(Part 3 -- story of Pat Kidd)
Pat loved animals, and he played a lot with our dog Anna when we lived on Volder. Poor Anna took a lot of abuse, because Pat could be pretty rough, even though he was not malicious. Pat loved holes as well as dogs, and one day he shoved Anna down a storm drain on our street. For a while, Anna was out of sight, but we could hear her down there. Fortunately, it was not a bottomless pit, and God sent a man, who was able to get down in the storm sewer and rescue our pet. On another occasion we were all visiting my cousin Phyllis somewhere in East Texas, and Pat was outside with some other kids and with Phyllis' dog. We were in the house - Grandmother Woods was there too - when a messenger rushed in with the urgent word that Pat had thrown the dog down the well. We all hurried outside and looked into the depths, and sure enough, that little dog was dog-paddling for its life and looking up at us with pleading eyes from maybe 15 feet down. Lord, have mercy. The dog would surely tire and drown, if we could not find a way to lift it out. We were all agonizing over what to do. Phyllis had an inspiration. She got a basket and rope, and we lowered it down to the dog, and the dog climbed aboard, and we pulled it up ever so carefully, just hoping the basket wouldn't tip. I think people must have been praying, because miraculously that poor dog rose into the sunlight, drenched but not seriously hurt. Afterwards, Grandmother Woods wondered, "What got into Pat, to make him do such a thing?" She said she thought it must have been the devil that got into him, and I said, "Oh, Grandmother, it wasn't the devil that got into Pat. That's just the way Pat is, He loves dogs, and he loved holes. It just made sense to him to put the dog down the hole." But since then, I have often wondered what does get into people to do outrageous things. With Pat, though, there was no meanness and no comprehension of consequences.
My mother always considered Pat innocent, and precious, and her little angel. I remember the day when Pat and I were both young, and our family was visiting a historical site at Vickburg, MS, I think it was. I just remember that we were all walking in a park-like area, and it was very dry, and there were large cracks in the ground, and Pat was flipping Mama's bracelet because it was wide and flexible and flipped really well. It was Pat's favorite flipping device at the time, and it was also one of Mama's favorite pieces of jewelry. You know what happened next. Down the crack it went. Way down. We couldn't even see it. Probably it's still there. And when he would do something like that, Pat would be so pleased, and he'd want to talk about it. "Where's bracelet?" When he got older, he learned to spit, and if you didn't watch out, he'd go to the guardrail at the mall and lean over and spit to the lower level.
Although Pat was in some ways an adult, he remained in other ways childlike. He depended on his family. He loved us, and he loved his other relatives and friends. Pat loved people in general and was not at all shy. He would put his arm around a stranger who looked interesting. At a restaurant, when he wasn't eating, Pat might gravitate toward another table, if the people there looked to be having a good time. I always thought a person should mind his own business, but Pat was not like that, and I was often embarrassed by his uninhibited outreach, especially to young girls. Lord, have mercy. If Pat got an opportunity to make contact with a pretty high school girl with a pleasing personality, he would leave his father and mother and brother, and go sit with her, and maybe put his arm around her. Thus he would do, naturally and innocently, what I would never in a million years have dared to do. People hardly ever took offense, though, at Pat. I was embarrassed many times, but in a way I admire Pat's uninhibited approach.
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