Perhaps they were after Dad’s “tater” onions or potatoes, but possibly they were just looking for a safe place to spend a cold winter’s night.

Unfortunately, Dad had a plan to end the safety of the vermin refuge. He went to the hardware store and bought an absolutely huge mouse trap. Honestly, it could have captured a fairly good sized cat. He put some cheese, possibly peanut butter, on the trap for bait. He tied a rope to the trap and secured it to the exposed frame around the chimney so the huge rats couldn’t just drag it away down the inside wall as they made their escape.

This was assuming, of course, that the mouse (rat) was caught by the tail. The power of the spring on that huge mousetrap would mean instant death to any creature unlucky enough to have it snap on its head, throat, or abdomen. Dad placed a flashlight and a huge stick by his bedside so he would be prepared to bludgeon his prey to death should it survive instant death by the trap.

Sure enough, Dad’s plan worked! The usual scuttling inside the walls, across the bare floor, then a huge SNAP! Victory! There followed a much livelier scuttling and noise across the floor. Dad jumped from bed in his long-handled drawers, pulled on his untied clodhopper boots (no time for the foolishness of tying shoes), grabbed his stick and flashlight, and stomped upstairs.

In a few minutes, he came back down with the trap in his hands. It had captured by the tail one small mouse, much smaller than the trap. He looked so amazed that the cause of all the noise was such a small, tiny thing! He looked like Captain Ahab might have looked if he thought he had speared Moby Dick but instead had caught a minnow!

My mother laughed about Dad and his mouse until the day she died. How ridiculous he looked with that little, scrawny mouse in that huge trap, along with the big, unused stick in the other.

Never forget the old cliché, “He who laughs last laughs loudest.” Don’t think for one minute that the cause of all this trouble, small though it was, survived to talk about his adventure to his brother mice. He became a nice, playful midnight snack for our friendly cat. He was finished!

When you read this, it will be almost the end of 2019 or possibly already early 2020. 2019 is finished, for all intents and purposes. As we enter another calendar year, we may be faced with circumstances that seem huge, possibly insurmountable. Perhaps if we prepare ourselves for the huge expected challenges, the actual encounters will not be as big as was imagined from the “hullaballoo” that preceded them. Never forget, history buffs, the newspapers went to bed thinking Dewey had defeated Truman, and one publication was so certain that the headline was printed prematurely. The next morning, a retraction was in order.

Thankfully, many things are not as bad as we think they will be. When things do get tough and are as bad as or worse than we would have thought, our friends provide us comfort. Proverbs 18:24 (KJV) states: “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” Knowing that Friend will not necessarily make problems go away, but He sure can make the hard road easier to walk.

Dear Faithful Reader, may the richest joys and blessings of the New Year be yours, and my wish is that 2020 be the best year you have yet experienced. Thank you for allowing me to share a few thoughts with you in the past, and I look forward to your continued readership in 2020!