The dog on Early street was fearsome. Little Samantha was able to walk part way home from kindergarten with her cousin Peter, but the fearsome dog was a few blocks farther than his house and a good half mile short of hers. She complained to her mother, her mother complained to her father, and her father complained to the dog's owner to please keep the dog tied up until Samantha was well home. But this was a small town, folks did not like other folks telling them how to raise their children or treat their animals, and her father's complaints fell on cloth ears.

One day Samantha did not come home from school. Five year olds walked to school themselves in those long ago days. At first her mother Ann was only mildly annoyed that Samantha had not come home on time and that she had to leave her three younger kids home with a neighbor who could check in on them. Ann went to her sister-in-law's house to see if Peter had made it home (phones were iffy back then, and not everyone had one) and learned that Samantha had told Peter she was going to walk a different way this day. She was going to go up Pearl Street to avoid the dog. Peter, also five years old, saw nothing wrong with this and let her go on her way.

The route Samantha had taken since the beginning of school was well known to her, but she had not been shown any other route. One block farther to the north then turn east seemed like a good idea, but Pearl street had a curve in it. Samantha wandered for a while, becoming more and more disoriented. After a while she sat on someone's front porch step and hoped for someone she knew to walk on by. Asking for help at that house didn't occur to her, that wasn't something folks did back then. The child waited.

The door to the house opened and shut. Samantha turned and saw the biggest dog she had ever seen come out that front door and come down the stairs towards her.

Another big dog! She stood and ran down the street with that big silent dog giving chase. She had to get away! She tried scooting around a blue car that looked familiar but that dog just stalked her around it.

Poor little Samantha! She'd been taught to be seen but not heard, so not a sound did she make. She kept running, and that dog kept following her. She went into someone's back yard, hoping the dog would give up the chase, but he followed her.

Trapped in a fenced-in yard, she had no choice but to scramble up a tree, the dog sitting on the ground looking up at her. And there she remained for three hours, terrified, quiet, crying, alone, and with no idea where she was.

Life used to be different for kids. They were mostly safe wherever they were, they'd all been taught to swim, they knew how to safely cross a street, and pretty much everyone knew whose kid they were. At first her mother was unconcerned. The kid would show up at some point. But after an hour of wandering the streets and calling "Samantha!" Ann started to become alarmed. Even small towns had dangers, and this one required the help of the police.

There were two cops in town, Steve M and Kevin M, father and son. They usually had little to do, besides helping someone who had just hit a deer with their car, or now and then a dispute between neighbors. This missing child was some big excitement for them. Pretty soon they'd organized quite a few people out looking for Samantha.

The dog's owner found her when it had gone fully dark. The dog, who usually came when called, would not leave the child, but eventually gave enough of a bark to be located. Samantha was sitting in the tree with the dog guarding her on the ground when Kevin M found her. The dog turned out to be friendly and he'd just been trying to help.

The cops told the dog owner who refused to keep his dog confined until Samantha got home from school to do so or they would shoot it. That was the end of that.

This is my first use of a daily prompt sent out by @shadowspub by email. I'm not feeling well today, but I read this story by @shadowspub and I just had to write a little memoir of my own about my childhood. Trouble is, I was severely traumatized by my encounter with this dog so I remember absolutely nothing of it except the bits my mother told me years later when we were trying to figure out why I was so afraid of dogs. I hope I got a little of the flavor of being a kid in a small town in the fifties right. Except for the part of its being dark when I was finally found in a tree with a dog on the ground guarding me, it's mostly fiction. Thanks so much for reading my little story.

All images are my own unless otherwise stated.

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