Touched by Something

There were only four rooms in the house where I grew up with my eight brothers and sisters in the back woods of Kentucky. And for most of my life, there was no electricity or running water in any of them. We had to work hard and play hard all day to make it - but then when night came - we slept longer and better knowing that we had done something that day.

Winter nights were the coldest, and longest, of any nights, I believe, that we ever had in that little house. The roads were too long and treacherous for us to travel off of the mountain in order to go to town, and there weren't a lot of people up there to social with either...so during the winter we pretty much had only each other to keep company, entertain, and pick on until spring came.

We would spend the time trying to keep the fire burning, singing songs, learning to sew and play musical instruments, and telling stories to each other... ghost stories, funny stories, true stories, and then there were always just the stories that we would make up as we went along...but the story that I am about to tell you, really happened to me one of those chilly winter nights...and to this day...I haven't forgotten a single detail.

I was about 10 years old when they finally ran an electric line up the mountain to where we lived. I was so excited when daddy hooked us up! We could listen and sing along with the radio, which we all loved to do! And we didn't always have to go to bed when the sun went down, 'cause we still had a light or two on the inside of the house that didn't burn up all of our lamp oil.

But the greatest day of all, one that I'll never forget, the day that Daddy got us a TV! I remember that little black and white screen would often be so fuzzy that we could barely make out the faces, but it mattered none at all to us - we would sit right there just to see and hear what we could.

You see, our house was down in a little holler beneath the top of the hill, which is why the reception for the television was so poor. This soon became a very big issue for our family, as we began to focus more and more time toward this little box.

So, it wasn't too awfully long until we stretched a cord from our house to the top of the hill, and rigged up an antenna in the loft of an old abandoned shack. Mommy always told us the house was haunted by an old woman who fell off the porch, broke her hip, and died right there in the place...but I just figured that it was her way of telling us kids to stay away from there. It was a creepy little place, though. The door was off its hinges, the windows were broken out, and the side was completely grown up with raspberries. It was mostly a lonesome place, I guess you could say, and yet uninviting enough to keep me at a distance most times.

But then it happened one evening when we were watching our television. We were all just sitting there laughing away at something - and then the screen just started roaring and the picture left completely.