Fun with Fiction 1

The little farm on the outskirts of town was strange to say the least. Rather, I should say it was a place where weird things happened. It wasn't that the people who lived there were strange; they were my best friend's family. We spent many a summer day there having the time of our lives. It's just that we had several strange experiences there.

I guess I should describe the farm in more detail, but it won't seem strange to you as you read about it. In all I guess there were about four acres of land, the house and surrounding "yard" took up an acre and sat against the lane. Another acre against the lane was devoted to a pumpkin patch that was harvested every year to be sold to kids and families for Halloween. It was to the south of the house so you had to drive by it on your way there from town. The back two acres were split between the barn and animal corrals on one side, housing one cow, one donkey, two goats and an assortment of chickens and turkeys, and a cornfield on the other.

Matt's dad wasn't a farmer really. The pumpkins, and animals were a hobby; the corn was for the animals and the family. It was really an afterthought at that, the whole county was devoted to corn crops, and so it was a natural choice. He worked at the technology plant in town, helping computers to talk to each other and stuff like that. Matt and I had all sorts of adventures on the farm that summer, playing in the irrigation canal, chasing the snakes and frogs we found, and generally getting into as little trouble as we could, considering we were two boys with no one to tell us what to do.

Like I said, there was nothing strange at first glance. You had to have your eyes open to see the weird. That's the way things are everywhere. The weird is there to be had, but most people ignore it. That's what you do with the stuff that doesn't fit into that we call "ordinary."

There are all kinds of stories I could tell you. The thing that lived at the end of the canal two farms to the East. The things we saw hovering over the mountains miles away after dark on moonless nights. What we saw the night before the crop circles appeared on the Birdwell acreage. So many things, that hopefully I will put down in time, but the thing that comes clearest to mind as I sit here was the Mueller’s scarecrow...

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