Turning point

Be Gentle I am still new to this. R&R is a good thing but no flames please.
}:>~~PP


CH 1
~Down the path~

Hot & humid did not seem to be a strong enough description for the weather in Tennessee that June day. The sun beat down with an unforgiving glare and the air was so thick you needed to chew it before you could get it down. Not that I was unused to weather like this, the summer weather in my home state tended to be even worse. In fact the over all weather back home is so bad that a friend of mine always jokes that it is the place they send people that are too bad for hell. So we ask each other why we stay there anyway?

For me I stay because it is my home, it's where my roots are & for another thing my little corner of the world is ruggedly beautiful. No flat farm ground like the rest of the state for me!

Limestone,,the left over remnants of a long dead sea who's life is now frozen in time and used to build some of the most wonderful buildings & stunning sculptures in the world. It is this limestone that helps give the land I love its rugged looks. The rolling hills covered in places with a thin layer of rich dirt over the large deposits of limestone that make up the bones of mother earth in this region are riddled with caves, sink holes and under ground rivers that make it unsuitable for the most part to use in large scale crop farming that the rest of the state is checker-boarded with.

The land of my home is made up of craggy stone faced cliffs interspersed with lush forest of trees sliced through with many streams and river bottoms full of yet more stone only this time on top "of", and mixed "with" the limestone there are geodes & sandstone. Then to make it even more interesting most all of it is covered with underbrush so thick you have to grease a rabbit to get it through.
There are some rolling fields and grass pasture ground but all in all this kind of terrain is not the best place for farming many things. However the area is just perfect for raising one thing for sure,,,GOATS! Yes goats, you may laugh but goats were the reason I was in the great state of Tennessee this fine sunny day. And it is the goats I ultimately have to thank for one of the best things that ever happened in my life.

Tho I did not know it at the time I was walking down the slope to the building where the goat sale was being held, I was about to take the first step along a path that would change me as a person forever.

At this point in my life and for all the years before as far back as memory goes I felt that for the most part the males of the species were a lower form of life, good only for grunt labor.
The only exceptions to this being my Grandfathers and great Grandfathers. On top of my list of the only good guys in the world was the sire of my long dead father who was killed when I was a very small child. I was the only child of my father & even tho my Grandfather had wanted a grandson he "made do" with me,,,& raised me just like he would have raised a boy. He taught me what it takes to be a livestock farmer in this hard region, as well as teaching me the ethics that went along with that. He taught me to be strong and did his best to teach me just what it takes to be a good person.
I was also an avid student of my other Grandfather as well as his sire who taught me the lore of the forest & the ways of the wild woods.
To say I was a "tom boy" & a bohemian would have been an understatement, even tho my Grandmothers and great Grandmothers did their best to turn me into a "proper" girl. The females in my life did teach me to be a rather good cook but most of the rest of the feminine arts they gave up on & shopping never was my thing.

When I was with my grandparents all was right with my world & one would think that with such wonderful men in my life I would have not become such a raving man hater....
AH but alas, there was another side to my life,,, a step father..
The idea of the evil step parent gets much press and tends to be over done, but one can't understand what brought me to who I am without bringing up the years of severe emotional, physical and sexual abuse I went through at the hands of this man, all of which I hid from my grandparents due to the fear that my step father instilled in me that they would all turn their backs on me if they ever found out what a "bad" little girl I really was.
In truth as evil as he was and he was real evil, & if my friend is right and this is the place they send people that are too bad for hell then the reason is not really the weather, it is because my step father must have been the one who taught Satan his art. But anyway, even with as much damage as my step father did to me he is probably one of the reasons I am as strong a person as I am today,,strong but screwed up, nuts even, so nuts that squirrels stalk me.
The years of living two lives starting just before age five made me able to hide many things from the world as an adult, I mean lets face it hiding the abuse of me at the whims of my step father from my Grandparents was a feat of acting that should have earned me an Oscar & went a long way toward making me feel as if I was very near to being two people living in one body. The abuse also had the effect of causing me to divorce myself from my body, & this caused me much problem in other areas later in life. I believe that it is also one of the reason that when I look back on that time in my life it seems as if I am watching a movie of another persons life, someone that looks just like me. But if it was a movie it was some kind of a strange horror flick that was the start of my man hating ways.

OH, but my step father was not alone as far as teaching me to hate men, no, no ,no dear reader he had help.

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Sorry this is so short, I wanted to see if there is any interest before I post any more.
}:>~~PP