When I was a little girl around six years old, I saw Bigfoot on my family's farm in southern Alabama,

15 miles from the Mississippi line in Marion County. I've never forgotten it. It scared me more than

anything before that day or since. I was an active child, sliding down road ditches in that soft

Alabama sandy clay, climbing up into the barn loft and jumping out onto the hay wagon.

My cousin and I did both of these things all the time, though I always got switched on the back of the legs for it by my grandmother. She thought I was going to break my arm jumping out of the hayloft and of course, sliding down road ditches doesn't do much for one's clothing. My family grew cotton, huge gardens.

We had many chickens and a smokehouse. Every fall, my grandmother plowed with one or two mules,

which she harnessed up and guided as she hung on to the plow behind them. I thought she was the

most fascinating person that had ever lived.

And being the only young child on the farm,

my grandmother always took me to the cotton field or to the garden with her.

I didn't mind because I love watching those huge mules,

listening to the way my grandmother would command them and talk to them.

Looking back, I suspect there was another reason she took me with her to the cotton field or

into the garden. It was because she was afraid of what would happen to me if she didn't have

her eye on me, not just because I was an active child, but because strange things happened

on that farm, especially

at night. In addition to the Whopperwill that was very loud, I recall hearing strange whistling

sometimes. There would be something or someone outside that would bang on the house, and the

hound dogs would bark and yelp and go up under the house

and they would cry as if something were hurting them or trying to get a hold of them.

My grandmother slept with her 30-30 Winchester rifle standing up by her bedpost.

As a child, I never thought anything about all that because the rifle was always there.

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