Snakes

In the early to mid 1950s, we lived on my mother's parents' farm in Missouri. My mother said that sometimes an old farmhand named Charley used to show her snakes he had killed while mowing the yard. I think he thought that she would be more interested in the snakes than she actually was.

A few years after that, the menfolk helped my younger brother and me build a 'fort' with logs. It was in a field, and wasn't very tall, maybe three or four feet high, but was wide and long enough to have some room inside. The next year, we wanted to use it again, but it had tall grass around it and in it, and the adults were afraid of snakes being in it and wouldn't let us use it anymore.

My father used to say that he was chased by a snake called a blue racer. He didn't like snakes, perhaps because of that experience.

When I was little, I used to say that I had had three snake dreams. I think that in at least one or two of them, the dream was mostly about something else and the snake only appeared in a small part of it, perhaps towards the end. I don't remember much about the dreams now, though.